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New Palm Lineup Reviewed: Tungsten T3 & E, Zire 21
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."
on InternetNews.com .
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
You can find one at Amazon cheaper than at Barnes and Noble!
Sony also announced two Clies today, which cost $200 and $250 respectively. Not bad, but not revolutionary.
For more information, click here.
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.
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
The Palm Tungsten C ($500) and Sony Clie UX-50 ($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.
For more information, click here.
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*
Karma: \Kar"ma\, n. [Skr.] (Buddhism) One's acts considered as fixing one's lot in the future existence.
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.
"You've got an invalid haircut" -Warren Zevon - Life'll Kill Ya
Considering the Zaurus is competition to these devices, and does offer these utilities, it's relevant.
Oh, and there are console and SSH apps for Palm OS. They're quite popular for Sysadmin types. Who are a huge target market for these babies.
And the 911 offers full-time AWD instead of on-the-fly 4WD.
"You've got an invalid haircut" -Warren Zevon - Life'll Kill Ya
PalmOS devices for the educational market? Alphasmart agrees with you.
2. They run Windows XP Tablet Edition (Which is a variant of Home).
Actually, it is "a superset of Windows XP Professional"
Yoda of Borg am I! Assimilated shall you be! Futile resistance is, hmm?
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.
I read the internet for the articles.
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 get. It's not like it's not possible now: there's a package to emulate the hp48 on PPCs and Palms that has been out for a while. Still, it makes you much less efficient. In the calculator world, if you want power and usability, for real world usage, and not only HS, get an HP (while they're still decent), which is what has been used by those who interact with their calculators all the time(engineers, bankers, etc) for many years, not a Palm.
Try Corewar @ www.koth.org - rec.games.corewar
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.
Since you have a IIIx you can use the Graffiti Replacement Trick. The reason Palm moved to Graffiti 2 is because Xerox sued Palm over a unistroke character patent.
-- iCEBaLM