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Bots / The Ultimate Palm Robot/ Mukhar & Johnson / 222880-6 / Chapter 1

20 The Ultimate Palm Robot

mind devoting it to your robot—at least part of the time—then there’s nothing
else you need to do. Move on to the next chapter.
If, on the other hand, you don’t own a PDAand your hand comes up empty
when you reach down to your belt, you’ll need to get one (a PDAthat is, not
a belt).

You can obviously run down to your local electronics store and buy a brand
new PDA. That, however, may set you back hundreds of dollars for the very
latest PDA gadget. If you want to take a more economical approach, there are
various ways to get your hands on pre-owned PDAs. We present a few of
them here.

Should You Buy Used?
Just how reliable are those used PDAs? Should you invest in a PDAthat’s
been used and possibly abused for years before you got your own hands
on it?

Consider this: any time you buy something secondhand, it has under-
gone a certain amount of wear and tear. That means any used PDA may
have certain defects, such as buttons that don’t respond as well, compo-
nents that are closer to their end of life, and rechargeable batteries that
have measurably less capacity than when the device was new. Aparticu-
lar concern with used PDAs is the state of the screen and Graffiti area.
Since people interact directly with those parts of the PDA, they can get
scratched and sometimes even damaged. A few scuffs is no big deal, but
an abusive owner can really do some damage to a PDA touch screen.
One thing is for sure: with 10–15 million PDAs sold each year, there’s a
big secondhand market. If you can get a PDA inexpensively enough,
a little wear is no big deal.

Your Friend the Gadget Freak
Do you have any friends who are gadget freaks? (Not sure? You can identify
them by the way their clothes sag due to all the gadgets they carry.) These
folks were first to get a cell phone, first to get the latest gaming console, and

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