i have always found having a palm is fairly handy. if you purchase the handbook of fractures for the palm, you can read a little bit on each fracture that you see while you are on the fly. also, as far as being an ortho resident, i find it very handy to have my calender, epocrates, and my HUGE list of phone numbers in an easy to locate place. people have always made fun of me carrying a palm, but when they need the fourth contact number for an attending they turn to me. if you decide to get a palm, i would strongly suggest getting a tough case to go with it. personally, i carry my 515 in a halliburton case, and it fits into the back pocket of my scrubs without a problem (and supports the weight of my big ass without breaking!).

For students, the palm is awesome. couldn't live without mine. Epocrates is great for a drug reference & it is free. 5 minute clinical consult by skyscape is another great program, but is costs something like $60-80. It has basically no use for ortho, but is good for 3rd year clerkships. If you have friends in the know, there are cracks availabe for skyscape programs. unfortunately, i already paid for mine before knowing this.

i've heard there is a netter available for the palm, but have never seen it.

whatever palm you get, i'd recommend getting one with an expansion memory slot as some of these programs fill up the memory really quickly. i have the m515 also which has about 16mb. i filled this up with only 4 programs. i got a 128mb expansion card for about $40 and now i have tons of extra space for whatever i want.

I agree with the previous posters in that a PDA will be of little use clinically beyond the intern year with the exception of Handbook of Fractures from Skyscape. It's a searchable word-for-word duplicate version of the hard copy including all the diagrams. There is a Netter's for ISilo with every plate from the atlas - it's OK for quick look-ups but the resolution isn't that great even on my 320x320 screen. Even so, it will take up close to 70 megs. The Skyscape crack will work for the older apps (including HBFrac) but apparently doesn't work for newer releases.