Personal Digital Assistants These electronic organizers can be the small-business owner's little helper.

Alexander Graham Bell had his Watson, Johnny Carson had EdMcMahon, and now even a fledgling entrepreneur can afford anassistant--named Newton or OmniGo. For less than $1,200, a newgeneration of lightweight, portable devices, commonly known aspersonal digital assistants (PDAs), are making life a lot lesscomplicated for the technologically savvy businessperson.

PDAs allow you to take the office wherever you go, squashingdown many of the organizational, practical and communicationsfunctions of a laptop computer into a package that can usually fitin one hand. Although most PDAs may look like a child's toy ora portable video game, they are very serious, powerful tools.

In the Beginning