The PDA should have the obvious function of being able to look up the economy of the last few stations you visited as of the time you left.

Having to write down "needs coolant" outside the game (e.g. on paper next to my laptop) is not adding to my immersion gaming experience. 8-)

+1

But you should know the list of station needs is not accurate.

"Having to write down "needs coolant" outside the game (e.g. on paper next to my laptop) is not adding to my immersion gaming experience. 8-)"

Then don't. You can make notes in-game. In the nav window, hover the mouse over a sector and press "a" and you can add notes to that sector.

There's also a notepad in PDA -> Missions -> Mission Notes.

You could also take the "desired" plugin from http://www.gyph.net/plugs/plugs.html and extend it to save the information for you to recall at a later time.