Palm TX Handheld by Palm
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Digital camera reviews of Palm TX Handheld
Digital camera Review: Amazing tool for the price!
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought my Palm TX roughly 5 months ago, and I love it! I'm 16 years old and some people would call me a bit of a geek. I have bought many expensive gadjets and I know my way around a computer, so I was able to take full advantage of all the great features on this palm.
Pros:
-Wifi
-Big screen- Landscape mode!
-Pocket Tunes
-Expandability
-Battery Life
Cons:
-none so far!
Wifi - The wifi connection is one of the main reasons I purchased this. I set up a wirelss network in my 2400 sq foot house and I can go anywhere in the house and on the front porch and I am able to browse the web. Web pages load very well at a good speed using the Blazer software. Also, the Versamail program is a great tool for checking email without having to use the web browser. Be aware that you cannot use Hotmail or Yahoo with Versamail so I just set up a Gmail account and it works great.
Big Screen - The big screen gives it a great advantage over other Palms because it gives you the option for landscape mode. Using a free TCIMP media player I found on the web, I've watched full length movies on my Palm TX with amazing picture and sound quality. I highly reccomend Palm DVD Studio for converting your DVDs to Palm format and it's well worth the $30. Do NOT hotsync your converted videos with Palm Desktop or you'll get a bunch of blurry crap. The best way to put a video on your palm is to load it onto your SD card and then use the TCIMP video player and select the video.
Music - First of all, buy a large SD card, it's well worth the money, especially with the cheap prices for card media these days. I bought a 2 gb card about 5 months ago for $65 from Best Buy, and now they're even cheaper. I'm able to fit a little over 300 songs, plus four 22 minute tv shows and about 400 pictures onto my sd card. The Pocket Tunes player is really great and it makes it easy to create playlists, and has all the play modes you would ever need, excluding bass/treble adjusting.
Expandability - A palm is a palm, meaning that there are tens of thousands of Palm compatible programs out there. You can use your Palm TX for just about anything, especially with its Wifi capabilities. I have a bunch of games and they're all great.
Battery Life - Battery life is what sets this apart from other PDAs. You can get over 10 hours on music and about 4 and a half hours on video. I barely ever have to charge it doing normal tasks.
Overall, I'm extremely satisfied with my Palm TX and I use it all the time. One more small note is that the wall charger dosen't work as another power source. It soley charges your Palm's battery, meaning if your battery is at zero, you have to wait until the power adapter has given it enough juice to use it again. And that is not even a big deal, being that the charging time is just 3 hours. I HIGHLY recommend this device, you won't be dissappointed!!!
Digital camera Review: An "upgrade" from a Sony UX-50
Summary: 4 Stars
I've had a Sony UX-50 for at least three years, since they became generally available. I still love that thing, and it was a tough decision to upgrade. The UX-50 still has many features which aren't available elsewhere. For me, the selling points were the clamshell case and keyboard. But the death knell for the UX-50 is it's miserable battery lifetime expectancy. I'm not talking about how long the battery can last on a single charge, but rather the expected lifetime. The UX series battery life is a common complaint. I've replaced the batteries at least twice, and am on the verge of a third replacement. At the moment, a single full charge gives me the power to do one Hotsync over Wifi before it's time to charge again.
It's a shame that Sony pulled out of the Palm market, because they brought a lot of innovation, and now with no competition, it seems like Palm's offerings are getting rather bland.
I'm fairly old-school, in that I'm of the mindset that a full-function PDA will outperform a "smartphone", which tries to do PDA tasks, but at a limited feature set. Smaller screens is the first thing that pops into
my mind. I know people who have Treos, and they love them. But until technology catches up with the promises, I'll continue to wait. To be fair, the past two years has seen a good leap in the merging of cell phones and PDA.
So for now, I'll continue to use a cell phone as a phone, and a PDA as a PDA. Unfortunately, I have the suspicion that the T/X will probably be the last of a generation. It's been out for at least a full year now, and there's been no real hint (as far as I can see) at future devices.
I like the T/X. I've been using Palm devices regularly since the Palm III, and even before. I used a Palm Pilot Professional before the III, but I did not come to rely on it very much. Or at least as much as when the III was released with its greater capabilities.
Migrating from the Sony UX-50 to the Palm T/X was rather painless. All I needed to do was do a final hotsync, deinstall the Sony version of Palm Desktop, and install the Palm software. I needed to install my programs and databases from the UX-50 backup, but that was easy. I'd say it took me about 30 minutes to migrate.
Shortly after that last step, I realized I forgot to copy the data from the UX-50 MemoryStick, so I needed to reinstall the Sony SCSI driver, otherwise known as "Data Import". Once I copied that data to my PC, I used the Palm Quickinstall to install this stuff to the SD memory card I also picked up.
Several pieces of software did not work. Some just crashed the device, but it wasn't too hard to get a later version from the author's website. Only once piece of software was incompatible. Some, like HappyDays, I did not need anymore, since there is additional functionality.
The stylus is fantastic. Solid, heavy, and very comfortable to use. After using the UX-50 toothpick, there's no complaint at all here. It fits nicely into the silo, and a handy-dandy reset pin is underneath the cap.
The device is very light weight, at least in comparison to the UX-50. It weighs noticeably less, and is also comfortable to hold.
The flip-cover is a joke, and the second accessory I ordered (the SD memory card being the first) is an Innopocket hard case. The flip-cover won't provide much protection, especially since I suspect I'm not alone in carrying my Palm in my jacket pocket, and don't want to risk dropping it.
I'm left-handed, but the flip-cover actually adds a nice stable base for my hand to rest on.
There is no external power-charging indicator, and no real easy way to tell when the device is fully charged up. The power button is in a strange configuration, at the top of the device, in a slight recessed position. Gotta use my pinkie finger to power it on.
The USB sync cable is also tedious. It plugs in to the bottom of the device, and the only comfortable way to grab the business end of the sync cable is via the flat area. But that's just where they decided to put the
sync button, so I have a tenancy to press the sync button while trying to insert the cable. Too bad they didn't stick with the cradles. When the power jack is plugged in, it butts right up against the sync cable. Not much room to finesse things.
I've been sync'ing over Wifi for years now, and the Wifi on this device is very fast to acquire a signal, and the Wifi profile manager is a breeze. I'd like to connect it to my workplace LAN, but that uses 802.1X, and the 802.1X upgrade is $6. Not free, but not terribly expensive. Wish they could have included it, or at least given me a break.
So, not truly a full review, but you've got over 200 reviews here on Amazon to read if you're really serious. There are some unhappy users, and I hope that I'm not going to be one of them, who in the future deletes a positive review after sour experience. But as of now, the bottom line is that this is a very nice upgrade for me, and would be a heck of a nice device for a first-time PDA user.
Digital camera Review: An Appraisal and Some Recommendations
Summary: 4 Stars
I have been using Palm devices since the very first Palm Pilot. Before that, I used Palm's Graffitti on my Newtons. My phone is a Treo 650. Without question, the T|X is superior to all the rest. Oh, and I use it in combination with a Macintosh, (syncing via BlueTooth, usually) but have used it with Windows XP as well.
A hand-held device slim and light enough to fit into virtually any shirt or jacket without being obtrusive, able to communicate via BlueTooth, infrared and Wi-Fi, with a screen that can be rotated 90 degrees, large and crisp enough to permit even my 62-year old eyes to browse web sites and view MP4 video, and with the ability to accept at least 2 gigs of SD memory, this is the device to own unless you are seeking the kind of game capability that only a PlayStation Portable provides.
Of course there are cons. I suppose the greatest is the lack of a built-in microphone. But even that has been hacked by a very clever company that offers both a headset with boom mike and a tiny plug-in mic. Competing with the lack of a mic is the fact that the battery is sealed in the case, so that you can't carry another, fully charged, battery as a spare. There are external rechargeables to deal with this, but they are one more thing to remember, or to lose. Another negative is the lack of a Flash player, which makes YouTube and similar sites unusable, unless you know something I am not aware of. Of course there is no camera, either, but it's happy to accept your camera's SD card for either viewing or emailing.
These things said, here are some recommendations:
If you are going to use it for email from a corporate or university server, spend the necessary bucks on SnapperMail. It's more versatile than the included Versamail. But if possible, consider the mobile view of GMail (Google's free email service.) Not only is it beautifully designed, it's free. I have my other accounts forwarded to GMail and both read and send from there using the browser.
TCPMP is a simply astonishing and free media player, with additional audio controls to boost and adjust the sound above what the T|X's controls provided. I am no audiophile, but I have used the T|X with a variety of earphones, including the Sony and Bose noise-cancelling variety on long flights, and simply cannot complain about sound. The only minor complication is that the AAC decoder must be tracked down and installed separately. For reasons of copyright, apparently, it does not come bundled with TCPMP. But a bit of astute Googling should solve that problem.
With TCPMP on the T|X and something like the free HandBrake on the Mac or equivalent free software under Windows, one is able to convert one's DVD to a 700 MB file, drop it onto a 1 GB SD card, and take along a movie. Of course the picture is small. In fact, it's far better for viewing a favorite movie than seeing a particular title for the first time. But I own an embarrassing number of media-playback devices, some with larger screens and/or greater capacities, and the size and weight of the T|X trump them all. So much so that I simply passed on the video iPod and will continue to until its screen is significantly larger or I can afford those video goggles that are now available.
The latest version of Pocket Tunes is both a fine audio player and your link to Internet radio. Include it in your budget if MP3, playlists, podcasts and streaming audio are important. They are to me, so I wouldn't be without Pocket Tunes.
VoIP via the T|X appears to be possible. With the external headset and some new software, others are reporting success. My router is not letting me do that from home, and I have yet to try it elsewhere, but don't be surprised if you hear that people are using their T|Xes as Wi-Fi phones.
Finally, (well, there is no "finally," but I have to stop somewhere) I own a Bluetooth keyboard so that I can use the T|X as a sort of substitute for my laptop. They work flawlessly together. Would I try to do a lot of detailed formatting and revision on that 4-inch screen? Of course not. But for sheer text entry, such as a first draft of a paper, it's just fine.
So here is the final indicator of how well I like this device: If it were to break, or if I were to lose it, I would buy another. There are very few similar bits of technology I can say that about.
Digital camera Review: An Expensive Piece of Plastic and Silicon
Summary: 1 Stars
I wish I could give it negative stars for a rating.... After only two months of nominal use, the touch screen of this pos PDA is completely unresponsive. No amount of poking the reset button fixes this and it's now awaiting return shipping packaging to get repaired/replaced under warranty. If you need a reliable PDA, this one's not it.Digital camera Review: An old standby
Summary: 4 Stars
I purchased to replace LifeDrive that was failing. Works well so far and I am happy about the size.
Just wish they still updated the software and that new devices without phones were being considered.