Palm Tungsten E2

I spent quite some time researching Palm's because my fiancé wanted one for Christmas. Whilst I may be a bit of a geek I had no experience of these at all.

After a few weeks reading and talking to people it seemed that this Tungsten had what I needed, it had a nice clear screen, high resolution 16-bit (64k colour), but the cover was a little pointless, its quite light at 133g and it has 32mb of non volatile memory, which means that if the battery dies you do not lose anything. For protection I think it may be worth investing in a harder cover. I was a little annoyed that I had to either buy a "wireless adaptor card" so I could sync it with a wireless laptop, or buy a "laptop Bluetooth adaptor" so its own connectivity could work. A choice would have been useful.

It had wireless connectivity (a pre-requisite for the fiancé!), the ability to read PDF files (acrobat reader), and the ability to work with word/excel and Powerpoint file. It has its own contacts and calendar function but will sync with Outlook.

With 32mb of internal memory, to store anything substantial you really need an adaptor memory card - these palms use Secure Digital cards and a 1GB card will cost roughly £35 and upwards depending who makes them. The MP3 player is pretty good, using Real Player and it has video playback capability also, little sketchy from a SD card but it may be different on internal memory. Battery life is very good, moderate use will last about 8 days which compared to my iPod is excellent! There is a nice clear battery indicator on the Palm for reference. The computer to palm cable is standard, but a "dock" for the Palm would have been helpful.

The screen is very responsive to the stylus and it is pretty easy to get around the Palm itself.

But I could overlook a few things, after all you can't always get everything you want, especially when it offered so much for less than other palms on the market and the price was £129 at Amazon.co.uk.

Since my fiancé has started to use it there have been problems with Hot-Sync in that sometimes I will for no apparent reason connect and sync successfully. But then everything is a little temperamental sometimes.

I have to say that everything has glitches but on the whole this palm has a very good reputation and it works pretty much as you expect it to. If you want further information try the Expansys website (www.expansys.co.uk) and search for it, it has a lot of good information and shows all the compatible upgrades to it, including SD cards etc.