Technofile: Many moons ago, I started to type my life into computers - birthdays, appointments, everything. But, as progress marched on, was I consigning all those thoughts to a digital grave? And what will happen to everything I have stored on my mobile phone?
In the mid to late 1990s there really was only one mobile digital device on the block. It was the Psion PDA. Psion digital diaries started life looking like a prop from the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - brick-like and with a tiny screen that would just about display the words "don't panic".
But the Psion evolved and became the robust Psion 3a, a clamshell portable computer, and the little Psion Sienna, a digital diary with a lot of computing power. Eventually, they came out with the superb Psion Series 7, which had a laptop-like mini keyboard. But Psion was up against massive competition from US firm Palm Pilot.
Even though the Psion had the better operating system, instant on and a rechargeable battery good for about 8 hours, Palm trounced the UK firm with sleeker, smaller designs.
God forbid you should want to keep up with technology and retain your Psion, because by the turn of the century, the writing was on the wall. The world was turning to Palm and Windows Pocket PC, and hundreds of hours tapping your life into Psion wasn't going to make any difference. As Psions gradually became more obsolete, all I could salvage was plain text files.
Fast forward to the world of 2005 and the little software engines that run your life - principally on your mobile phone and desktop computer - are still around, and they're growing and multiplying. But the data you enter into your mobile today needs to find a way out in tomorrow's technology.
Which brings us to 3G, the third generation of mobile phones.
One of the latest 3G phones is the Sanyo S750 from Orange (free or €200 depending on contract). It will behave well as a mobile video phone. A slider phone with a large 2.4 inch colour screen, it has two cameras front and back (a 1.3 megapixel camera with flash). Battery life is fine and a built-in MP3 player draws on 8 megabytes of internal memory or SD memory cards.
The S750 is great for voice calls, but - and here's the clincher with many 3G phones - not so great at data. It's been branded as "bug ridden" by some.
It's generally known that the built-in Openwave browser does not cope well with regular HTML pages. However, at least it is less troublesome than NEC phones, which were the first to appear on the 3G network in the UK.
Ultimately, it is the operating system of these newer 3G phones that is at issue. In the case of the S750, there's no obvious way to get your numbers off your existing GSM SIM card into the handset so you can start making calls. The handset can't copy numbers from the old SIM onto the new 3G, USIM card.
Sanyo says you can download telephone numbers, tasks and appointments from Microsoft Outlook to the phone, but the process is torturous, and Orange does does not include a USB cable. Bluetooth, although built in, does not make it easier due to fiddly instructions.
Symbian is in the lead as it runs on Nokia and Sony Ericcson phones, followed at some distance by Microsoft, PalmSource and Linux. The Treo 600 from PalmOne, for example, has been popular in the US. Symbian rules in Europe, while Asia is increasingly interested in the free OS Linux.
But some of the newest games and features only work with Java, which you only find on Symbian phones.
