Palm T|X and Z22 Reviewed 155
robf writes "The eagerly awaited Palm T|X and Z22 have been officially announced. Palminfocenter has reviews posted for both the Palm T|X and the Palm Z22." From the article: "The T|X and Z22 are the first new models to return to the Palm name, after the company reacquired the rights to the Palm name. Palm has decided to drop the Tungsten sub brand, in order to highlight the strong Palm name brand."
Someone help... need question answered. (Score:4, Interesting)
As a long time user and fan of Palm, (I kind of consider them the tivo of the hand held industry -- maybe not the very first there, but one of the ones that got a lot of things right ergonomically before they got steamrolled by the industry and their own inertia), the time and technology seems about right for me.
Looking at the features list it seems to fulfill much of what I've waited for (good memory, expandable vi SD, nice screen, improved and enhanced original apps).
But a question for any who really know: Will the user be able to use this wireless capability to move pictures and mp3s to the device? That would just about lock it for me, but it's not clear from the feature list and description that that is doable.
Also, are there any users out there who would vouch for today's screen quality? I would be upgrading from the Palm m5xx which has a color screen, but that screen is of less than great quality and is quite anemic. I've seen other newer devices with screens that scream -- is Palm doing the same?
Backlit? (Score:2, Interesting)
Is the Z22 backlit? The blurb doesn't say.
I would have bought a Zire 21 ages ago for a cheap e-book reader, had it been backlit.
I guess my old Handspring Visor Deluxe will still be in use if it's not.
Re:At last... (Score:3, Interesting)
A camera on a handheld is handy to have, and I get enough use out of it on my phone to lift it just out of "toy feature" status, but I still don't see it's use as an integrated part of a professional tool like this.
not as good as bailed third parties (Score:4, Interesting)
Ah well. I just Ebay'd up that Samsung clamshell Palm/phone...Palm/Treo doesn't understand the beauty of clamshell design either.
I've been a Palm loyalist since 1997, but even to me it's clear the future ain't so bright for the brand and the nice little UI.
Mac compatibility seems hobbled (Score:4, Interesting)
PocketMod is my new Palm (Score:3, Interesting)
My last two Palms - a Tungsten and a Zire 72 - made high-pitched humming noises. So loud I could hear it while sitting down and reading an eBook or reviewing notes. The Zire 72 runs out of battery juice within 45 minutes if I have the Wi-Fi card running.
Add to that experience the poor syncing with my Mac OS X and frequent Palm Desktop crashes with Windows XP SP2, I started syncing my calendar, address book, and notes to my iPod.
To scribble quick notes down I use The PocketMod [pocketmod.com] - an ingenious combination of paper, planner, and orgami. A single sheet of paper becomes a folded booklet with eight different pages. No batteries, it's paper so if I drop it I don't cringe, and I get a new one every week!
Re:Surely I'm not alone... (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh, and I did my last soft-reset a month ago...
There was a bug in IE back in Pocket PC2002 (released in 2001) when instead of loading a page the IE logo flashed for a secong and stopped all navigation. To fix it, you have to run \Windows\welcome.exe
Well, one of my friends bought a Fujitsu-Siemens Pocket LOOX 720 (or something like that) and another bought something like hp iPaq 2110 (the most recent entry-level one with Bluetooth).
Guess what? In 2005 they still have that problem! The only good thing about WinMob is a great variety of games.
Palm (or Palmone?) too has some crappy bugs, but these are usually related not with the system but with third-party Palm-branded apps like Novarra (Palm Web Pro), Multimail (Palm Versamail) etc.
So, when Palm have announced a Windows-powered Treo 650 (on their front page), they're losing a customer in me.
IMHO PalmOS is just too old and Winmob too buggy. Zaurus failed to gain marketshare (and it costs a lot).
So, in this situation I fail to see a PDA that would suit me. For non-gamers the best solution is probably a Palm m500-like PDA for reading books (maybe with a better screen) + iPod or other good music player. Beleive me, I use my Zire 90% for music and 9% for reading books while on the road. The rest 1% is PIM and stuff like dictionaries/calculators. If I exclude music, a B&W-screened PDA with a 100Mhz processor would fit perfectly.