What To Do With Older Children?

[Jon Westfall]

Do you sell them? Keep them in a special place of honor? Trade them with friends? Work them tirelessly on special tasks? Kick them into the trash?<br /><br />I mean, after our brand spanking new electronic baby grows up, what do we do with that child?<br /><br />Personally, I usually keep a select few around, and eBay the rest. Then I blow through the eBay money on things I usually don't enjoy as much as my lost child (i.e. pay bills, buy groceries... :D ). So now I'm thinking I should keep them around, but this brings in another problem: What good does it do to have a drawer of Pocket PC's? I use my primary PPC 100% of the time and my older PPC's 0% of the time. They are as good as lost to me...<br /><br />What do you do? How do you deal with your baby today growing up to the child tomorrow? And since most of us upgrade every 2 years or so (Some more often...), does this mean that once our wards hit the terrible twos we ditch them? :mrgreen:

[crashdau]

I sell them, but, it's not ebay. I usually have sold them to someone who is then converted to PPC-dom !!! :D

[hoodmeister]

Ditto the above. Electronics have a short lifespan as it is... To shorten it further is hideously wasteful.

Oh, and selling offsets the cost of a new one ¬¬

[OSUKid7]

Either keep them or give them to someone in my family. I've only had 3 of my own so far, plus I bought a cheap Jornada on eBay that's even less useful than my iPAQ 3870 that isn't being used atm. I should try eBaying them sometime. :|

[DaleReeck]

If I kept every PDA I've ever owned, I could open my own store :D

[Rod3]

I haven't kept them all, but most of them, and I have more than I like to say. But I use them all - sometimes just for games. I have found that my two newest are used least. I have reverted to my old trusty 4155 for just about everything. If it had VGA, I might sell everything else. Maybe. :roll:

[makic]

3 words
Hand me down

[Pony99CA]

When I saw the title, I thought this was going to be about giving Pocket PCs to older children. I guess I was wrong.

I usually give older PDAs to my wife or daughter and keep the others.

One thing I don't do is refer to electronics as "children". It's like naming your Pocket PC, computer, car, etc. It's a thing for &lt;deity's> sake. :roll:

Steve

[KTamas]

Sell'em :)

[Kursplat]

How about keep the older PPCs and eBay the older children? The PPCs eat less.

[Rod3]

How about keep the older PPCs and eBay the older children? The PPCs eat less.

Now that's a great idea! They not only eat less, they are cheaper to educate.

[ctmagnus]

I guess I should eBay it. It is in mint condition (except for the battery life), after all. Thank &lt;deity> for CarePaqs!

[JonnoB]

My PPC children go to my real children. First to my wife, and then to my children. There are 5 Pocket PCs to fill the needs of about half my family.

[bjornkeizers]

If it's worth some cash, I usually sell it shortly after I get my new baby, and use that to buy a case, memory, etc. I've sold all my PPC's to date that way (Ipaq 1915 &lt; Jornada 565 &lt; Ipaq 3630)

I do have some old(er) gear lying around that's still good. I like having old stuff around to play with on occasion and selling it wouldn't be worth my time and effort. I still have a Clie SL10, a Psion Revo (BNIB, never used!) and a Palm Tungsten|E that I don't use, and a Clie TH55 that I use infrequently.

I'm still kicking myself that I sold some of my really old gear, like a Palm Pilot Pro - that's a museum piece today!

[Phillip Dyson]

My Ipaq 3600 totally dies on me so it went to the grave. My girlfriend started with a 3800, then went to a Sony Clie. Now she has my 2210. She's threatening to go back to the clie though. 8O

[Jon Westfall]

One thing I don't do is refer to electronics as "children". It's like naming your Pocket PC, computer, car, etc. It's a thing for &lt;deity's> sake. :roll:

Steve

It's a humerous post title for &lt;diety's> sake. :mrgreen:

[mr_Ray]

How about keep the older PPCs and eBay the older children? The PPCs eat less.

Now that's a great idea! They not only eat less, they are cheaper to educate.

Plus if a child misbehaves you can't just hard reset it.

PPCs are just superior to children in every conceivable way (although conceiving PPCs is admittedly less fun).

[Jonathan1]

Trade them in for the latest Pocket PC. Unfortunately since they are used you will only get a portion of what they are worth in trade in.

[yawanag]

I often felt like a pack rat keeping my old PDA's. When I had my T-Mobile, I stayed on the line with Customer Support so much I didn't have many nice words to say to them. I gave up on the darn thing always formatting my SD Card and bought an Imate.

Well, as luck would have it, my Imate started causing problems too and I had to send it in. What did I fall back on? My old T-Mobile. The thing had sat around for 4 months and when I picked it up and formed a new partnership, etc. it worked beautifully. Now, I'm scared to get rid of them. Who knows when you just might need them?

Sure wish the Imate had the battery power the T-Mobile has.

I have other issues with Imate, but I won't go into those.

[yslee]

I went for the last option. I've always used my PDAs till either they're unusable or they're too expensive to maintain. The only exception was the MPx200 (not really a PDA, but not a cheap phone nonetheless).

[disconnected]

I'm on my fifth iPAQ. I still have the first one, a 3630 that I got from Datanywhere (don't think that exists anymore) because I couldn't wait for it to hit a local store. It's plugged in on life-support and ready to use in an emergency, although I've never had to -- I pick it up and check it out once in a while. My second was a 3870. It had enough problems that I was able to use Best Buy's warranty to trade up to a 3950. Since the 3950 didn't have bluetooth I sold it on Ebay, unopened, and got a 3975 from CompUSA. I used CompUSA's warranty to upgrade to a 5555, and then to my current 4700. CompUSA now has a new type of warranty that requires mailing in the unit, but in the past I've just had to bring it in, show them a problem (and all my PPCs did develop some problems over the course of 12 or 18 months) and pick out a new model of my choice.

[jimski]

Sell them, if you want to call it that. All of my old electronics (usually not very old) get sold to co-workers for deep discounts, which includes lifetime customer support (from me of course). Usually takes less than a couple hours to find a buyer.

For example I just sold my 5450 with original box and accessories, extended battery, portable keyboard, powered CF and PC Card sleeves and an extra Boxwave screen protector for $50.

The money does not mean that much to me (don't want a reputation of giving things away for free). I am just happy to find a good home for my retired devices.

[Jon Westfall]

Sell them, if you want to call it that. All of my old electronics (usually not very old) get sold to co-workers for deep discounts, which includes lifetime customer support (from me of course). Usually takes less than a couple hours to find a buyer.

For example I just sold my 5450 with original box and accessories, extended battery, portable keyboard, powered CF and PC Card sleeves and an extra Boxwave screen protector for $50.

The money does not mean that much to me (don't want a reputation of giving things away for free). I am just happy to find a good home for my retired devices.

Next time you have a deal like that, look me up :) It is a good idea though, so that you don't get the reputation of giving it away to charge a nominal fee.

[Dyvim]

Keep them around for programming! (Just in case you want to make your programs backwards compatible with obsolete devices.) I still have a handheld pc 2.11, a handheld pc 2000, and a Pocket PC 2000 in addition to several Pocket PC 2003 devices.

[axe]

I have managed to sell my previous PocketPCs (iPaq 3600s, mine and my wife's) but I still have an Apple Newton OMP that I waited way too long before I thought of selling it. So it collects dust in my bottom drawer, since eBay doesn't show much value in it.

AXE

[ucfgrad93]

Well, I've done several things with my (and wife's) old pdas.

Sold two (Palm Vx &amp; Casio EM-500) on various forums. Gave one (Palm IIIc) to my niece as a graduation gift. Still have three (Palm IIIc, Sony T665C, hp 1910) floating around in closets, drawers, etc.

[JMac]

I keep 'em all! :D

My original, tried and true Axim X5 Advanced is now a full-time GPS routing device. I have the entire line of Pocket Map Navigator maps and Highway grids on it, an Arkon powered mount with speaker, and an iTrek mouse-type GPS receiver with cabling just for an X5. I couldn't see purchasing a new BT receiver just so I could use my X50v for GPS navigating - let's face it: a VGA unit and the tons of space required for maps doesn't really do it any better, and why do away with the existing GPS receiver, cables, mounts, etc.? So the X5 lives in the car on a semi-permanent mount and is very happy there! And my X50v is not loaded up with the mapping/routing software (required to be in Main Memory! 8O ) and maps.

Then, my Asus MyPal 716.... It went wacky after only six months, which didn't make me very happy at all. Dell, what with all the griping you hear about their tech support, will send out a new or refurbished unit within a day if yours fails, and you ship the broken one back in the same box, with a prepaid shipping label. Even if the damage is due to dropping the unit, or spilling a glass of iced tea on it. Asus, which has a marvelous reputation for quality, is a little more primitive in their support practices. My Asus stopped running in December 2004. After eight emails to them (unanswered), and six phone calls (When I was able to find a valid phone number for their support!), I finally received an RMA to return it for repairs in April 2005. That's five months without use!! (Hence, the new Axim X50v!). After having my unit for a couple of weeks - during which I could not reach anyone to find out the progress of the repairs - they finally returned it with a new motherboard. With that kind of support, I almost don't want to use it - just take it gently out of its box every now and then to admire it and then quickly, but carefully, put it away!! :lol: Actually, though, I use the Asus primarily for beta testing of software for a few developers.

And that leaves my Axim X50v as my everyday device.

Of course I've also given away two Axim X30s, an X3, and another X5 to family members who otherwise would not have purchased them.

Ebay can wait!!