The more I research the less I know what to do!

[Hartville]

Should I buy my PD with everything included or wait until 2.0 PD arrives on the market?
Should I buy a Tungsten TX for my PD and Chinese Pod or wait until Mike makes a deal with IPod Touch so that PD can be downloaded on IPod Touch? According to an interview that Mike
had with IPod he mentioned that IPod Touch would be the best PDA/Cell for PD.

Right now I am a student at Shi Da University in Taipei. I been researching which PDA would be best for PD and Chinese Pod but the more I read the less I know what to do? I plan to
use PD and my PDA for a very long time. I don't want to buy something now and find out
2 months to a year later that everthing I have is outdated.

Please let me hear you suggestions!!

Steve

P.S. Chinese learning is going to be a lifelong process on my part so I want to make the
right decision. I will be raising my little girl her in Taipei. Neither my wife or her
relatives can speak English.

 

[mikelove]

On the iPod Touch, my point in that interview (which is at http://www.cibmagazine.com.cn/ShowAtl.asp?ID=378 for those of you who haven't seen it) actually wasn't that the Touch would be a better system for Pleco than a Palm or Windows Mobile device - honestly I think a stylus-based system will always beat out a finger-based one for writing Chinese - but rather that because it's much more widely available than non-phone Palm or WM devices, fewer people would have to buy a new cell phone just to run Pleco.

So I certainly wouldn't suggest waiting for the iPhone/iPod version on the expectation that it'll be better than the Palm/WM one; in fact, in the first release there'll probably be a lot of features missing, since we'd very much like to avoid the mistake we made with Pleco 2.0 of waiting 2 years to release a product with every conceivable new feature instead of gradually adding them every few months - better to have a basic iPhone version out in 6 months than a fully tricked-out one in 18.

A TX should be a fine choice; you could also look at the HP iPAQ 110/210 series, since in 2.0 Pleco tends to run a bit faster / smoother on Windows Mobile than on Palm. (as opposed to 1.0, where the opposite was true)

As for the buy now or wait for 2.0 question, there are only two reasons you might want to wait for 2.0. If you're not very good with computers and don't want to go through the trouble of installing/learning to use the software twice, it might be worth waiting so you'd only have to install it once, though there'll probably be one or two bug-fix updates released a few months after 2.0 so you'd still have to go through installing those. Also, if there's a specific combination of dictionaries that you want that you can only get with 2.0 - for example, the ABC, 21st Century and Standard dictionaries but NOT the NWP - you could save a little money by waiting. But the same set of dictionaries should cost the same regardless of whether you buy now or later - the ABC, 21st, Standard, and NWP together for example would cost $100 (Professional bundle) + $80 (21st/Standard upgrade) = $180 now versus $150 (Linguist bundle) + $30 (NWP upgrade) = $180 after 2.0 comes out.