Sunday, April 10, 2005

T5

What I do like and don't like about my new palmOne Tungsten T5.
Y - It has a painted logo. The Palm decal fell off the T3 and I've had it held on with sticky tape for months.
N - It no longer has the universal connector so my spare cradle, cable and keyboard aren't compatible.
Y - There was a free offer of a wireless keyboard when I purchased the T5.
Y & N - No slider so big/extended screen all the time BUT not all pre-loaded applications take advantage of the added screen real estate.
Y - Excellent screen resolution.
N - Some programs "glitch' with the T5 eg interfere with the global find function (one of the coolest things about Palm).
Y - New drive mode to allow T5 to function like a spare drive via USB on any computer (not just yours with the Palm software loaded).
Y - The calculator - which used to be ultra-basic but has now come of age! Many functions and modes - more investigation (and some instruction) required.
N - It takes so long to do a soft reset - and it needs resetting a LOT it seems.
N - Instead of the reset hole being big enough for a stylus tip, it's gone back to pin-size - so each time you need to force a reset, you have to undo the reset pin tool from the end of the stylus - and put it back again when you're done.
N - the power button on the T5 is where the retractable stylus was on the T3 so I keep turning the T5 off. Very annoying!
N - It is sooooo slow sometimes! The palmOne Knowledge base puts this down to some ''third party applications" but I don't buy it!
Y - The media functionality which has the conversion protocol built into the Palm desktop. However, it won't convert all file types. More investigation needed.
Y & N - The onboard memory but its use is not intuitive. It allows you the option of opening items from the Files area but none of them ever does - even simple Docs files - the resulting message is invariably "no application knows how to open this".
Y - that the cover that came in the box hinges from the side, not the top.
N - no LED - so you can't see if it's charging without turning it on and checking the battery status for the lightning smbol.
Y - the sync/charging cable/s. Out of the box you get a cable for syncing, and the power cable plugs into that. (No lights anywhere on either of these to tell if the unit is charging.) The good news is that you can also plug the power cable direct into the T5. This is a bit more flexible that previous iterations - where you needed the cradle to be able to charge the unit.
And that's all I can think of for the moment. If I were giving it a rating of 1-10, it would be about a 6.5 or 7 - only because it seems to have lots of buggy things about it - and some form features that haven't been thought through - or tested by hands who are used to using their Palms many times a day, and as a natural extension of themselves.
I'm not yet missing the other features that were dropped from the T5 - flashing LED alarm (although I do miss the LED itself), vibrating alarm, and voice recorder. I do miss the universal connector though.

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