Process for utilizing external handwriting recognition for personal data assistants

A personal data assistant (PDA) that effectively uses human handwriting as input is disclosed. The PDA takes advantage of the fact that a significant portion of the data which is entered into a PDA is not time-critical and can, therefore, remain in handwritten form for some period of time. The recorded information is transmitted from the user's input to an external device for processing. After the translation occurs, the data can be passed back to the PDA storage and/or processing within an application on the PDA. When using the PDA, the user would enter notes on the pad either free form or in an application specific form. The handwritten data collected by the PDA may then be transferred to a recognition engine. This recognition engine may be remote and connected via wireless modem. The transfer may be done in real time or later.