Paper is the hand-held device of tomorrow

Net Results:I have a confession to make. For me, 2007 might be the Year of Paper.

I know a technology columnist shouldn't be admitting this, but after a couple of years of having had various hand-held diary devices secreted on my person, usually in my pocket or handbag, I am tempted by the little, old-style paper diaries that get sent out each Christmas by lots of companies (and indeed, which The Irish Times produces too).

I actually do like digital diary programs. Outlook may have its security issues but it also is incredibly powerful and I have always liked how you can easily move information around between e-mail and the calendar.

Now that I mostly work on a Mac, I do try to transfer all my diary items straight from e-mail onto the iCal calendar programme. And in the past, I have made good use - for short stretches - of the Mac.com facility that lets you synch iCal and your contacts to your Mac.com account so that they are displayed online for you, accessible anywhere.

There's even a cool element that lets you give other people access to your online Mac.com calendar and shows them, say, your work- related items, while hiding your personal items (just be sure you classify them appropriately or it could be embarrassing).

But I have found I just never consistently synch anything, especially not to my handheld PDA. Inevitably, it runs out of juice and I forget to recharge and lose everything then never bother to resynch.

I've never even bothered to synch the various mobile phones I've had to my computer. One reason is that most of my mobiles won't synch to the Mac, but even when I mostly used a PC I never once synched a mobile with my desktop.

The only thing I care about with a mobile handset is whether it has Bluetooth, because if it has Bluetooth, I can transfer picture or document files to a PC or a Mac in a second with no compatibility concerns. I guess if I was managing music on my mobile as well being able to synch would be an issue, but I don't carry music around on my mobile.

"Convergence" is definitely not my middle name.

Actually, all of this isn't quite true. The one converged device I have used on and off for long periods is the XDA - I liked having the computing functions plus a mobile. But my XDA is ancient and for the past year I've switched to using regular handsets instead of smartphones, mainly because they are small and convenient and fit in a jacket pocket when I walk my dogs, without looking like some strange growth on my waist.

I suppose it's because I'm using small handsets that I have realised that I want to go back to trying a plain old diary. A diary is small, thin and light and doesn't need to be recharged or turned off when I am on a flight.

I don't need to remember to bring the right adapters when travelling (I swear my suitcase is half adapters and travel plugs sometimes).

It's also faster and easier to make a note with pen or pencil in a diary then to tap it in with a stylus or by thumb.

A paper diary is also a permanent record that I can save and check when I realise I've forgotten a birthday or when I need to check the date that I attended some event or last met someone. And yes, I know you can archive such calendar information on a computer, but I have at least three times in the past several years synched a handheld to the PC in the "wrong" direction, replacing my archived calendar data with whatever scrappy data was on my handheld. (Look, I'm happy to confess to being a computing klutz!)

I've also, once or twice, had total crashes where I lost the calendar information and got the infamous Blue Screen of Death instead to let me know everything had gone bye-bye. I do back up all sorts of information, but somehow I never get around to archiving those calendar and contact files (I know, I know) and zap! Part of my life disappeared.

By contrast, my old, pre-PDA paper diaries and filofaxes live on serenely on one of my shelves, an instant reference point for old contacts, phone numbers and diary information. Then there's all that convenient stuff that's in a paper diary. The ones from The Irish Times always have maps of all the main Irish cities, holidays, lots of useful contacts, handy facts about Ireland, public transport routes, a map of the country. If I want similar information on a digital device I have to download it from the internet (if the download exists at all) and upload it to the PDA.

So yes, 2007 is, I think, the year I go a bit retro. To complete the picture, a nice fountain pen and ink wouldn't go amiss either. So in January, when you see me peering into the displays at Dublin's Pen Corner rather than PCWorld, you'll know why.