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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great content, but PDA version could be more useful., 25 Sep 2005
This review will focus on the PDA version of the OHCM, and is aimed at medical students.You can't argue with the quality of the content. The real reason for getting the PDA version, though, is ease of use. You can search through chapters or use the index to tap in the first few letters of the word you're looking for. If there are several incidences of a term, you're presented with a pop-up that lists them, letting you find what you want. Having the PDA version will be a big bonus on ward rounds - when you're looking for that quick answer you'll be done before your paper-using colleagues have even opened up at the index. It's not the last word in textbooks, though. If you like to use your Oxford Handbook to revise, you'll find it a lot harder with the PDA version. It's the technology rather than the product itself, but reading from a handheld screen for any length of time is tiring and not likely to help your retention. The size and resolution of the screens of today's PDAs also throws up some problems with graphics and tables. Images can be shown in their entirety or zoomed in, but it's difficult to appreciate the details of a dermatomes diagram when you can only see half a leg. Likewise, tables often don't fit on the screen so you have to scroll back and forth for each row of data. Newer PDAs with higher screen resolutions should cope better but it's still a definite limitation. The software from Skyscape needs a mention. It does the job, but it does insist that you register your name and set up a free account before you can start using the software. It then proceeds to email you back your password. If you use one password for lots of services this is an annoying security breach and is a foolish oversight - so take care. It also loads itself onto your computer and encourages you to update all the time - it's livable-with but sometimes annoying. It would have been useful to search for any word in the text - you can only search the index as it appears in the book. So if you want to look up info on a drug you'll have to go to the relevant chapter and browse to find it. It's a shame too that you can't select text and copy it - this would have been really useful if you were using your PDA to make notes in a lecture. If you're in the market for a new Oxford Handbook anyway and you've got a PDA it's definitely a good bit of software to have. If you're just starting medical school though I'd wait and see if a new version came along before you start clinicals (that's when you really need an OHCM) - by that time the teething problems may have been ironed out.
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