Electronic personal organisers, or PDA’s, did not exist many years ago when the technology was not available, or was not good enough to satisfy the consumer’s needs. Due to this a manual diary was usually the best way to keep all your notes and important dates in one spot. Unfortunately this meant that each new year, dates such as birthdays and anniversaries would need to be manual copied into the diary for the new year, and depending on how many people you knew this could be a painstaking task.
Not many years ago the Filofax organisation system was the personal organiser of choice. Consisting of a ring binder created by added sections or pages, it would be easy to add and remove items without creating a mess. The filofax organiser seems to still be a popular method for those people to organise their items using a paper based method and it can be done with minimal fuss.
However, when high tech electronic PDA’s or organizers were available on the market, many people chose to give up the relative hassles of using their paper based filing system, and chose to use their personal organizers instead. The reasons were simple, they could stores all your dates, appointments, phone numbers, and email contacts electronically, and give you an alarm alert when requested. Furthermore deleted an entry would leave no trail and hence it was a much cleaner and less of a hassle to use these devices. They also have other applications which could make your life simpler such as a voice recorder.
As mentioned, one huge reason people choose to use an electronic organization method over a paper based method, is that it is very easy to set reminders and alarms to alert you when you have something important to look out for.
As advancements in the electronic personal organizers were made, other more exciting features were added to these initially simple devices. This included the ability to sync your computer emails of files with those on your personal organizer, which could happen in real time to ensure you have everything you may need for personal or office use, at your fingertips, at any time. In addition to this, email capability and also internet browsing, is what is currently making these devices a must have gadget.
In modern times, the electronic organizer is no longer a stand alone product. You will notice that most new mobile phones will have complete organiser capabilities inbuilt into it. Vice versa, many electronic organisers have calling and SMS abilities. This goes to prove that as technology evolves, items that were previously considered standalone are now integrated into a single user friendly device.
Although it seems like the electronic organiser is the one and only option for a truly up to date, user friendly, and time saving device, this is not always true. People who have grown up with the manual filing and organiser method will often struggle to be able to use these new age gadgets, as they have not been exposed to electronic devices most their lives. Even if they wanted to switch to sing them, these people may take a long time to learn and get a hang of these modern devices which the Generation Y have grown accustomed to. For this reason, elder people may stick to what they are used to, being the paper based system, to avoid change and to have to learn to use another new device.