Using AvWx.net with a PDA

If you have a PDA with a color screen, such as an iPAQ, Sony Clie, Handspring Vizor or Palm device, you can get a data cable that will let you connect the PDA to your current phone and use the browser in your PDA even when if you're not near a WiFi connection. If there is room in your flight-bag for your PDA and a cable, then you can use your current phone even if it doesn't have a color screen or a browser that displays graphics. The good folks at Gomadic have a range of cables that will connect dozens of different PDAs to scores of mobile phones. Gomadic offers extraordinarily prompt service and a hard-to-believe lifetime exchange policy, so that when you change devices, you can trade cables to stay compatible.

For many of us, this is just too much stuff to carry around. However, we've talked to several pilots who are using the mobile-phone-Gomadic-cable-PDA solution and are quite pleased with it. Gomadic makes a line of cables to connect mobile phones to notebook computers as well.