When I saw the PSP+ thread I thought it was about the (Play Station Potable) kind of gadget. The one that your kids use to play games ..etc.

Why did I think so ?? 'cause my son has one and I liked its larger screen ciompared to my cell phone, or even my friend's GPS system. For quite some time now I have been thinking of the time someone merges PSP entertainment gadgets with something more serious like e-book library, GPS, and other real use .. plus off course the occasional car race or Tetris for a change.

From searching Google images, there seems to be some PSP's with GPS capapbility. And my son has told me that his PSP does some limited internet surfing.

So, here is the question to the prepared minds on ETS :

What kind of small gadgets do you think has the maximum value to the buck when it comes to bigger screens and more versatile uses to us preppers ??

We have to diregard laptops 'cause they cannot go into most pockets. We want some smaller gadgets for smaller GHB or daily kits. And they should be as veratile as possible.

Cell phones allow us to communicate, which is a plus. But many have smaller screens . Plus playing all those songs or internet can suck the battery dry and you lose communication as well.

My kids and I seem to prefer the simpler more dedicated cell phones like NOKIA 12xx series with a very long lasting battery. It can outlast any other super phone since battery is almsot dedicated to communication and nothing else ( no internet or GPS ..etc. ) So it seems another gadget is necessary to supplement that with every other function like GPS , or even entertainment. The advantage of this setup is that if the gadget dies, we still have an independant way of communication.

Any ideas for a high value gadget with a PSP-sized screen and multitude of fuctions ?

Oh, I have to add this

Lately I got from my other son a broken electronic dictionary which I took to the distributor and got fixed. Although it is an old model (black and white screen) but I was pleased to go through all those functions it has. It has several types of calculators , an encyclopedia , an organizer , times of the world , travel guide, currency converter , and many other features.

Sorry I forgot the GAMES !!!

It runs on 2 AAA batteries. And the size is 5.5 x 3.0 inches. It is a great value and a big asset I would say.
I am very happy I spent $15 to get it fixed.

Now I need more of these kind of multi-purpose gadgets , even a converted PSP, stuffed with prep type e-books and video clips.

To my mind, your question implicates the same issues when we decide whether to carry a belt knife and/or a multitool.

Most of us would generally agree that a quality belt knife is a better knife than the knife in a quality multitool. But, the multitool offers a number of other features in a compact and convenient size. Unitaskers are generally better than multitaskers with respect to the unitasker's specialty. Thus, a PLB will be better at directing rescuers to your location if needed than a smart phone. A dedicated cell phone will have better battery life than a smart phone. A GPS unit will provide better service for locating yourself and planning routes while hiking than a smart phone. On the other hand, a smart phone (e.g., iPhone or Droid Incredible, etc.) can act as a cell phone, can act as a GPS device, can text and email, can store survival applications/information (e.g., first aid manual, army field guide, flashlight, etc.), and do untold other things as well.

If I were going on a day hike near a metropolitan area, I would have no qualms about leaving the PLB behind and taking a fully charged smart phone (especially if I had a hiking buddy). If I were going on a week-long canoe trip in the boundary waters, I would bring along a PLB and probably leave the smart phone behind.

Good point Kukulkan

But actually my main point was actually to have "electronic multittols" if we could call it that way. In a survival situation, I want to have things that can do many many types of functions because i don't know what I will be facing.

Maybe your BOB already has a BLP, two-way comms ..etc. But having another gadget like a PSP or electronic dictionary stuffed with info is defintely a big asset.

Even if it doesn't have GPS , a PSP loaded with map images (just like pictures) lets you have a full atlas in your pocket. Not bad in a survival situation.

This idea came to me when I had to travel with a friend. In his car, he had GPS and other cool gadgets. In my car, I had map images loaded in my cell phone (with reasonably big screen) and couple of compasses. We both did OK when we split.

PSP is quite capable gadget for that (good screen and CPU). And I'm keeping some survival books in my son's PSP just in case. Unfortunately you have to hack the PSP firmware in order to use any third party software (so called Home Brew software) with it, which includes mapping, reading, databases, and many other titles. And that in turn will make it incompatible with the new official (off the shelf) games and OS enhancements.

I believe that at the present time the most capable devices of this kind are Pocket PC (or Windows Mobile) devices. They have tons of free and very useful software applications available online far exceeding anything available to iPhone and Android phones to date. They are easy to pair with the regular Windows computers. And easy to program (must have - for me, if the need arises - for others).

Another option is PalmOS based PDA's (even those with B/W screens). They have a much better battery life and even more software applications available, but lack in features and computational power (except for the most advanced models like SONY TH-55E). However, as you probably know, PalmOS is almost dead now.

Personally, I'm using HTC HD2 (T-Mobile) for all of my needs now. The only features I miss are the infrared communications and serial port - to control older electronic devices. But I'm working on that (it's so advanced that I could emulate those old school ports functionality with easy device modifications).

However if you are new into it - I'd recommend to go for Android devices now. They will rule the world eventually (what means that the growing open source development community will provide you with tons of useful and free software very soon).

There are quite a lot of gadgets like that now, older smartphones running windows mobibe can sometimes have a better OS loaded (though the cost of those is going up now because of this), older PDA's nintendo DS, etc. The reason I say to put somehting else on WM devices is the difficulty finding software for WM, the difficulity of getting documents on them without being connected to a windows PC, etc. The Pocket Word, Exel, etc formats you have to convert to (though pocket word is close enough to rtf that those work), pdf viewing is too slow and you can't do much with the calendar/tasks/etc without outlook. Then the OS version fragmentation is pretty bad, My WM Standard 6.1 I have to really hunt for software, you'll find stuff for 6.5 or stuff for pro or stuff that takes .net 2.x. Then the web browser being IE is pretty bed too, since a lot of web sites are going back to true html standard due to the popularity of non IE browsers, the ones without the ie specific code don;t render very well. Some of the older phones you can load another OS such as Linux or Android where you get more use without need to connect to a host PC for file conversions.
Wife has a Nintendo DSi which works pertty well as a document/web browser, you can drop files on the SD card and read them, those are dropping in price since they have announced a new model.
Though not pocketable, netbooks in the 7-9" size are the size of a book, everyone is going to the much larger 10" so the 9" and smaller are getting cheap. Our 9" Asus netbooks are our main systems at home, with 500G drives in each so should we need to leave they are easy to grab and take.

Eugene, that's really sad! On my HTC HD2 I can comfortably read any documents/images/video/audio in native formats without conversion. The browsers are Opera and IE - never had compatibility issues except with heavy flash interfaces. My 16Gb memory card in it is 50% full of useful free software. And I'm downloading it either directly or through my DropBox online account. It's WM 6.5.

According to my KillAWatt meter, I cut almost 80% on using my home computer in the past 3 month because my Win Mobile phone is so versatile.

Netbooks are very good, but you'll get 6 hours max battery time, a lot of it will be wasted on powerup/powerdown/application loading time, and it's not easy to recharge it fast in the field.

I have my Motorola Droid phone loaded with lots of useful data and maps. If I have cell signal, I have almost unlimited access to whatever data I need. If not, I still have GPS, a magnetometer, lights, a camera, and apps that can work with the data already on the phone.
I can charge it from AA batteries using a gadget from Energizer, or I can charge it from my Solio solar charger. As long a I have my EDC bag or GHB I will have one or both of these.
Even when this has become the "old phone" and is no longer on a data plan with my cell provider, it will still be able to use a WiFi connection to access the internet, thus still being a useful gadget even after it has been replaced as my EDC cell phone.

WM 6.0/6.1 is just terrible. I still like the phone and it seems well built, its been thrown more than once by a 4 year old and two year old during a tantrum, if I could only put a more useable OS on it.