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Last week and this weekend I realized that I have a love-hate relationship with my Blackberry Tour smartphone.

I love that I can access the web anywhere that I have a cell phone signal. It means that train rides, cheap hotels without wi-fi and camping trips do not have to take me off the web.

But I hate that my smart phone is NOT, and I do mean NOT, a fully-functional hand-held digital assistant in the same way that several models of Palm personal digital assistants have been. My smart phone is NOT a PDA – and I miss the PDA functions that used to make my life easier.

When I got my first Palm IIIxe PDA in 2001, I discovered that I could write on it with its included stylus – and magically, my stroke-altered scrawl was turned into legible on-screen letters. Even more magic – when I popped the IIIxe into its cradle and hit the Sync button, I sent those scrawled notes directly to my PC – where they became memos, and task lists, databases and Microsoft Word docs. With my little electronic extra brain cells, I only had to write things down one time. Once written, the information could be read on the PDA and synched to my PC(s). From there it could be re-written, edited, emailed, categorized and saved a dozen ways.

I fell in love. I became the Palm subject matter expert at work. I bought second-hand, reconditioned PDAs and loaned them to other techs, converting a couple to PDA users over time. My PDA was always at my side or in my purse. I hadn’t taken notes on paper for nearly a decade – but I’d used and retired a Palm IIIxe, Palm m500, Palm m505, Tungsten E and my first Tungsten E2.

And then my phone died. And my second Tungsten E2 was getting quirky – the touch-screen sometimes blanked on me and the date-time would reset for no reason. I decided it was time to jump into the ‘convergence’ between PDAs and smart phones that tech writers had been singing about for years. My next phone would be a smart phone. Only my phone coverage lives with Verizon Wireless. No iPhone. Palm smart phones were being retired. It was Blackberry, or the new Droids. I decided to go Blackberry, a name that had a long history in multi-tasking smart phones.

And as I said, I mostly like the Tour. But I *hate* that I cannot write directly on my smartphone with a little stylus. I miss Graffitti. I miss scrawling down quick notes, and I miss being able to take notes in a meeting directly in my PDA. I hate tapping out a note with my thumbs on the included keyboard. The keyboard works for contacts. It sucks for writing. The Tour is not alone in sucking as a writing tool. No smart phone can do what my little Palm PDAs were able to do for a decade – allow me to write, in something like handwriting, and record my thoughts as fast as I can think them.

I am back to taking notes in a paper notebook, and then struggling to read my notes and retyping them into outlines, task lists, emails, Word docs and blog posts. Why? Because Palm no longer *makes* PDAs. And my Tungsten E2 is still being a little too  fruity to rely on it any longer. I will have to go to the eBay resellers and see what I can find reconditioned, or maybe I will be lucky enough to score another new-in-box Palm PDA that I can give a good home.

Yeah, I’ve seen an iPad. I want a real keyboard and I want to be able to write on the screen. I own a 9″ netbook which I love – but I don’t want to carry all 2.2 lbs. of my netbook with me at all times – I want the 4-5 oz. I devote to a phone to also be a funcitonal PDA.

If convergence means I can’t write on my phone’s screen, then I want my Palm PDA back. And I want my PDA to be able to make phone calls and surf the web. We have the technology. Why can’t we make our smart phones into true personal digital assistants? Things we can really write on? Please.