Devastated

Okay, maybe not devastated, perhaps just panicked and upset beyond belief. My beloved, darling, wonderful, necessary pocket pc has crashed and burned! I took it off the cradle tonight to put in my new schedule for my preceptorship and it wouldn't work... at all. There's nothing on the screen, it won't turn on, I tried the reset button a couple of times, tried to resync with desktop, desktop says it's malfunctioning. AH!!!!! Tried calling my brother and got no answer at any of his numbers (he owns a computer business and sold it to my husband as my Christmas gift last year). This thing is my left hand. We are to always have a drug reference on hand at all times while in placement... I have several drug programs and other specialty programs (like a differential diagnosis, clinical consult, medical calculations, etc) and am SO depressed that I will have to return to carting around drug cards. And, I will have to bring all of them since preceptorship is like nursing, you get your patients at report... no time for preparation. DH and I are thinking battery but even if that is the problem, you have to send away the whole thing to get it replaced so I will be without it for awhile. Talk about a bummer way to start the semester.

[CarVsTree]

Sorry to hear your PPC died. I don't know what I'd do w/o my palm.

Hope you get it resolved FAST!

[Browneyedgirl]

Is it possible that someone played with the color adjustment for the screen? My dad, who assembles computers for fun, had that problem before......

Good luck

[LydiaGreen]

Thank you for the sympathy... no, it isn't a colour adjustment problem... it doesn't have enough power to trigger the sync... the rechargeable battery is totally drained. I did a search on my model last night and it turns out the average life of the battery is 8-10 months with heavy use... I've had mine for a little over a year. It's just minorly upsetting this morning. I'm able to have one of those ironic chuckles about it. My DH got me an infrared keyboard for it for Christmas this year and I was so excited to be able to do my reports during my breaks at preceptorship. DH says he'll get it fixed RIGHT NOW but unfortunately, Toshiba is no where near little old town... so, I'll have to send it away and hope they put a rush on it.

Thanks again for your replies... my initial post was quite sarcastic but I didn't realize just how much I used my ppc until it quit working last night. We must always remember that our gadgets are only as good as our batteries.

[Sarah Kat]

I was going to suggest maybe taking an eraser and rubbing the metal connections (where the battery touches the ppc). I used to do customer servc for a major wireless carrier and periodically we had similar complaints on cell phones. Sometimes the connections between the battery and the electronic isn't working properly. I swear it works. But if your battery is totally toast, then only a new one will save you.

BTW Cell phone batteries also have life spans...

[teeituptom, BSN, RN]

Wow just think

In the old days we just had to memorize it all,,, no such luxuries as having a pocket pc to do it all for you. I still dont have or need one.

[CarVsTree]

I'm sure in the old days they didn't have books or notebooks either. I'm sure you have had reference materials you referred to when you were a student and perhaps even as a nurse.

A PDA is just one convenient location to keep all of these things.

I'm sure nursing school is MUCH easier now than it was in your day.

Don't know why you felt so inclined to leave a negative comment.