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Handhelds Hardware

New Palm Lineup Reviewed: Tungsten T3 & E, Zire 21 190

Posted by timothy from the can-they-play-ogg dept.
Geartest.com writes "PalmOne (AKA Palm) launched three new handhelds today: The Tungsten T3, Tungsten E and Zire 21. Without going on at length about the features of every model, the T3 has 64 MB RAM, a 320x480 display that rotates from portrait to landscape mode, a software writing area that slides out of the way when you aren't using it, built-in Bluetooth, a voice recorder, and Palm OS 5.2.1 that runs on an Intel XScale 400 MHz processor, which Sony dropped from the top-end CLIE in favor of its own silicon. InfoSyncWorld reviews the Tungsten T3, Tungsten E and Zire 21. PalmInfocenter also has a T3 review. ZDNet UK has a Tungsten T3 preview. And the Detroit Free Press has an overview of all three devices."
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New Palm Lineup Reviewed: Tungsten T3 & E, Zire 21 More

New Palm Lineup Reviewed: Tungsten T3 & E, Zire 21

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  • A review can also be found (Score:5, Informative)

    by Sir Haxalot ( 693401 ) on Wednesday October 01, 2003 @03:14PM (#7107275)
    on InternetNews.com [google.com].
  • Do any of them have a console and the ability to run an onboard C (cross)compiler?

    If not, I'll stick with my Zaurus.

    • Re:But the big question is: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You can find one at Amazon [amazon.com] cheaper than at Barnes and Noble!
    • What about GCC for Palm OS [sourceforge.net]? I've never used it, but I'm going to give it a try on my Clie sometime... Since Palm doesn't have their own C++ compiler, this looks like the best option.
    • OnboardC [sourceforge.net] is a self-hosted C dev environment for PalmOS. Consoles, well... I personally think having a console on a PDA is akin to having ejection seats in a helicopter, but whatever floats your HCI boat I guess. ;)

    • Re:But the big question is: (Score:4, Interesting)

      by theridersofrohan ( 241712 ) on Wednesday October 01, 2003 @03:56PM (#7107769) Homepage
      For whom is this a big question? Who would want to run a cross compiler on a handheld? Would that be more than 5 people?


      And actually there is a compiler (not cross though) for the palmos. OnboardC [sourceforge.net]. Open source too!


      I'm very eager to get my hands on the T3 :-)

      • Most users won't want one. The fact that my zaurus can run GCC, XFree86, ESD, and the works is what made me buy it.

        Situations come up that can't be predicted, and that's where Linux shines on handhelds. I'm using my zaurus as a network ESD server at the moment, and I'll be using it as an HTTP server in a few minutes. Because my zaurus runs Linux, no one has to rewrite software to do such things. Only a simple recompile is necessary.
    • Do any of them have a console and the ability to run an onboard C (cross)compiler?

      Well, there is a FORTH [quartus.net] (cross) compiler.

      Real men don't need C.

    • Re:But the big question is: (Score:5, Informative)

      by jandrese ( 485 ) * <kensama@vt.edu> on Wednesday October 01, 2003 @04:20PM (#7108008) Homepage Journal
      I have both a Palm VIIx (got from work) and a Zaurus SL-C750 (also from work). When I got the Zaurus I seriously considered dumping the Palm, but I havn't yet. While the Zaurus is much _much_ more power, it is not nearly as polished (I'm running the English hacked ROM from the Cacko team) as the Palm. The address book and scheduler just aren't there yet on the Zaurus. The keyboard input is great, but their handwriting recognition is the pits, which is a pain when I swich it into PDA mode. Oddly, the Palm (which I have overclocked to 32Mhz) feels snappier. The Zaurus has this annoying delay every time you turn it on. I also have a metric crapload of third party software installed on the VIIx, and havn't been able to give up the web clipping stuff I've set up yet (this won't be a problem once those 3G Cell Modem CF cards come out though). It's slow going installing stuff on the Zaurus though, because you have to pretty much port everything yourself, since the software compiled for the 7xxx series Zaurus's tends to break the 7x0 series.

      On the other hand, the Zaurus has a lot of cool features. My officemate transcoded the LOTR movie into a WMV he can play directly off of an IBM microdrive (it looks _nice_). The Zaurus has a full web browser (Opera) including a PDF reader, which is nice when I'm close enough to an 802.11b access point to use it. The screen completely blows away the Palm (640x480!) which is nice for ebook reading (although there are no ebook readers for the Zaurus that can hold a candle to Weasel AFAIK. I've been HTMLifying the books and using Opera, which is suboptimal). The terminal on the Zaurus is very nice, although the keyboard is not designed for terminal work (^V sends a paste, although ^C works ask you'd expect, although to even get control you have to remap the kana key.

      Overall, both devices are nice, but neither eclipses the other's functionality at this point. I don't like how the Zaurus has it's built in battery, I much prefer using rechargable AAAs like the Palm so I can swap them out when they get low. This has been an annoyance because the Zaurus is rather power hungry and you have to keep the charging brick around if you want to use it for more than a few hours at a time, unlike the Palm where I can read an entire ebook before I need to replace the battery. I know the battery will be expensive to replace when it wears out too.

      Hmm, that's pretty rambling. Lets just say that different people will prefer different devices based on their needs.
      • Have you tried OpieReader? I reformat ebooks with OO.o, save them as HTML, run them through Plucker, and read that with OpieReader. It is MUCH quicker on the Z 5500 than plucker is on my m515 at work.
        • That's one of those applications that screw up the 7x0 series. It's designed for a smaller screen (and one that cannot be rotated), so when you load it up the Zaurus has to resample the pixels and it ends up looking terrible. Plus If you're in notebook mode the screen is sideways. These also tend to screw up the fonts on the Zaurus, which means you have to reboot to get it working again.

  • Tung Pilot? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 01, 2003 @03:19PM (#7107332)
    Why don't they call these things Tung-Pilots? Come to think of it, that would imply a revolutionary way of inputting data into the things.
  • I was wondering when we'd finally see 128MB in a palmtop system. I'm kind of torn between getting one of these or a Tablet PC, although I suppose I'm inclined towards the latter because of the size and speed as well as the ease of use of Windows CE and compatibility that platform offers.
    • Tablet PC doesn't run Windows CE. I have both a Palm and a Compaq TC1000 Tablet PC. Get the T3. Trust me.
    • I was wondering when we'd finally see 128MB in a palmtop system.

      Most folks don't need that much memory unless they're storing multimedia files. However, you can easily buy memory cards for many Palm devices (not sure about these new ones, though) with 128MB or more of additional storage.
    • 2 problems with the Tablets.

      1. They're shit slow. The top-end ones run P-III Mobile 1GHz CPU's. No CD-ROM, no expandability.

      2. They run Windows XP Tablet Edition (Which is a variant of Home).

      Get a thin laptop with a Centrino or P4-M CPU instead and see some real performance and portability. Oh, and they're way cheaper than the Tablets

      Or get a cheap beast (Like my base-model Thinkpad G40) for the price of a high-end PDA.
    • My one concern with the new Palms is the "Graffiti 2" recognition software - you can try a demo at this site [palmone.com] and it's really annoying for a long term palm user like myself who's very, very comfortable with standard graffiti, eg.:

      "t" and "k" are completely different

      the unofficial strokes for "d" (backwards [shortcut]), "y" (Greek gamma) and "v" (backwards "v") don't work

      "i" is now "l", etc ...

      It looks a lot slower, too (requiring multiple strokes for several characters). Does anyone with one of these d

  • A good review can be found at The Palm Information Center [palminfocenter.com] They also have strong coverage of the Palm OS in general.
  • Looking at the spec of the new Palm machines (and noting that they are finally in Newton territory), a thought struck me: these are the machines we should give to kids in grade school. Forget laptops.

    The processor has some oomph, there are multimedia capabilities, there is wireless; you don't need a hard drive. Install a nice object-oriented developer package and let them learn early programming on the Palm. The lack of hard drive makes it tougher, and cheaper to replace all-around. Take assignments on SD

    • There are a few downsides. Public schools lack funding to buy a bunch of these things, unless they get a killer discount. I've tried writing some C++ on my Clie, and it's a pain to write for extended periods of time without a keyboard. Also, these would get stolen pretty easily. The screens on these are not the toughest, so you would wind up with a lot of mangled screens (similar to what I did to my crappy cell phone). Also, administrating all of these would be a pain in the ass. Kids would play around with
      • "Public schools lack funding to buy a bunch of these things, unless they get a killer discount."

        I know how to solve that. Ditch textbooks. They are such a waste in terms of budgeted monies. Get a license to purchase the text books on PDF and require the license allow for students to print their own copies without running into copyright issues. But of course the publishers will never allow that. Look for some type of rebellion at the universities first before it spreads down to K-12 education.
    • these are the machines we should give to kids in grade school. Forget laptops.

      Obvious drawbacks: Writing with a stylus isn't as intuitive as a keyboard. Small screens get hard on the eyes after a while. And, of course, they're nearly impossible to write a term paper on.

      Laptops are there to help kids work. Handhelds exist as portable PIMs and carriers of data, but no one in their right might would try to do serious work on one exclusively.
      • I don't agree that keyboards are more intuitive -- familiar, yes, but hardly a natural exercise for young students who may well still be working on their handwriting.

        I agree that trying to do any significant amount of data entry or editing on a palmtop becomes frustrating quickly; however, I think that's much more a product of their small form factor than any inherent design problems.

        If you want to see where this could go, just look at the eMate -- Apple took a standard Newton mobo and display and package
      • Laptops are there to help kids work. Handhelds exist as portable PIMs and carriers of data, but no one in their right might would try to do serious work on one exclusively.

        Get a keyboard for them. PDA + Full size folding keyboard = $300 "kid computer."

        That's more than enough for just about every general-purpose school assignmet. If they need to do more--coding, office skills, et cetera--they can have a lab.

        (And, really, it's not like getting the stili-strokes is all that hard, or lacking an easy refer
    • I actually thought about this idea some time back, when everyone started started clearing out refurb Handspring Visor models for less than $50. Add some sort of wireless, and appropriate add-ons for tasks like lab data acquisition or sound output, and you have an all-purpose educational computing tool.

      Software development on that kind of device is still a huge pain, though. Think about it: how many developers do you know who work on anything less than the largest (either in size or number) available displa
      • While I was in Japan I did all my software development on my clie. You can take a look at what I generated at my site [imsa.edu]. There's some good CS stuff and a very nice (IMHO) puzzle program.

        Actually, it did everything I needed. I could edit programs and listen to music at the same time. Needless to say, however, it's nice to have my Athlon 3000+ too :)
    • these are the machines we should give to kids in grade school. Forget laptops.

      PalmOS devices for the educational market? Alphasmart [alphasmart.com] agrees with you.

    • i'm not sure if kids need Palms or not- but the the HELL are we going to have a standardized computer education course in the US?

      SO many people sit in front of computers all day long, but we are not educated about them! Anybody that graduates high school should know what a Megabyte is and how a computer works (to some degree).

      I'm pretty sure most people would have a need to know about the Internet more than they need to know about different forms of Algae.

      Sorry to any Algae lovers out there.

      • Re:Getting on my soapbox (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Onan ( 25162 )
        Even more people use cars, telephones, and clothes every day. Do you also feel that we need standardized education on crankshaft design, that all high school graduates should know the current provided by dialtone from an ESS7, and that all citizens should be familiar with cotton cultivation techniques?

        The fact that these devices are ubiquitous is a cause and result of the fact that one does _not_ need to know arcana like "what a megabyte is" to use them.

  • New Sony Clies too (Score:4, Informative)

    by generic-man ( 33649 ) on Wednesday October 01, 2003 @03:22PM (#7107376) Homepage Journal
    Sony also announced two Clies today [palminfocenter.com], which cost $200 and $250 respectively. Not bad, but not revolutionary.
    • Also note that the two new Sony Clie models, the TJ25 and TJ35, have rebates available, which can reduce the net cost to $180 and $220, respectively. See the sony style [sonystyle.com] web site for details.

      The new Sony models also use a faster processor (200 MHz Motorola MX) than the new Palm Zire21 and Tungsten|E (126 MHz TI OMAP) models.

  • Where's the 802.11 B? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Schlemphfer ( 556732 ) on Wednesday October 01, 2003 @03:23PM (#7107383) Homepage
    I've been on the sidelines ever since PDA's came out. They always seemed like a nice thing to have, but they've either been too expensive or too toylike to be worth buying. The original Zire caught my eye, but with a 33 Mhz processor and 2 megs RAM, it just seemed like a pathetically underpowered unit.

    The 21 seems to rectify those problems with being underpowered. I'm sure that in a month or so, you'll be able to buy refurbished 21's for $80 or so. At that point I might finally cave in and get one.

    What surprises me, and the thing that's kept me on the sidelines so long, is that none of the units offer 802.11 B. A friend of mine has a Handspring with an 802.11 B card, and speaks the world of it. I bet a lot of folks would jump in and start using PDA's, when 802.11 B becomes a standard feature.

    • The Palm Tungsten C [palmone.com] ($500) and Sony Clie UX-50 [sonystyle.com] ($700) include Wi-Fi. High chip cost and battery consumption are the main reasons why Wi-Fi is not yet standard on your average PDA.
    • Forget that, I want internet access from nearly anywhere. I wish someone would combine the 24/7 internet connectivity of the T-Mobile HipTop with a Palm-style PDA.

    • No, Bluetooth (Score:3, Insightful)

      by uradu ( 10768 )
      It's more useful in a portable device like this. While out, you're more likely to have a BT cell phone with you than be in range of some access point. Ideally of course you'd want both, but realistically I'd take the cheaper BT if I could only have one. I just wish they'd start including BT as a standard feature even in the low-end models.
    • 802.11B is notoriously power ineffecient for the PDA power envelope.

      Wait until Broadcom's new 802.11 chipset starts to proliferate. They've apparently solved some of the major power issues.

  • Tugnsten E: Palm's iMac? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RevAaron ( 125240 ) <revaaron@hotmail. c o m> on Wednesday October 01, 2003 @03:23PM (#7107385) Homepage
    It's about time woke up and smelled the price points, man.

    For a while, you've been able to pick up a very good PocketPC device for around $200- currently the Dell Axim X5 Basic, and before that the iPAQ 3100 series (all the usual 3600 specs, but with a B&W screen, 16 MB of RAM instead of 32). Both of those PPC devices are very capable little PDAs that can just about do it all.

    Palm, on the other hand, has only tossed us some pretty crappy bones for a cheaper Palm device. Yeah, you could get a Palm m130 for $200 (now $180), or the low-end Zire for $100. However, both of these models are pretty limited. The m130 has an old, slow processor (although, it still displays PDFs faster than my 400 MHz Zaurus C760, or a 206 MHz/400 MHz WinCE device), little RAM, and a small, non-reflective screen. The m130 has a limited SD slot and the Palm serial connection. For the same price, you could get a PocketPC device with 3x the screen real-estate, 4x the RAM, 5-10x the processor speed and 3 expansion options (SD, CF, serial), usable for various networking options and memory upgrades.

    However, it seems Palm is finally putting out something

    In a way, this model has the potential to be the company's iMac analogue. When you think of it, the PocketPC vs Palm race parallels the Microsoft vs Apple one. I'll put the MS vs Apple in parens:

    1. Palm (Apple) comes out with a superior product at first: the first Palm PDA (the original Mac 128K).
    2. Microsoft comes out with an inferior product as a reaction to #1: WinCE 1.0 devices (MS Windows 1.0).
    3. Palm (Apple) keeps on moving forward, doing incremental updates, eventually arriving at the Palm III (Mac OS 6).
    4. MS finally gets a larger chunk of its act together, gets a better hardware platform, puts out PocketPC. (Win 95)
    5. MS and PocketPC starts to claim territory that was once very clearly PalmOS-land.
    6. Does a CPU and general archetecture upgrade, moving from dead-end m68k CPUs to ARM-based chips. (Apple goes from m68k to PowerPC.)
    7. Palm sticks to a friendly to use, but somewhat ugly to code for and quite primitive internally OS, while Microsoft has had something resembling a "real" OS for a while. (Apple sticks to its primitive-cored Mac OS 9, MS has NT, 2k, 9x [although they suck just as much ass as OS 9, even though they look better on paper].)
    8. Palm comes out with the Tungsten E, which provides almost all of the features of a more expensive PDA for a lot less. (Apple comes out with the iMac, pretty much all the features you need, but for cheaper.) ...9. What's next? Here's to hoping the story continues on this line- I'd use a Palm device if PalmOS wasn't so primitive. I want/need a pocket computer, not an expensive organizer, and before the PalmOS can fill that need, it will need to be able to do a couple those little features we take for granted in a real OS, like multitasking. :) Will PalmOS 6 be the analogue to Apple's OS X?

    Of course, this is totally ignoring the Newton, which is where Palm did well to steal a lot of ideas for PalmOS, although ignoring a handful of very important architectural elements. I also ignore all name changes, referring to USR, Palm, PalmOne, etc just as "Palm."
    • Of course, this is totally ignoring the Newton, which is where Palm did well to steal a lot of ideas for PalmOS, although ignoring a handful of very important architectural elements.

      Also ignoring several design elements that resulted in the Newton being a very unprofitable and low volume seller (versus over 30 million PalmOS devices sold).

    • "I want/need a pocket computer..."

      Then buy a PocketPC. What I want is a PDA that can also access huge amounts of data - medical references for work, plus ebooks and whatnot. I wish that someone would sell a PDA with a high-res monochrome screen that's big enough to read, an energy-efficient dragonball processor, a memory card slot and/or at least 64 megs of RAM, using AAA (or AA if they can be fit into a model small enough) batteries and getting at least two weeks with rechargable NIMH cells. I'd happi

      • Read my journal entry [slashdot.org] where I talk about the exact same thing. I think we only differ on the size of the screen, you want one bigger than I do. Hell, I'd pay twice what I paid for my Handera for one that fits my requirements.
        • Yeah, though the screen on the Handera 330 was just big enough. Unfortunately, the one on mine is now cracked and useless after being hit by a truck (while in my pocket)... interestingly, the bottom 1/3 displayed when it was turned on initially, and the memory card was OK, so I could recover my data, but it doesn't seem to work any more.

          I got the SJ33 after a lot of searching. The battery life was at the high end of the pathetic options available, and I like the case design - most new models don't seem

      • That was the Handera, almost exactly. Not suprisingly, it was a very popular choice for doctors.

  • good lineup, pricing (Score:3, Informative)

    by mblase ( 200735 ) on Wednesday October 01, 2003 @03:23PM (#7107386)
    The Tungsten T3 retails at about $400 (US), the Tungsten E at $200, and the Zire 21 at $100.

    Overall, it looks like the Tungsten E is the best value of Palm's offerings to date (320x320 color screen, multimedia, Graffiti 2, 32 MB of memory). For $200 more you get Bluetooth, wireless Internet, and a rotating screen; for $100 less you get a black-and-white screen and a no-frills, PIM-focused device. It really feels like Palm is listening to its users when they say what they want in a handheld.

  • Now I can get organized! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Now I can get organized! Wait.. where's that damn Palm thing again.... *fumbling around*

  • Warning: no backlight on Zire 21 (Score:4, Informative)

    by mbessey ( 304651 ) on Wednesday October 01, 2003 @03:26PM (#7107419) Homepage Journal
    I bought one of these to replace my wife's ailing M100. I was pretty surprised to find out that it doesn't have a backlight. What the hell were they thinking?

    True, it doesn't include "backlight" anywhere on the list of features on the side of the box, but since (almost) every other Palm OS organizer ever made has a backlight, it's not like I would have expected it to be optional. Who would buy a digital watch or a cellphone without a backlight?

    -Mark
    • I was given a Zire at Seybold. Looks nice but the lack of a backlight kills it. Also, the flimsy rubber cover is a bad joke (flip it out of the way and it springs back into place) and I like the clock (visible through the cover) on my m105. The Zire's USB is nice and it matches my iBook but I'll keep the m105 for now.
  • I'm still just looking for some apps that'll make my Zaurus as usefull as my old palm pilot was as a PDA. Then it'd be perfect.
  • Tungsten E for $190 could replace the expensive the TI's.

    Maybe the zire too for $100 .

    Are schools locking students into these Texas Instrument calculators when the these pda's can now compete?

    Me thinks so.
    • Although many PalmOS calculator applications look nice, they are just barely catching up in terms of symbolic math capability and educational add-ons.

      But given that a T|T3 benchmarks around 3 double-precision megaflops, PalmOS devices should blow away calculators for some handheld uses.

    • User Interface.

      I can tap on my cheap TI keyboard much faster than i can ever hope to enter data with a pen on a palm. Even using the screen as an input device doesn't cut it: tactile feedback is GOOD.

      Also, i have no idea why HS are pushing graphing calcs: there aren't many college courseswhere you can su programmable calculators.

      And finally, battery life.

      If you want power and usability, you're always going to ahve to dish some money. Heck, nowadays, it's more like, usability == money; power is easy to g
    • I haven't tested it through, but I have a Ipaq and am using a "calculator" [ravend.com] on it. Although it looks nice, if I need some bad ass calculations, like 60000 x (e^-7,5), the HP12c (a calculator released 20 years ago) seems to give the right answer, and not some funny numbers. So, I guess the software is still a problem.
  • What about battery life? As with phones, PDAs, and other portable devices it always worries me that all the latest bells and whistles come with about 2 days battery life (in real terms, not manufacturers quoted figures), in which a pad of paper is better for me, as it won't lose my information or stop working! Anyone got any figures on battery life for recent fancy PDAs?
    • As with phones, PDAs, and other portable devices it always worries me that all the latest bells and whistles come with about 2 days battery life

      There is a reason why just about every new PDA has a built-in battery. Carry a power cable with you if you're going to not be home at night, and recharge it at least once a day.

      I love having a PDA, but I couldn't concieve of working on it for fourty-eight hours straight.

      (As for lost data--get a memory card. The darn thing's designed to not lose data when it's
      • And in most the built-in batteries suck. Non-replaceable lithium batteries that get a few hours of battery life and die in a couple years, leaving you with an expensive paperweight. Whee.

        Personally, I'd rather have a unit that uses AAA batteries or even a couple AAs. The old monochrome units would get between a couple weeks (Handera 330 with NIMH rechargables, hit by a truck - while in my pocket, ouch) to a month or two (Palm IIIxe with alkaline cells, stolen) in battery life, but you can't get them li

  • I traded out a palm m105 for a toshiba pocket pc - e335 - it is 300mhz, but the palm beat it hands down in most things - opening documents, opening the address book etc.
    The toshiba can barely play mp3s without skipping. I have to ask, why is the performance of most pocket pcs so cruddy?
    • I traded out a palm m105 for a toshiba pocket pc - e335 - it is 300mhz, but the palm beat it hands down in most things - opening documents, opening the address book etc.
      The toshiba can barely play mp3s without skipping. I have to ask, why is the performance of most pocket pcs so cruddy?

      I'll give you a hint. Starts with "win" and ends in "dows".

  • Is it time to replace my Vx yet? (Score:4, Informative)

    by LaserBeams ( 412546 ) on Wednesday October 01, 2003 @03:36PM (#7107545)
    Dang, only 6 comments, and the server is down... Must've been running a Palm server. *chuckle* [/obligatory]

    In all seriousness though...

    I'd have to say no. My 3(?) year old Vx still does its job remarkably well, and I don't want a Palm-based Pocket PC do-alike. The Tungsten E is getting closer to what the Vx was in it's time, but it seems they keep skirting handily around the midrange model that I'd like and be able to afford - especially with that battery life! And no expansion capabilities either... a shame as well. I don't want to pay $200 extra for a little SD slot, or likewise...

    Oh well, I can keep waiting. *pats the Vx*
    • No expandability? What the hell are you talking about?

      "ADD EXPANSION CARDS With built-in expansion slot, your Tungsten E handheld grows as your needs grow. Use stamp-sized expansion cards to back up your handheld or add more memory and applications like games, encyclopedias, dictionaries and more. Or, add peripherals such as a digital camera. (all sold separately)"

      PALM EXPANSION SLOT Supports SD, SDIO and MultiMediaCard expansion cards

      If you mean the lack of the Palm Universal Connector, then yes, it

  • Wasn't the T2 just released, literally, a couple months ago?

    Why would they release an update to it now? To cause consumer confusion?

    I don't believe the general public (of which I am a member) thinks of their PDAs as they think of their desktop or laptop computers.

    A PDA is more a consumer electronic device than a computer, and as such should have a much slower product update cycle.

    The T3 is not that different from the T2, definetly not enough to justify a completely new device short months after the orig
    • As it is I would have rather seen the T2's price drop.

      The T2 price did drop with the announcement of the T|T3, and it's still a good product in Palm's lineup because it has noticeably bettery battery life than the T3.

      • I was thinking about replacing my old Palm V with one of the Tungsten series, as I also wanted bluetooth - what is the battery life like on the T2 or T3? I never seem to see figures mentioned anywhere.

    • Re:T3? What, is the T2 too old alread? (Score:4, Informative)

      by LionMage ( 318500 ) on Wednesday October 01, 2003 @05:09PM (#7108462) Homepage
      While it's true that the Tungsten T2 was released just a few months ago, there is significant difference between the T2 and the T3. I can summarize the differences as follows:
      1. The T2 has a Texas Instruments OMAP processor (ARM derivative with a built-in DSP), while the T3 has an Intel XScale (a StrongARM chip).
      2. The T2 has a dedicated handwriting area. The T3 has a soft handwriting area that doubles as extra screen real-estate.
      3. The T2 has 32 megs of RAM. The T3 has 64 megs of RAM.
      4. The T3 has somewhat streamlined and updated navigation buttons.
      5. The T3 has the ability to display in landscape mode or portrait, due to the extra pixels revealed by the slide-out navigation controls. The T2 only supports portrait display.

      I bought a T2 a couple months back, even though I knew the T3 was going to arrive "soon." (Photos of the T3 had already been leaked, but it was common knowledge that Palm was sitting on the T3 for some reason.) Since I didn't know how soon "soon" meant, I got the T2. I have few regrets. The T2 undoubtedly has better battery life, and I don't have to worry about excess wear on the portion of the display reserved for handwriting, because there are no live pixels in that region.

      So why did Palm release the T2 at all? A few reasons. If you look at the difference between the original Tungsten T and the T2, there are very few. The main differences are: The T2 has a better display, the T2 has double the RAM (32 megs versus 16 megs), and the T2 has a newer PalmOS revision. It's this last part that is perhaps the biggest change, since the newer PalmOS comes with Graffiti 2. As you might recall, Palm lost a lawsuit over the original Graffiti handwriting recognition system, and as part of the remedies, they agreed to migrate to the new Graffiti 2 HWR system across their entire product line. I think the T2 was released precisely to comply with the remedies required of them, and it gave Palm an excuse to slip in a few other revisions to the device. The original Tungsten T was, at the time, the only professional PalmOS device from Palm still using the original Graffiti HWR. Even the Zire series had moved to Graffiti 2.
      • I was all set to buy a T2 not too long ago, but doing the requisite research, I discovered that it suffers from "digitizer drift" far worse than any other Palm handheld. Most people attribute this to the sliding case, also noting that the problem can be fixed by banging the Palm(!) in the opposite direction of the drift, as though some mechanism is getting out of whack and this will reset it to it's correct position. While I have dealt with digitizer drift on my Palm IIIxe, it's really annoying. If it's
        • I suppose it depends on how often you open and close the sliding region on the case. I've noticed a tiny amount of drift, but not enough to be worried about. Recalibration is easy enough, and you're supposed to recalibrate the digitizer on any Palm device at regular intervals.

          I've noticed that Palm has some useful features that eliminate the need to use a stylus or to open the HWR area up, like when you're looking up a contact using only the five-way navigation control. (Up-down to page through the cont
      • probably offtopic, but I wish I'd known more about Graffiti 1 versus Graffiti 2. I'm not a big fan of Graffiti 2; perhaps because I was so used to the first version and had imprinted upon it so well I still try and use it on my newer device.
        • The major differences between the original Graffiti HWR system and the new Graffiti 2 system are:
          1. Graffiti 2 has more natural looking characters, several of which require 2 strokes instead of one. Graffiti 1 was all about forcing every character to be a single stroke.
          2. To capitalize a character in Graffiti 1, you had to use a special stroke to "shift" to caps mode; to force "caps lock," you made the gesture twice. Graffiti 2 eliminates the capitalization shift stroke, instead interpreting letters drawn on

  • A lot of nice features, but... (Score:4, Funny)

    by MickLinux ( 579158 ) on Wednesday October 01, 2003 @03:40PM (#7107587) Journal
    There are a lot of nice features there, and it's a very attractive package and all. But a common criticism that I've heard is that the new T3 sometimes forgets that it can run [terminator3.com].



    (Note to moderators: please do not rate this informative. Check the link first. Aargh, why do I actually have to make such qualifying statements first? Do your job, or don't use the mod points. Maybe I'm just too subtle.)

  • So, Palm is touting these as media devices for playing movies. We are considering developing some movies for ophthalmological surgical instruction on Palm devices, but I am wondering with memory limits of 64MB and add on cards only 256MB in size, is anybody really using these things to play anything more than 5-10 second clips? If so, please let me know what you are doing.

  • These palm shaped things are next to useless for any serious work.

    • These palm shaped things are next to useless for any serious work.
      I think the people making these and every that has bought one already figured that out. You tend to buy PCs for serious work, these are for flexability.
    • These palm shaped things are next to useless for any serious work.

      Some people do their serious work standing up and moving about. These palm-sized devices fit in a shirt pocket or on a belt-clip.

    • That's funny; I get a lot of serious work done on mine - writing procedures and planning assignments for my team; scheduling work and personal meetings, using a variety of work-related tools such as IP calculators to check my work; and I keep some reference materials (like IDS signature definitions and the event codes for Cisco devices like firewalls) - right next to a few e-books so I can get some reading done in bed and/or waiting for my wife if I don't have a paper book handy. I am much more organized a
  • i was going to look for the specs on a zire we got floating around the office, to see if i wanted it, but palm.com was unresponsive.

    checking slashdot to make sure it wasn't just my connection, i see now why i couldn't get to palm.com
  • really a fantastic handheld, pity for the battery life, though, 3 hours doesn't really cut it in a palm (heck, it's lowish even for a laptop!). My lowly IIIc goes weeks without a charge...
  • Finally Palm has ditched the legacy Motorola 68000 chip for modern variants. That's one less boat anchor they have to worry about in terms of successfully competing with Microsoft's offerings. Eh, maybe I should've looked at their website before I posted that; the original Zire model is still in production and it still is ARM-less. But then who is going to buy the Zire when the Zire21 is only $20 more? 6 more megs and a modern OS.

    Now, with this current lineup, the best thing Palm can do is start adding

  • When will they get it right? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hustille ( 529350 ) on Thursday October 02, 2003 @03:05AM (#7111722) Homepage
    Aargh! I'm still waiting for a useable phone/organizer combo. I think putting a clunky treo to your ear is absolutely ridiculous, and something as slim as a mobile phone can only have an impossible screen. Now there are organizers with GSM, organizers with bluetooth and bluetooth headsets. Where is the problem with combining them? All those nice innovations, but never in the same package. Ok, I'll stick to my Vx a little longer...

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