3.2. Walking away from the PDA by Jarle Petter Kasbo, Hans Gallis and Jo Herstad This article presents our study of medical students in their medical practice and their use of mobile terminals, serving as information resources, in relation to the KNOWMOBILE project. The main objective is to shed light upon conditions for the possibility for use of mobile terminals, serving as an information resource, in contexts related to the medical practice. The title of this article refers to our most distinct discovery: We observed a very limited use of the mobile terminal in the medical students’ practical training. We observed that they preferred to use other resources instead, and often left the mobile terminal at home or in the cloakroom at the practice location. When moving away from the medical contexts and the medical tasks, the use increased. Through literature studies, prototyping and empirical findings, we state that several aspects affect the use or more correctly: the non-use of the mobile terminal. We state that the use is dependent upon the characteristics and resources of the mobile terminal as well as the other information resources available in the context. In addition, we believe that because the use of the mobile terminal was not perceived as a part of the community of practice, the medical students did not find the mobile terminal useful in their medical practice period. This article is an extract and a rewrite of the master thesis of Hans Gallis and Jarle Petter Kasbo, which was finished February 12th 2002 at Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, and bears the same title as this article 1 . 1 Introduction The aim of our study is to gain the understanding of use of mobile information services and technology. The focus is on mobile services, or more specifically: information resources, but we also have to take the mobile device itself into consideration when discussing the services. To reach that goal, we have made a prototype of an e-book, carried through interviews and contextual inquiries. The basis for this article is experiences and results from 9 interviews and three contextual inquiries. 1 The master thesis can be downloaded from http://www.ifi.uio.no/~jarlek/knowmobile/documents.php3