[lug] Linux PDA with Bluetooth?

[Peter Hutnick]

I would really like to have a PDA and cell phone (NOT a single device)
that will give me real Internet access with no wires.

I would greatly prefer a Linux based PDA.

Here is what I have come up with.

Phones

- AT&T will gladly sell me a phone with Bluetooth, and data for ~$10/meg
(!).  I swore I'd never go back to AT&T, and $10/meg seems way out of
whack to me.  I'm not sure how there service is in Denver, but I suspect
it is not as good as Verizon.

- Verizon might sell me a bluetooth phone in six months if I am really
good and eat all of my vegetables.  Maybe.  I'm on verizon now, and I am
very happy with their service.  Their deal for data seems to be "all the
data you can eat, at ~modem speed, and we just charge you minutes."

- Other vendors are harder to nail down :-0

PDAs

- I have a Palm m500 now.  I like it, but there doesn't seem to be a
"real web browser" for it.  There is an SSH package that "might work."
There is a bluetooth SD card that should work with my device.  Upside:
cheap, Downside: Doesn't really do what I want.  The Tungsten looks kind
of cool, but has the same basic weaknesses.

- The Zaurus looks like the obvious answer.  Bluetooth is available in
either a "developer" cable replacement dongle (unacceptable) or in a CF
card.  Thing is, I'd almost certainly be unhappy without a big-ass CF
card or better yet, a micro-drive.  Apparently, no SD bluetooth cards
work with it.

- The iPAQ has built in bluetooth.  I'm a bit leery of the Linux distros
for it though.  No on (on the Familiar mailing list) can tell me if it
can really pass IP traffic over a bluetooth phone.

So, the long and short seems to be that I could /probably/ kludge it
together in a way that I wouldn't really be happy with for about a
grand.  That's not very exciting.

I could probably live with a cellular PDA, but that leaves me with
PalmOS, which I really like, but doesn't support the apps I want, or
WinCE ('nuff said).

:-(

I'm open to any and all suggestions.  I really don't want anything
bigger than the iPAQ.  My m500 case /is/ my wallet, and that works out
perfectly.

-Peter