> > 5) Buy someone else's PDA (like a Palm Pilot, Handspring, etc.) and just
> > program it.


The Palm OS has a fine serial RS-232 implementation.  The first thing that I
ever wrote for the PIC collected data on an '877 and transferred it serially
to the Palm.  The simple solution is to have a Palm with a three-foot serial
cable (retails for $15) that plugs into your PIC implementation.  The serial
code on the PIC takes less than a page (with full interrupt driven
receive/transmit) - it's gotta be a whole lot easier than implementing IRDA
on the PIC...