 Medical PDAs - Prism's on Sale at Fry's
Around here we call Fry's Electronics "The F-word store" for a variety of reasons I won't bore you with here. However a couple weeks ago Doug was sitting on the living room floor leafing through the Fry's ads in the Times. When all of a sudden he called out to me, "Hey ML! Fry's has refurbished Handspring Visors on sale for $179! Can you run a check for me online and see if that's a good price?" Drat! Busted! He knew I was online. So I did a little searching even checking the Handspring site (who wanted $229 for the same model,) to find that it was a great price. (I felt a Fry's run coming on.)
The reason Doug wanted a PDA is because as a Clinical Pharmacist*. All the doctors and medical students he works with everyday carry one. One of the Residents recently told him that most medical schools are requiring them because of the constantly updated information, which gets updated daily. It had seriously cut the cost of very expensive medical textbooks they were required to buy. A Palm-type PDA would replace about five books Doug drags to work everyday in order to have the dosing and diagnostic information he must have to help patients. For all the years we've been together, Doug going to work without his reference books, is like Doug going to work without his pants or a calculator. It just doesn't happen. So buying him a Prism at that price made sense. So... off to Fry's we went with the normal amount of trepidation necessary since we were walking into the belly of the beast.
Much to our surprise, the refurbished Prisms at Fry''s are factory sealed color 8 MB models with the USB docking station, (note URL is not Fry's,) that frankly look like they have never been used or sold. To my jaundiced eyes they looked more like overstock. This was thrilling to me. We put one in the basket and added Fry's $29.99 - 2-year over the counter exchange warranty-- only because the refurb' warranty's only 90 days and we knew the repair bill to replace a battery would be over $150. So for the $30 bucks-- this was a no-brainer. He added a neoprene belt clip case ($20) and a package of screen skins ($10), a package of extra stylists (pens) ($10) and a car charger ($10). Total cost $269.00. Still well under the cost of a new one. And with Fry's 30 day price guarentee we knew if they dropped the price in the next month, we could get a refund. So like a kid with a new toy we headed home to charge and load it up the new toy .
Since I'm the software geek in the family (Doug does hardware very well,) I checked out all the instructions and loaded up all the installers and drivers. Doug went online to find all the URL's of the software the medical students had told him about, and he decided what he wanted to download. I expected the credit card to come out, but much to my surprise all of the research books are FREE. (I computed this was over a $500-600 a year savings from the books he buys.) Picture me thrilled.
Over the next two hours I registered, downloaded and installed 8 programs and references onto the color Visor over the cable modem. I was amazed that on 8 MB model we bought, it was only 60% full when I finshed installing all his programs.
Now some two weeks later, Doug's been using it at work daily and it's been rock solid. It updates and charges every night when he comes home automatically in less than a hour. He's said carrying a Visor has really helped lighten his load to work and look ups on dosing are quicker. (However He refuses to give up his preprogrammed HP Calculator. Some habits die hard.) On a standard 10 hours shift, he's only using about 40% of the battery life, which amazed me.
And then the good news... this weekend we noticed that Fry's lowered the price AGAIN to $169. We returned to the store, invoice in hand and received the difference in cash and Doug decided to buy one for me. I was still unsure I wanted one, but he said-- "At this price, try it." So I took one home.
I've had it the since the weekend. For it's size and storage I'm honestly impressed. The Prism is rock solid and the color is beautiful. I have all ready transfered by Outlook Address Book, Datebook, Quicken expense reports and Acrobat files. That was a godsend, because I unloaded serious weight out of my purse. I've all ready loaded some of my client photos and notes from NAB and things I need to take to the Streaming Video Show today, including some press releases I'll be following up on at the show. This axed out another notebook and papers in my purse. (Scarey but I can see the bottom of my purse.) I still have memory to spare. To say we're thrilled would be an understatement. I just downloaded Klondike. ;-)
Any suggestions on what programs I should look at adding? Hit the comments link!
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* A Clinical Pharmacist is a specially trained pharmacist normally who works in hospitals or in home-care who selects and monitors the medication selections for very ill patients. They also correct a considerable number of medication errors in patients with multiple doctors.
4:44:24 AM 
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