For employees who are mobile frequently and who must stay in close contact not only with e-mail but with enterprise applications, 3G may be well worth the expense.

Alternative input devices

Usability trade-offs are inevitable as devices shrink, and one of the biggest shortcomings of small mobile devices is input. Most small devices such as smart phones have QWERTY keyboards for thumb-typing, which is fine for entering small bits of information. But it can be maddening if you must type more than a few sentences.

Enter alternative input devices. The best-known of these are foldable keyboards for use with smart phones, PDAs and other mobile devices. Typically, they fold down to the size of the devices themselves and, expanded, are roughly the size of a keyboard on a small or medium-size laptop.

Perhaps the best known line of foldable keyboards are the Stowaway keyboards from Mobility Electronics. One of the newest and most intriguing of that company's offerings is the Stowaway Ultra-Slim Bluetooth Keyboard. As the name implies, this connects to your PDA or smart phone using Bluetooth wireless technology.