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palmOne Announces Tungsten T5

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the everyone-likes-little-computers-right dept.

btornado writes "palmOne has officially announced the Tungsten T5, which is due out in early November. It features 256 MB of flash memory, Palm OS Garnet 5.4 with a 320x480 display, and Bluetooth connectivity with support for the SDIO Wifi card. It is also the first device to support the Multi-connector, which allows you to trickle charge from the USB cable. You can also configure the T5 as a USB drive to transfer files."

13 of 200 comments (clear)

  1. New features? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Charge from the USB connector?

    Oh my, that's what a two yeard old Zire does!

  2. Wifi Support by Metatron · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Support for a WiFi card ... why does it not have WiFi in it ?????

    1. Re:Wifi Support by jht · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well, WiFi is probably more of a niche for a PDA than Bluetooth for the most part. WiFi support (probably just 802.11b) will only get you networking over a short distance wherever a network is available, and it sucks power rather quickly. Odds are, though, that you're more likely to use WiFi with your laptop.

      A PDA, OTOH, needs mainly to talk to it's "mothership" desktop, or to a cell phone, or some other "personal" device. Right up Bluetooth's alley. In fact, probably the best way to think of Bluetooth on a PDA is as an expansion port that just happens to be wireless.

      I use Bluetooth to sync my Palm and my PowerBook, to connect my cell phone to my Jabra headset, to iSync everything, to connect my iMac to peripherals, and in a pinch I use Bluetooth to get GPRS internet access with my cell phone from my PowerBook when I don't have any other form of access available. I also have used my cell phone with the Palm (a Tungsten T) the same way.

      And though I don't use it as much, I have a Dell laptop with Bluetooth, and the cordless phone at my office uses it both to talk to the base station and to sync with a PC.

      OTOH I have a Pocket PC as well (an iPaq 1935), and I use a Sandisk SDIO WiFi card with it. Very rarely. There's just not much I'd do with it that isn't better served by the laptop, and the SDIO card sucks power so quickly you can practically see the power meter drop.

      Mind you, I'm not dumping on WiFi. It's great, and useful, but it's just good for one thing - networking. In PDA's that's enough of a niche compared to what you can do with Bluetooth that I'd rather have Bluetooth in my PDA given a choice of only one.

      --
      -- Josh Turiel
      "2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
  3. Where is OS6? by cgenman · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I remember distinctly that palm OS5 was supposed to be a stopgap measure between the classic OS4 and the modern, BeOS based OS6... Essentially OS5 was OS4 with some badly needed modifications to make it run on faster hardware. And now that we're up to 5.4, the patches keep rolling in and in, as they add more ram and expand the featureset ever towards what OS 6 is supposed to contain, which is supposed to be in parallel development.

    When are we getting the real Palm OS 6, with such badly needed features as multiprocessing and a file system?

    --
    The ______ Agenda
    1. Re:Where is OS6? by Bronster · · Score: 4, Funny

      Imagine a beowulf...

      No, don't. Just imagine running your mp3 player in the background while you actually do something else on the device - then go read up on the difference between multiprocessing and multiprocessor and be elightened.

      Sheesh. I guess IHBT.

    2. Re:Where is OS6? by MadChicken · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I agree with multitasking/threading in a LIMITED way, but certainly not a file system. That's the stupidest contrived need for a PDA I've ever heard of. For those of you with Winboxes, open up your "Program Files" folder. You really want something like that on your limited memory PDA? Yikes. I used an iPaq for a year, and file systems... what a waste (Ever heard of a program called WIMR? Don't need one on Palms). The database idea Palm had 'way back was well ahead of its time... the only thing that was missing was being able to install generic files on that "file system"; like MP3s or DOC files. Nice if/when desktops catch up to that (WinFS?)

      As for Multitasking, again, CE machines are a nightmare of "wanna be a desktop" os overkill. This is a sweet and smart way to do it, instead of "Start | Settings | Memory | Running Applications | End Program" or loading a program to make the close button actually close something.

      My iPaq is now sitting in the cradle, and has been for about 3 months, untouched, while I carry my Tungsten E upstairs and downstairs just in case I need it.

      OK! Ignition started, pour on the kerosene!

      --
      SYS 64738 NO CARRIER
  4. As always, underwhelming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Palm's announcements are always underwhelming.

    The $400 sounds okay, until you realize it does not include built-in WiFi. The screen is half VGA.

    And it doesn't have the new version of the PalmOS. Instead we get 5.4, which as far as I'm concerned, the entire 4.x and 5.x OS's have been disappointments. The IP stack in the 5.x OS is what I'd consider unstable and unusable. Imagine that when networked apps crash, they actually crash inside the IP stack, not the application.

    Don't get me started on the lack of multitasking.

    Very disappointing.

  5. Rotate screen by Lurker+McLurker · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Forget the arguments about processors, wireless connectivity and other technical issues, it's little things like this that make me want to buy a device.
    Simple but useful features, that's what makes a product stand out

    --
    Mod parent up!
  6. Re:USB Drive? by wizrd_nml · · Score: 5, Informative
    From the Brighthand Preview:

    What's most unique about the Tungsten T5 is it can be plugged into the USB port on almost any computer and the 160 MB segment of memory will appear on the computer as a removable drive. The Palm Desktop software doesn't have to be installed on the computer. What's more, if an SD card is inserted into the T5, it will also appear as a removable drive.
  7. Power consumption... by blueZ3 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    WiFi sucks power like crazy. It reduces battery life by over 70% if the SDIO WiFi card is any indication.

    And, as another poster mentioned, WiFi seems to change about once a year - and I'd rather buy a new $100 SDIO card than a new $400 PDA.

    --
    Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
  8. Cheaper T3 by TonyZahn · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think the real news here is that the price of the T3 has dropped to $350 with the releaase of the T5.
    Another $50 and I'll be all over it...

    --
    - sig? who is this sig of which you speak?
  9. It's still better than PPC by a_nonamiss · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Lord... The PalmOne crowd will never be happy... Frankly, I an kinda tired of reading people bashing P1 for this unit. Sure, it's not revolutionary, but it's an improvement, especially on battery life. I don't really think the T3 needed a whole lot of improvement, (again, battery life) and I don't think this was intended to "unseat" the T3. I'm in the (seeming) minority of people who don't need WiFi, don't want WiFi and frankly could care less if P1 ever makes a WiFi radio on their devices. I get along just fine with Bluetooth and my Motorola v710. I can browse the Internet, get my email, and do everything I want Internet-wise. I've never been sitting in an airport or coffee-house and said "Damn... if I only had WiFi! Now I'm ruined!"

    I'm willing to admit that Dell devices still may have higher tech specs, but honestly, until they can run PalmOS, I'm not the slightest bit interested. PPC sucks. It's not stable, it's a resource hog. It has more moving parts, and having supported both PPC and POS, can say without hesitation that in my opinion, POS is still far superior.

    In conclusion to my rant, I'm not going to say "Way to go PalmOne!" They made some mistakes. (Plastic case? Oops!) On the other hand, I don't think this is a miserable failure. It's an evolutionary device that is slightly better than the T3. I think that everyone's expectations were simply too high, and mostly unreasonable. If P1 had come out with a device with WiFi, people would complain about battery life. If it had a voice recorder, people would complain that it turned the device on in their pockets. I don't think that Palm could have satisfied people after having such a long break since their last release. And to those of you wondering, I don't work for Palm. Let's just hope that the long-term reliability of this unit is an improvement, because that's where P1 could go horribly wrong. My T3 had far too many hardware problems, and if the T5 exhibits the same problems, then P1 could really be in trouble.

    --
    -Arthur
    Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
  10. Zodiac Rules by computechnica · · Score: 4, Informative

    The Tapwave Zodiac is superior. It has a much nicer form factor, can use 2 SD cards at the same time, Nice loud stereo speakers, a real 3d GPU, and good battery life. It also has several good EMUs for just about every cartridge console system. made.:

    http://www.palmsource.com/interests/emulators/
    http://www.palmemu.com/
    http://www.kalemsoft.com/
    http://www.codejedi.com/

    --
    Science is the Real TRUTH!