Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
It's about time woke up and smelled the price points, man.
...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?
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.)
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."
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
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.
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.
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...