Palm Tungsten T5

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I chose Palm over Pocket pc because as an Apple Mac user Palm offered Mac Syncronisation oug of the box (more on this later).

The Palm I decided on was the Tungsten T5

Product Description PalmOne Tungsten T5
Dimensions (WxDxH) 7.8 cm x 1.5 cm x 12 cm
Weight 145 g
Processor Intel XScale 416 MHz
Product Type Handheld
Audio Output Speaker(s)
Display TFT active ...
...the box I found the palm with a lather face cover charger manuals and usb cable. The device itself look very appealing small and light you can fit it into your shirt pocket though its slightly its heavier than a pocket calculator.

The screen is crisp and bright menu buttons obvious and easy to use. Handwriting recogntion is ok I seem to have a problem writing t sometimes. I must say personally I would prefer the tiny keyboards found ... more

As someone who constantly forgets meeting addresses phones numbers I decided maybe it was about time I bought something the might be able to help me organise my life.

I chose Palm over Pocket pc because as an Apple Mac user Palm offered Mac Syncronisation oug of the box (more on this later).

The Palm I decided on was the Tungsten T5

Product Description PalmOne Tungsten T5
Dimensions (WxDxH) 7.8 cm x 1.5 cm x 12 cm
Weight 145 g
Processor Intel XScale 416 MHz
Product Type Handheld
Audio Output Speaker(s)
Display TFT active matrix - transflective - 16-bit (64k colours)
Input Device Touch-screen, 5-way navigation button, stylus
Operating System Palm OS 5.4
ROM 256 MB
System Requirements for PC Connection Microsoft Windows 2000 / XP, Apple MacOS X 10.2 - 10.3
Wireless Connectivity IrDA, Bluetooth
User Available Memory RAM: 55 MB / ROM: 160 MB
Total User Available Memory 215 MB

Its priced at around £250 from retailers so I opted to buy the unit nearly new off of ebay for £150 it arrived boxed with manuals two days later.

On pulling it out of the box I found the palm with a lather face cover charger manuals and usb cable. The device itself look very appealing small and light you can fit it into your shirt pocket though its slightly its heavier than a pocket calculator.

The screen is crisp and bright menu buttons obvious and easy to use. Handwriting recogntion is ok I seem to have a problem writing t sometimes. I must say personally I would prefer the tiny keyboards found on the Zaurus or blackberry.

Functionality is excellent the calendar, task manager and address book are a dream to use present relavent infomation and input is simple. Its clear a lot of effort has gone onto these features.

Battery life is great certainly a lot better than the Sharp Zaurus I used to own.

Life drive, the device has an inbuilt 256 mb of memory which is directly accessable as a hard drive much like a usb memory pen or floppy drive. This feature has to be activated on the palm but it works really well for transferring files on both mac and pc.

The sync software proved to be a bit of a pain its was simple enough to install though it forced me to register the deivce (on the mac). The problem is the initial install only gives you palms desktop software with no like to the apple utils. In order to get palm to talk to isync you need to follow a rather bizzare procedure of downloading apple palm sync conduit adding the conduit to palm sync checking a box in the settings which turn on sync with isync.

I also adivse downloading the latest version of palms software which has many enhancements including an update for the Unit
Though updating the t5 software is a pain it reboots then you *must delete thefiles from the backup directory* or the unit will attempt to update itself each time you sync.

On the subject of syncing bth my Powerbook and the Palm have inbuilt bluetooth so I had hoped to be able to sync wirelessly. This is technically possible but I wasnt able to get it working, nor was I able to get irda (ifraread to my phone working) though to be honest I didnt try too hard.

There is updated PC software.

Lack of Wifi was a bit of a dissapointment Palm have certainly missed a trick by making this an additional extra. I think in the USA there are better price plans for mobile data so bluetooth over gprs / 3g is acceptable. y mobile operator charges a premium for data so until I buy a wifi card I wont be doing any surfing on the pda.

Overall
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Despite a few niggles with connectivity I have found this to be an excellent device for organising storing appointments and addresses.
The drive feature is also really useful for moving data or backing up the odd important file.
You can also use it as a media device to atch movies (the screen is certainly god enough or as an mp3 player. The only real features I would want are wifi wireless networking and a voice memo record function. That aside if you want a personal organiser which does personal organiser functions well the Palm is a great choice. 

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