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Handhelds Hardware

Palm Releases New Tungsten T2 215

Posted by simoniker from the you-could-be-miiine dept.
securitas writes "Palm has released its latest PDA, the Tungsten T2. The T2 features a Texas Instruments 144MHz OMAP 1510 ARM processor, 32MB SDRAM (29.5 available), 320 x 320 transflective TFT display, wireless communications including Bluetooth, email client, SMS, and web browser, Palm OS v5.2.1, and MP3, video playback, and photo software. It will set you back $399. You can read more about the Palm Tungsten T2 and get tech specs (PDF) at the Palm site. Press release here. More at CNet, PC World, Infosync, the Register and the Inquirer. I'm not sure how many people will buy this product instead of waiting for its newly acquired Handspring Treo 600."
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Palm Releases New Tungsten T2 More

Palm Releases New Tungsten T2

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  • *yawn* (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ravenousbugblatter ( 682061 )
    I don't see anything new here at all - they just bundled a bunch of things. When is there going to be some fresh innovation in the PDA world?

    • Re:*yawn* (Score:5, Informative)

      by Patrik Nordebo ( 170 ) on Thursday July 24, 2003 @06:31AM (#6519882)
      Nothing new? It has a new display and twice the memory. That's bundling only in the sense that any handheld is a bundle of components. It also comes with a new version of the OS, including Graffiti 2, which I don't think is available for the Tungsten T.

    • Re:*yawn* (Score:3, Insightful)

      by torpor ( 458 )
      Have you not seen the new Sony Clie UX-series yet? [www.sony.jp]

      I dig my NX70V... it is most righteous being able to read slashdot.org anywhere in my pad, wirelessly. I can even go across the road to the park with it.

      In my opinion, PDA's are getting better and better every month ...
    • Sometimes you don't even need to read the daily stuff. My suggestions for the top 10 daily Slashdot articles:

      1) Microsoft warns of a new security flaw.
      2) RIAA, et. al. are fawking us bad.
      3) Apple's doing something innovative.
      4) New Linux release,driver,bundle,etc. announced.
      5) Neat new digital device arrives. Runs Linux.
      6) Palm offers a new Palm.
      7) New video/audio format/program released.
      8) Someone announces a game for Linux.
      9) Obligatory offbeat science topic of the day.
      10) SPAM is leading to the apocal

    • Re:*yawn* (Score:3, Insightful)

      by nixer ( 692046 )
      The hassle with PDAs is that it is really difficult to get past the form factor. They are too big to intregrate well into a phone - and since I don't want to carry two devices this is a real issue for me - and I want as small and light a phone as I can get. The latest Nokia phones (e.g. 6100 - the one I own) also have the key functionality I want - i.e. the ability to sync my Outlook contacts and schedule. All the other functionality is fluff that isn't as well handled as a regular laptop or other device
      • get yourself a sony-ericsson P800. symbian OS, full outlook synch, opera browser, symbian OS, camera etc etc. it's a little chunky for a phone, but not much...

        • Re:yep, kind of (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Nogami_Saeko ( 466595 )
          It's much smaller when you hold it than it appears when people see photos of it. I've had one for a couple months now, and I could never imagine going back to a seperate phone or PDA. It's not perfect, but it's close.

          My only P800 gripes:

          - 12 bit colour screen
          - low res camera, fairly poor lens (webcam quality)

          Other than that, it's great. Both of those gripes are addressed in the new P810 which may be released by next year.

          Any company making PDA-style devices without having a GSM phone in it has missed

          • missing stuff in p800 (Score:4, Informative)

            by RMH101 ( 636144 ) on Thursday July 24, 2003 @09:37AM (#6521400)
            * no support for playlists at all with native player
            * dodgy plastic lens on camera really limits things. 640x480's not that bad (i remember paying quite a bit for the first domestic digital cameras that did this and being reasonably happy) but a glass lens would really help
            * dodgy new memory format - the memory stick duo. it's a sony, so maybe you can't expect an SD slot, but it'd be nice. the duo cards are *really* expensive
            * provide a means of terminating running programs without third party software. why don't the apps have a "close" icon? this is plain dumb

            there's probably a few more, but these are the main gripes. don't get me wrong, i love mine. make it a little bit slimmer and less plasticy and i'd be *really* happy

    • Re:*yawn* (Score:4, Funny)

      by colmore ( 56499 ) on Thursday July 24, 2003 @09:37AM (#6521408) Journal
      Well see, this time the PalmPilot is sent by the good guys from the future and he's trying to SAVE Sarah Conner, but yeah, it's basically the same.

  • Article Text (Score:3, Informative)

    by dakryx ( 646923 ) <dakryx@gmail.com> on Thursday July 24, 2003 @06:23AM (#6519849)
    Palm on Wednesday launched its newest Tungsten handheld targeted at businesses, the Tungsten T2.

    As previously reported, the T2 comes with 32MB of memory, twice that of its predecessor, the Tungsten T. It also includes a new "transflective" display, which is the same size and resolution as that of the Tungsten T, at 320 pixels by 320 pixels, but Palm says it is more easily viewed both indoors and outdoors.

    Updates aside, the T2 focuses on multimedia performance, including software for maintaining a digital photo album, playing audio files and viewing short video clips. The handheld also comes with the latest edition of Palm's operating system, version 5.2.1, and built-in Bluetooth wireless. It continues to use Texas Instruments' OMAP 1510 processor.

    Tungsten T2, which is available now, will sell for $399, according to Palm. Originally priced at $499, the Tungsten T now lists for $349.

    Along with the launch of the Tungsten T2, Palm confirmed price reductions on two of its consumer-oriented handhelds, in an effort to help stimulate sales.

    The company dropped the price of its m515 handheld from $299 to $249, and cut its m130 from $199 to $179, the company said. Palm's last price cut was in February.

  • Stereo Headphone Jack (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kitsook ( 516402 ) on Thursday July 24, 2003 @06:24AM (#6519853)
    They finally include something that is really usefully...

  • Handspring Treo (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Surak ( 18578 ) * <.surak. .at. .mailblocks.com.> on Thursday July 24, 2003 @06:27AM (#6519865) Homepage Journal
    Yeah, I expect the Treo to retail somewhere in the high $400s, about for an extra $100, it's a cell phone too, which this doesn't appear to be.

    The only thing is I gotta wonder how long the Treo will last after finalizing the merger with Palm. Will Palm provide support? For how long? Palm will most likely kill off the entire Handspring line of products, this will include the Treo 600, which will no doubt be short-lived.

    • Re:Handspring Treo (Score:3, Interesting)

      by NDPTAL85 ( 260093 )
      The Treo 600 is WHY Palm bought Handspring. They aren't going to kill it, they want to take it and support it and come out with better future models.
    • What?

      Palm bought Handspring to flesh out their core markets. Handspring had basically committed to being only a "convergence" pda company (the treo line had become their only moneymaker), and had spent a lot of time listening to both customers and providers.

      The treo 600 is supposed to be the distillation of all this - hardware revisions were made to directly answer the requests of Sprint, et al. This is another thing - Handspring had very good relations with the providers - and a completely different set

    • Re:Handspring Treo (Score:3, Interesting)

      by hey! ( 33014 )
      We develop for the palm platform and have both Treos and Tungsten Ts in house, as well as a pretty wide variety of Wince devices.

      A lot depends on how you feel about phone-PDA convergence. As a pure PDA, I prefer the T to the treo. It's smaller and much more rugged feeling. The Treo feels plastic-y. The treo is larger, but has the advantage that you don't have to carry a separate phone. However, with the T you can have the benefits of phone integration with certain phone models via Bluetooth. Carry
    • Yeah, I expect the Treo to retail somewhere in the high $400s

      Dude, if that's true, I'll buy one in a second. I'm a huge Handspring fan with a VisorPhone Prism. I'd love to have had the money to buy the Treo 270, but come on - it just came down from $700 in the last few months. I'll be ecstatic if a Treo 600 will be under $500, but let's get a little realistic at least.
      -N

      • I'll be ecstatic if a Treo 600 will be under $500, but let's get a little realistic at least.

        Um, not to be rude, but RTFA [eweek.com]. ;) I wasn't pulling the number out of my ass. ;)

    • The only thing is I gotta wonder how long the Treo will last after finalizing the merger with Palm.

      As a bitter Handspring Visor owner, I would guess not too long since Handspring doesn't even really support the Visor anymore. The whole PDA and cell phone market has become nothing but thrashing through product and technology changes so fast that it's impossible to use any device more than 2 years. No wonder people aren't buying -- it's a market for $300-$500 disposable electronic devices.

      The only consola

    • Re:Handspring Treo (Score:3, Interesting)

      by GarfBond ( 565331 )
      You my friend have absolutely no insight into Palm's business strategy. I'm not going to profess that I know all, but it's fairly obvious why Palm bought Handspring.

      Handspring has transitioned themselves into a smartphone provider after moving away from the typical PDAs, and only now are they starting to catch on. palm has met only mild success with their smartphone/blackberry type device, the Tungsten W [palm.com]. If palm wanted to kill off handspring, why would they buy a company that makes nothing but smartph

  • What's with 32 MB memory? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by minghe ( 441878 ) on Thursday July 24, 2003 @06:28AM (#6519868)
    "As previously reported, the T2 comes with 32MB of memory"

    How come those devices always are so cheap on internal memory? I mean, get a least 128 MB in the cheapest of MP3 players these days. So what's the problem?

    • Re:What's with 32 MB memory? (Score:4, Informative)

      by ThePeeWeeMan ( 77957 ) on Thursday July 24, 2003 @06:32AM (#6519883) Journal
      'cause most Palm apps are small ( 1MB). IIRC, the Tungsten T2 will (like other recent Palms) come with a SD/MMC/CF slot for expansion, so they can save costs by including less onboard memory.

      • Re:What's with 32 MB memory? (Score:5, Informative)

        by BenjyD ( 316700 ) on Thursday July 24, 2003 @06:42AM (#6519923)
        1Mb? That's a huge Palm app! Most apps are around 30-64K (not including those with lots of extra data like plucker web pages, of course).
      • 'cause most Palm apps are small ( 1MB). IIRC, the Tungsten T2 will (like other recent Palms) come with a SD/MMC/CF slot for expansion, so they can save costs by including less onboard memory.

        Maybe so, but a 2 meg data file on your PC will still be 2 meg when you stick it on your PDA. More memory is always good.

        My biggest gripes is the ancient and featureless built in applications (they haven't been significantly updated since 95 or so) and the fact that there is no continious syncing a la ActiveSync. Th

    • coz 32 MB is fine for web browsing and all the other things you might want to do. This isn't going to run Quake 3, nor was it meant to.
    • How come those devices always are so cheap on internal memory? I mean, get a least 128 MB in the cheapest of MP3 players these days. So what's the problem?

      The T2 "memory" is RAM, your MP3 "memory" is flash storage. The T2 doesn't come with any flash storage built-in (but you can put hundreds of megabytes of flash storage into its expansion slot).

      Furthermore, until recently, PalmOS couldn't even cope with more than 16M of RAM (although it could address more flash storage).
    • The problem is battery life. The larger the internal memory is the more power it takes to run the chip. More power == less battery life. Flash cards are nice in this regard in that they require no power to maintain state (unlike the DRAM used inside the Palm), but they have very power intensive write operations. Besides, 32MB is quite a bit for a Palm device, if you need more (stored dictionaries or multi-volume ebooks), use the expansion slot.
  • I'm not sure how many people will buy this product [the Tungsten T2] instead of waiting for its newly acquired Handspring Treo 600.

    They're very different beasts, appealing to very different people. I can't imagine people in doubt between the T2 and the Tréo 600.

  • The expansion slot (Score:4, Interesting)

    by waltmarkers ( 319528 ) <waltmarkers@gma i l .com> on Thursday July 24, 2003 @06:30AM (#6519878)
    Why does palm insist on using a lower capacity, less adaptable expansion slot?
    Seriously, compact flash is cheaper for memory:

    SD costs 232 USD for 512 MB - http://www.pricewatch.com/1/226/5642-1.htm

    CF costs 96 USD for 512 MB - http://www.pricewatch.com/1/226/4003-1.htm

    1 Gigabyte is only available in CF, and the SD/ MMC format can only be used for memory whereas CF can do almost anything PCMCIA can. Is the space saved really that important? Or could the unit not afford the slight extra power drain? Why does palm insist on the clearly inferior expansion slot?

    • Re:The expansion slot (Score:5, Insightful)

      by the_2nd_coming ( 444906 ) on Thursday July 24, 2003 @06:50AM (#6519948) Homepage
      compact flash is also HUGE in physical size compared to MMC or SD.

    • Re:The expansion slot (Score:4, Insightful)

      by dtldl ( 644451 ) on Thursday July 24, 2003 @06:50AM (#6519949)
      Of all the formats to moan about, try the sony memory stick on the clies. propriatary format, more expensive than SD/MMC last time I checked and about to become incompatable with itself with memory stick pro.
      The advantages of SD are the size, protected content can be put on it hence Secure Digital and if you wanna moan about all protection is bad, use an MMC, slightly smaller cheaper in places, uses the same slot.
      And the most important thing compatability. All new camcorders afaik except sony take SD cards and loads of stills take SD, plenty of mp3 players take MMCs, my old phone took an MMC.
      And heres something insightful, google palm SDIO, theres an add on camera, a bluetooth card, a wifi card coming up, a video out for presentations. Nothing but memory?
      • I just went and checked Froogle [froogle.com] and Sd memory ranged $42- $70 and Memory Stick ranged $50-$70 for 128mb. So the low end is a bit cheaper.

        Both Lexar and Sandisk make Memory Sticks, so it is not a proprietary format. It is patented so you need to pay Sony royalties to use it, hence not a lot of electronic devices use the slot besides Sony's.

        BTW everything you mentioned for Sd is already out for Memory Stick.
      • Nope...The new Samsung "high-end DV/4mp digital still camera" Camcorder takes Sony memorystick pro.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday July 24, 2003 @07:12AM (#6520031)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:The expansion slot (Score:3, Informative)

      by 73939133 ( 676561 )
      Why does palm insist on using a lower capacity, less adaptable expansion slot?

      To which one might add: SD is proprietary and not publicly documented.

      Why do they do it? Because SD is much smaller than CF.

      Note that there are SD expansion devices, although the SD "card" in that case becomes little more than a connector.
    • www.bhphotovideo.com has 256MB SD cards from SANDISK priced at $70

      at $0.27/MB that's the best "bang for the buck" I could get when I purchased memory for my digi-cam; YMMV;

      As someone already said, MMC/SD is very nice being so small. But I rather have both CF and SD/MMC because there are some nice CF periferals (for memory it's just too bulky ...)
    • Here in Toronto I can get 256Mb Comapct Flash card (Sandisk) for $85 and a 256Mb Secure Digital card (Lexar) for about $95 so there isn't that big of a price difference. Oddly though, when you move to a 512Mb card, the CF costs less than *half* what the SD costs ($175 vs. $425). To further illustrate the difference, you can get a 1Gb CF card for $325 and as far as I know, there are no 1Gb SD cards on the market at any price.

      I know that SD cards are physically smaller than CF cards and smaller is usually m

  • drawkcab gnivom si ygolonhcet ADP (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rmorph ( 692035 ) on Thursday July 24, 2003 @06:32AM (#6519884)
    .sdrawkcab ecnatnes siht etirw ot emit dah I taht yadot cnys ot gnol os gnikat si ti tcaf nI ....ledom 1002 ym sa cnys dna ,sksat od ,toob ot gnol sa eciwt sekat QAPI wen yM

  • I miss the K.I.S.S. Palms (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MarcQuadra ( 129430 ) * on Thursday July 24, 2003 @06:42AM (#6519921)
    I really miss the black and white, 33MHz palms. What a wonderful idea those were. I never used more than 512K of the ram on those things and the batteries would last me weeks on end. My Palm III and Visor Deluxe worked without flaw for years. Now they've got too many faetures and extras, except for the zire, which feels very cheap and breakable to me (not to mention the TINY screen). I thought the whole idea for the Palm was SIMPLICITY. I think they'd honestly make more money if they just refined those old models, made them smaller and added mini-USB ports for HID keyboards and connectivity. The'd be selling twice as many palms, and the stable platform would finally give corporate customers time to evaluate and migrate to the Palm (right now they can't because the meaning of 'Palm' keeps changing, hardware and software). Here's an idea, LET PocketPC take the speed/features crown, make really high-quality reliable and simple Palms that people can pick up and USE. I'll bet they could put the whole DragonBall palm logic and memory onto one or two chips now, it would be beautiful.

    About half the people I know who have Palms have the old ones and they SWEAR by them. I know people who have PalmIIIs that bought a second one, new, just to replace their current one when it dies.
    • There's always Palms like the m105 - $59 I think at the moment. 8meg memory, 20Mhz. Plenty fast enough for me.
    • Kind of agree with you.

      I've a palm Vx and the only reason that I use 7 of the 8mb it has, is that I've a 6½mb dictionary installed. I don't need anything that the new machines can give me. Lot's of the new features would be "nice" and "cool", but I don't need them.

      What I really don't need is a gadget bigger or heavier than the Vx, as it's just at the limit of what you can have, relativly, unseen in a pant/shirt pocket.

      But then again... I also have a mp3 player (MPIO) and a mobilephone (nokia 6210) a
    • Why don't you try actually using that little handheld computer you have for more than just the basic 4 PIM apps?

      First of all I'd love to have more than 4 buttons. Right now I have to use an app called Button Launch (its free people) that lets me assign more than 1 app per button. (counting what the buttons are already assigned to there's three apps to a button).

      I have a Kyocera 7135 Smartphone. It runs Palm OS 4.1 and has 16MB of RAM. It also has a SD Card slot, 3G speed capability and a built in MP3 Play

      • Re:Simplicity is over rated (Score:4, Funny)

        by Vagary ( 21383 ) <jawarren&gmail,com> on Thursday July 24, 2003 @10:09AM (#6521804) Journal

        Tipper so I can calculate the exact tips at restaraunts...

        You need a special app to calculate the tip? What, does it use a little camera to estimate the waiter's service level? On my Palm there's this really cool app called a calculator, it can calculate tips and tax!

        What kind of loser leaves a $5.23 tip, anyway? My brain can round-off, can Tipper? (With a Master's in Psyc, I'd hope so, but you never know...)

        • How To Figure Out A Tip
          1. Tip (at least) 15%. Servers get paid less than everyone else because it's assumed they'll be tipped. Tipping isn't optional.
          2. Drop the rightmost digit of the bill, and move the decimal point one to the left. For example, $43.68 becomes $4.36. You now have 10% of the bill.
          3. Take half of the 10% you got from the last step. This gives you 5% of the bill. Continuing the example, half of $4.36 is $2.18.
          4. Now add the 10% and 5% together to get 15%. There's your tip, and it's that si
        • If my bill isn't rounded off why should the tip be?

          Yes I could use the PalmOS's built in calculator to calculate the tip but why do that if the Tipper app makes it so much easier? I enter the price of the bill, select the percentage I want to tip at (15%, 20%..etc) and hit enter and there's the exact tip the waiter should get.

          The percentage is used to represent the waiters service. If the service is below average they get a lower percentage. Great service gets a 25% tip from me. Besides I suck at math, do
      • So you're in the 'it should do everything' camp. All MOST users want is those 4 features, email, maybe mp3 playback, basic audio recording, simple stuff. Palm should produce the 'killer tungstens' but should also produce a highly refined, durable, and STABLE (in the 'it won't change for years' sense) platform for us. The M-series is weak, they're flimsy and the screens are miniscule.

        I was thinking that they could probably make a dragonball-based machine in a single-chip (that's CPU, RAM, and I/O logic on o
    • The'd be selling twice as many palms, and the stable platform would finally give corporate customers time to evaluate and migrate to the Palm (right now they can't because the meaning of 'Palm' keeps changing, hardware and software).

      Actually you are wrong, the market is screaming for these new features which is why palm is implimenting them.
    • I agree with you, I think Simplicity should be a priority when looking at these things. But when I recently went around looking at a replacement for my venerable Palm V (2mb was getting kind of cozy), I was amazed at how bloated a lot of these PIM's had become.

      The Sony Clie's had way too much eye candy for my tastes. It also uses those infernal Memory Sticks for expansion. The Pocket PC's were simply too bloated also. (I have no need to drive a display for a Powerpoint Presentation from my handheld...) And

    • Re:I miss the K.I.S.S. Palms (Score:4, Interesting)

      by jht ( 5006 ) on Thursday July 24, 2003 @07:55AM (#6520254) Homepage Journal
      I'm on my fourth Palm since the early days, a Tungsten T (My previous ones were a Pilot 5000, a Palm III, and a Vx). My wife has an M100. I've also owned and used several other handhelds over the years - at various points I've had a Newton, an iPaq, a Jornada (but that one came free with an HP 4000 switch - I gave it away to one of my staff), and a Zaurus 5500. I still have and use the Zaurus, which stays in my briefcase with an Ethernet card and a wireless card. But I never really thought of the Zaurus as an organizer or even as a Palm competitor. The Zaurus is more like a laptop substitute.

      Thinking of these different systems makes me speculate on what an organizer should have for a feature set. I basically see three good categories that handhelds can go after, with this for basic feature sets:

      Basic/Economy - first off, a black & white (or at most, 4-bit) screen. It should also have a reasonably speedy processor, rugged design, small size, and it only needs minimal expansion, if any. It needs 8-16MB of RAM if it's a Palm (and Palms come closest to this), and ideally it should have user-replaceable batteries that could be charged when in the cradle, like if you used NiMh AAA batteries instead of alkaline. Standard Grafitti should be good enough for HWR. The battery life needs to be good enough that you could use it heavily for a few days on the road without draining it, and with light use it should last a month or more - like the original Palms did. The cost for one of these should be $150 or less - $199 at the very most.

      The midrange handheld can be a little bigger in form factor. Add a color screen, faster processor, and some sort of internal expansion - probably an SD slot. A little less battery life is an acceptable trade-off here. It also should have 32-64MB of RAM - less if it's a Palm and more if it's running CE or Linux. The docking connector on one of these should be able to serve as a USB port to allow for some peripherals to be taken advantage of. At the higher end of this range, Bluetooth and/or 802.11 could make an appearance. Handhelds in this range could cost as much as $400. I think this is the logical ending point for the PalmOS as we currently know it.

      Finally, at the high end you get handhelds that are more like little laptops. Slightly bigger screens, at least able to do a resolution like 600x400. A fold-out keyboard is a must, as is wireless networking. It needs at least two expansion slots - some combo of SD and/or CF. Processor power should be equivalent to a decent desktop from a few years ago. It'll run either CE or Linux, and be able to execute software from flash. Battery life should be at least 6 hours of heavy use, untethered - 8 would be better because it represents the mythical "full workday" charge. Size isn't that important, nor is weight. Heck, these could be the size of a Newton 2100 for all it matters. They'll never go in a pocket anyways. And the price for one of them is whatever the market will bear. Only a handful of wealthy geeks will buy them as individuals - most of them will go to big companies who use them as laptop substitutes.

      The only problem with those three market models is that the low-end handhelds will sell to the point of market saturation and that's pretty much the end of it. There's not going to be much of a compelling reason to upgrade a nice, solid, cheap handheld that's rugged enough to not break every year. Ergo, no significant growth. Heck, look at what processor stagnation helped do to Apple in the desktop market! Without compellingly "mo-betta-fasta" Macs to go to, a lot of the upgrade/replacement market dried up for quite awhile. It really has cost them in the high-margin Pro desktop line. Palm would get hit much the same way playing in the entry level space. So I think they have to focus elsewhere - and the midrange is a better target for most of their energy.

      That said, I love the KISS principle when it comes to a handheld - it's what first attracted me to Palm, and what's driven me to own several of them. I just don't think that alone is enough for Palm, but it is a key advantage they have against the other players and one they should exploit better.
    • I agree with others in this thread that marketing is screaming for features. Palm needs to beef up their offering so it can compete with Pocket PC. WM 2003 is right up there with Windows XP as a decent OS. Sure, there are bugs. Sure, it's a bit bloated but hey it's an accomplishment! Something that approaches the usability of Windows XP and a compact .NET framework that all fits in 32 MB of ROM. Pretty cool if you ask me! If all you want is an organizer, then you could try a Royal Linea or one of the

    • Now they've got too many faetures and extras, except for the zire, which feels very cheap and breakable to me (not to mention the TINY screen).

      I don't know about the original Zire, since I've never used one. But I own a Zire 71 [palm.com] ($300), which is a beautiful little machine. It has a solid feel to the case, a gorgeous display (better than a lot of $400-600 handhelds I compared it to in-store), a built-in digital camera for simple picture taking, MP3 playback, and video playback. It also has the trademark "

    • I agree about simplicity being the most important feature, but if you have ever seen a Tungsten T.. you would know it is one of the more simple PDAs you can buy right now that doesn't look like a cheap toy. In fact, I would say it has better usability than my old Palm IIIxe with its superior display (higher resolution, color, and fonts), collapsable panel to hide the graffiti area, and size.

      It does have some features that may seem unnecessary to most people such as bluetooth, voice recording, and a CD fil
      • Alright, maybe I'm a fool, but if you gave me two Palm units, one with color and one greyscale, I'd get the greyscale unit. I have no use for color, I think it looks stupid on handhelds. If you gave me a choice of CPUs, I'd pick the DragonBall over the ARM because it'll give me better battery life. If you asked if I wanted 32MB RAM or 8MB RAM, I'd go with 8, because I've never used more than 512K and I want better battery life.

        I guess what I want is a Handspring Visor Deluxe.
        • Color screens are subjective I think.. I may just be falling into learned helplessness because good, greyscale palms are no longer available. I do personally like the color Tungsten T screen (apparently the T2 is better), but obviously have never seen a greyscale one.

          I read a paper once that said that men in particular are confused by color, advertisers have picked up on this and it is apprently the reason behind a lot of the black and white beer commercials that used to be shown on TV (Miller, I think).

  • Syncronizing with desktop/bluetooth (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tcdk ( 173945 ) on Thursday July 24, 2003 @06:46AM (#6519934) Homepage Journal
    Anybody know if it's possible to get it to syncronize with the desktop over the bluetooth connection?

    A bit slow, but if you just want to update a few minor things it would be great (and it would save you a cradle, if you do it with secondary computers).
    • from the site:
      *
      BUILT-IN BLUETOOTH
      It's wireless connectivity when you need it. Access email and surf the Web when you team your handheld with a compatible Bluetooth mobile phone (ISP required, not included). Perform a wireless Hotsync® operation with your Bluetooth-enabled desktop, or wirelessly share data with colleagues that have compatible handhelds.
      *

      bt is really handy for such things..
      • I just had a look around and there seems to be plenty of different bluetooth adapters availible, both for pci, usb and PCMCIA. Starts at around 50/us$.

        Couldn't find a card or basestation with both 802.11b(/g) and bluetooth though.

        It does seems to be possible to connect to linux [holtmann.org] through bluetooth.
        • i recommend one of the cheap usb bt-dongles, though try to find out beforehand if the chip in it works in linux(afaik almost all work but i'm not sure). i got an a-link that i use with windows for talking to my nokia 3650(transferring progs, clips and pics), the a-link cost ~47euros or so. there's not much point in buying the more expensive one's unless you want the sometime called class1 dongles that have more range, though obviously you would need another class1 devices to take advantage of it.
    • The AC post is right but I'm reinforcing it because I have points.

      Bluetooth works just fine and the Bluetake dongle works perfectly. I have the cradle on the desk machine and the dongle on the notebook, no problems. If you need longest battery life remember to turn off bluetooth when not in use.

      Only catch is, the Tungsten will not work with my crappy company Nokia phone, whose Bluetooth is crippled.

    • Bluetooth synchronization works fine.

      BT support in Windows is pretty awful--hard to install, hard to configure, and some USB dongles don't work. But once you find a USB dongle that does work (I'm using a blue-gene.com dongle), hotsync over Bluetooth works like a charm.

      BT support in OS X looked more limited but claims to support hotsyncing and appeared easier to install.

      Since BT emulates serial lines, you should also be able to hotsync with Linux over BT, but I haven't tried that since it requires a more
    • Yes, it is possible to sync a Palm to the desktop via BlueTooth (both on the PC and Mac). I've done both many times. Caveat: I also ended up with a lot of duplicate addressbook entries when iSyncing everything on the Mac. One of the devices I sync to doesn't support repeating appointments or no-time events (birthdays) - I'm pretty sure it's either the iPod or the t68.

      PC Instructions [clove.co.uk]
      Mac instructions (including t68 sync instructions) [unex-t.com]

  • Apparently listening to music via my bluetooth headset is not an option. I love using it for my mobile phone. When am I going to get to use it for my PDA?

  • Palm and the sucky web browsing. (Score:3, Informative)

    by NaveWeiss ( 567082 ) on Thursday July 24, 2003 @07:08AM (#6520012) Homepage Journal
    Tungsten comes with the Palm Web Browser, and you know what's stupid in it? That it requires a *beep*ing proprietary proxy to work!

    Yes. The palm itself is not powerful enough to resize the images and render the documents, so they use a mandatory proxy that does the job. I don't know how fast it is, but it's really annoying that the palm can't connect directly.

    I hate the concept so much because:

    1. AvantGo has to do the same thing, and their proxy is overloaded and many times you must reload. I don't know if the palm thing is different.
    2. What if Palm dies? Their proxy will die too and that will render the browser useless.

    How do I know that it uses a proxy? If you look at the palm web browser [palm.com] page, you'll see on the bottom of the page that they mention that ports 8827 and 8775 must be open. I can't check if this thing would work without a proxy, because their browser won't work with earlier palms.

    I should mention the Palm (III and above?) can do normal TCP/IP as long as you use a modem and not the proprietary web-only palm.NET service (I think it can even listen too but I doubt it can run servers), and there are a couple of palm browsers that access web servers directly without a proxy, like the free EudoraWeb [eudora.com] and Xiino [ilinx.co.jp]. But nobody seems to support them anymore and they got problems: EudoraWeb is very nice but can't load docs bigger than 21k, and Xiino is even nicer than EudoraWeb but it got a very annoying bug with radio buttons (when there are many radio buttons, it makes some of them selected).

    I couldn't find any usable browser for palm which doesn't have the problems I listed above, even that I looked a lot. If anyone can recommend me one I'd be very glad, but till then I am really disappointed and frustrated at Palm. I bet that the browsing in the competitors (PocketPC/Zaurus) is much better.

    • Tungsten comes with the Palm Web Browser, and you know what's stupid in it? That it requires a *beep*ing proprietary proxy to work!
      Whine, whine....The free Eudora web browser [eudora.com] and the Blazer browser that was bundled with my Handspring Treo 90 work directly over TCP/IP. Blazer renders all of the graphics on the web page.

      I aim my Treo's IR port at the one on my Nokia cell phone with built-in 9600bps modem and get online with no problem. I prefer not getting the images so I can browse faster.

      The biggest problem is "clever" webmasters who put in code that checks your browser and refuses to show you any web content if it doesn't recognize it. Morons. Let ME decide if the content is usable.

    • 1. AvantGo has to do the same thing, and their proxy is overloaded and many times you must reload. I don't know if the palm thing is different.
      2. What if Palm dies? Their proxy will die too and that will render the browser useless.

      1. I use the Tungsten browser daily and have never had any issues with the proxy being choked.
      2. Palm still supports proxy required for the Palm VII PQA applications, the device for which has been discontinued for years (the PQA apps wont even run on the newer devices).

  • 'cuz we all know T3 won't be nearly as good.

  • Abandoned palm (Score:2, Informative)

    by tf23 ( 27474 )
    About a month ago I recieved my first PocketPC (a Dell Axim [dell.com]). I started, many years ago, w/ a Pilot 1000, I believe it was. Then other palms, then a III, IIIx. Then a Samsung i300 phone that had the Palm built in.

    While I do love the phone w/ the palm built in, the PocketPC is so much more useful then the palms are (excluding, obviously, the bundled phone and palms).

    There's more ram. I can throw documents on them. It's wireless. I can now surf the web on the shitter, in boring meetings. There's *room* on t

  • I'm still using my Sony Clie OEG-S300 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Wonderkid ( 541329 ) on Thursday July 24, 2003 @07:26AM (#6520080) Homepage
    Because it's ultra reliable, the batteries last weeks, it does the key orgnisational tasks I require, it incldues an 8Meg Memory Stick for backing up (I only use 250k so far!), it's well made and most importantly, it doesn't pretend to be a multimedia machine. How complicated is it to download video to a Palm T2 and how much can you get in 32Meg? I will by a multimedia PDA when, like the iPod - it has a 30 gig hard drive. And built in 802.11g. Sony's new Clie 50 still lacks the RAM, but it accepts Memory Stick Pro, so one could watch hours of video! Now that is innovation!
  • It came time for me to upgrade my Palm m130 and I decided on a PocketPC. Why? It was an issue of price and features. The cheapest Palm I would consider buying is the Zire 71 at $300. It didn't really seem to make any sense to buy it because the PocketPCs offered a lot more at lower prices. I decided on a PocketPC that cost $250 and came with 64MB RAM (36MB usable vs. Zire's 13MB usable) and a 300Mhz ARM processor (vs. 144Mhz ARM for the Zire). Seems pretty clear to me who's offering the better deal.

    Y
    • Running a full-blown C compiler in an emulated x86 on your PDA... now THAT is cool.

      I run a full-blown C compiler that's not emulated on my Tungsten. I also have a pascal compiler that was written using that C compiler. I tend to do my palm development in the scheme system I've got on it, though. Look around, though. There's python, a few C systems, smalltalk, etc...

      There's also a lot of good languages/dev tools/utilities/games/etc.

      Have you looked around at palm software? The last time I looked, t
      • I run a full-blown C compiler that's not emulated on my Tungsten. I also have a pascal compiler that was written using that C compiler. I tend to do my palm development in the scheme system I've got on it, though. Look around, though. There's python, a few C systems, smalltalk, etc...

        All those languages have PocketPC ports as well. The point I was making was that it's really neat to be able to run a particular C compiler (a DOS-based one), in addition to all those old DOS utilities on the PDA. Emulating
  • I got my Zire71 the week it came out in April. I love it still, and seeing more OS5 devices on the market will only help(Pardon the standard res Treo 600). I never thought I could do so much on a Palm without tying myself down to a PPC.

  • Not-so-well though out name (Score:3, Funny)

    by Bjarke Roune ( 107212 ) on Thursday July 24, 2003 @08:38AM (#6520626) Homepage
    atleast not in Denmark, where I live. In danish, "tung" means heavy and "sten" means rock. So this is the "heavy rock t2". Not exactly a handheld I'd like to own!

  • t2 (Score:2, Funny)

    by Bubba-T ( 578601 )
    should have called it a t3 and did a terminator tie in.
  • I have a Tungsten T and I love it. When the newer Palm devices came out, I said to myself, "I wish Palm would come out with a device just like the Tungsten T but with the new tranflective screen". Here's the T2, and it fits the bill.

    Double the memory is nice, the transflective screen is great, and the rest is almost purely unchanged. That spells a winner in my book.

    I'm nervous about Graffiti 2; I like Graffiti as it is. But Palm lost a lawsuit over Graffiti and they don't dare ship it in new models, s

  • I bought the TT because I was already using Bluetooth and wanted something that didn't use an external adapter (I was using a Vx with the blue5, and I didn't want to use an SDIO card that stuck out of the top, either). What does the T2 add? A better screen (the TT's screen has been good enough for me, readable in all lighting conditions I've tried), and more memory (I already have a 128MB SD card, and I'm still using less than 8MB of internal memory).

    The T2 looks like a product that might sway people not

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