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| Home >> Handheld & PDA Reviews: PalmOne Tungsten T3 Handheld | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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User Submitted PalmOne Tungsten T3 Handheld Reviews (cont...)Date: 2005-05-10 Why a T|T3 is still a great PDA as of May 2005. As every product review arises from the unique preferences and tastes of a particular individual, I begin with the following disclosures. (a) I'm a medical professional and I think that the volume of medical references and tools available for PDAs, and especially palms, is transforming the medical professions for the better. (b) I do research and I use Windows laptops, and UNIX workstations, regularly, almost all day. (c) Scheduling and reminder notices are a key part of my work and personal life. More on (a): It follows that I'm partial to the Palm platform and the medical software for PalmOS that I've accumulated over the years. The medical software available for Palms makes continuing medical education a pleasure for me. In a few free moments, or even as a break from the work routine, I like to read up on medical subjects from 5MCC or Harrisons' or epocrates. In casual interactions with other medical professionals, or while reading the newspaper, or looking over content.nejm.org, sometimes I want to look up some quick information to refresh my memory. Medical information on a Palm is often at the perfect level of detail. It's key, however, that the Palm be accessible, that it be in my pocket with my wallet or in my labcoat. If it takes me more than 20 seconds to find the information I am wondering about, often, the information may not be worth tracking down. The T|T3 has a near ideal size, the size of a wallet. I would think that the T|T5, the T|Es and the Sony TH55 would be very comparable, but the T|T3 is still smaller. The upcoming LifeDrive looks too large and heavy. Many of my medical programs want to reside in volatile RAM; that argues against the 16MB limit of the TH55 and, perhaps, the 32MB limits of the T|Es. The T|C appears to be an important contender, but I prefer the security of short-range Bluetooth to 802.11b WiFi without WPA-PSK/AES. Also, it is likely that unencrypted 802.11b violates HIPAA. More on (b): For research work, there is a clear separation from the heavy-weight computing tasks for which I need a workstation, the medium-weight tasks for which I need a luggable laptop, and light-weight scheduling, quick notes, reminders, etc. that a PDA does well. I don't want my PDA to be a database or have the feature sets of office productivity suites. Still, adding research info. management to medical info. management increases demand on volatile and non-volatile storage. This argues for the T|Ts, the T|C and the LifeDrive. More on (c): I want my PDA apps to be useful day-to-day, quick to launch and nimble to use. Keeping this in mind, I was disappointed that PalmOne did away with voice recording on the T|T5. I like the idea of using voice recordings for quick memos while driving or just before going to bed or adding voice-over notes on calendar and to-do apps. The T|C will do voice recording, but with the hassle of an external mic. Unfortunately, that little hassle could be too large a barrier to my using a voice-memo feature regularly. That takes me back to the T|T3. The Treo 650 would be a reasonable contender. But I like my PDA to be available for scheduling and note-taking while I am talking on a cell-phone. So for me, the two should be separated. Besides, I've recently signed up for another two years with Nextel. That excludes the Treos. In the back of my mind is also the fact that cell phones aren't compatible/safe with many hospital wards. Unfortunately, as of today, there precious few sources of new, warrantied T|T3 available in the US. Amazon & associates just sold the last of the warrantied OEMs; I squeaked by and managed to get one of these. Ebay may be the only remaining source. I bought a spare T|T3 and some spare parts from ebay last week and I've been happy with this route. To conclude, I assert the T|T3 is still a great PDA as of May 2005. Date: 2005-04-12 Great product, except for the screws! Great product! My wife works in real estate, so the Tungsten T3 is invaluable to her. Easy to use and durable EXCEPT for the 4 little screws on the side of the slide part. They are NOTORIOUS for coming loose and falling out.They are so tiny that you do not even notice them come loose untill they have fallen out and are gone. However, I have contacted PalmOne and they graciously sent me 4 new screws for no charge. Great customer support! Date: 2005-02-06 To "tommy mike" and the White Screen of Death Caveat emptor: I, too, had the same problem when attempting to run the Universal Wireless Keyboard (UWK) with my T3. Apparently, you have to download an updated version of the Keyboard.prc (located on Palm's website) and install that along with two other prc's that came bundled with the UWK installation CD. In my case, my T3 actually froze and would not even respond to a hard reset. But I called Palm's tech support, got it exchanged, uploaded the other prc's, and it's been working brilliantly ever since. This problem is actually really common among T3 users. Anyone experiencing the same problem, might find this post from the palmOne Help Forums useful: http://forums.palmone.com/pe/action/forums/displaysinglethread?rootPostID=20140203&returnExpertiseCode=__Accessories__USCA Aside from that little hitch, I highly reccommend the T3. The expandable view screen and landscape mode definitely evoke that "Wow" factor. And functionally, it's great. I'm a student, so I've started taking all of my notes on my T3. Here's where the landscape mode really comes in handy. And now that my UWK is working, it's easy as pie. I should add that warnings about a low battery life are right. It does seem to run down pretty quickly. I got a travel charger to add some juice in between classes, which seems to work fine and doesn't take up a lot of room. So I reccommend getting either that or an attachable battery if you plan to be using your T3 extensively during the day. I believe the average battery life is 4 hours without a recharge (less if you plan to be browsing online or using the high media apps like the Kinoma player). Hope that helps! Date: 2005-01-22 Nice machine, poor support The T3 is a very nice machine, but with a serious design flaw. And, it is very poorly supported, a bad combination. The Palm Universal Wireless keyboard comes with an application with a serious bug such that if you attempt to run it on the T3, it will hang the T3's ROM code. Unfortunately, the T3 is designed so that a soft or hard reset requires the attention of the ROM code, which in this case is completely catatonic. So you cannot regain control of the machine, rendering it an expensive paper-weight with a white screen (hence, the term "White Screen of Death", which others have called this syndrome). (In my 40 years as a computer pro, I've never encountered a machine where you could get the hardware in such a wedged state that a reset button or power-cycling wouldn't return the hardware to a good, if re-initialized, state). You can wait for the battery to die (I sent mine back to Palm 6 days after this event, and the battery was still alive). Or you can do a little surgery on your nice T3 to disconnect the battery connector from the mainboard. Or you can try to get Palm to replace the machine. I chose the latter, and believe me, it wasn't easy. After a couple of calls to support that got me the folks in India, who told me the only remedy was to let the battery die, and when it didn't, I finally called the main number at Palm and screamed bloody murder. They did an advance exchange. So the outcome was fine, but it took me an awfully long time on the phone at my own expense and a lot of aggravation to get them to fix the fact that THEIR software killed THEIR machine. Want a laugh? They released an updated software package for the Universal Wireless keyboard without a word on the website saying that if you don't switch to this upgrade, you will kill your T3 dead. I did install the updated stuff, because I'd like to be able to use the keyboard I paid for. And guess what? Try to run the app and it crashes (the driver works, so you can use the keyboard; you just can't change any settings). It is improved, in that you can recover from the crash by soft-resetting. This is quite unbelievable. And it would be nice to be able to run this app, because with the keyboard driver installed, battery life, not a T3 strong-suit, is compromised because the driver is constantly probing the IR port to see if there's a keyboard there, consuming power in the process. For me, this is bad, because I use the keyboard only once/week. The app supposedly lets you control this behavior to save power, if you can run it, which I can't. I must agree with the many other reviewers who have said that this is a nice product when it works, but Lord help you if you need support. Date: 2004-12-15 White Screen of Death (WSD) and the T3's Universal Wireless I ordered the T3 on 11/23 (open Box) a few days later. It is beautiful and Versatile. The first time I had it out in the field for a day, the silly color screen sucked the life out of the battery by the early afternoon. So I forked over money for the battery backup (Power To Go) for $45.00. My i705 and its less sexy LCD screen would have soldiered on for days. The Universal Wireless Keyboard (UWK) installation was followed by the 'White Screen of Death', in which the device locks up with the screen gradually fading to white, and then as the battery is depleted, it goes through purple to black. No reset maneuver was effective in interrupting this demise. When I waited until the next day to call technical non-support on the Bangalore Night Shift, the poor guy professed not a clue as to what I was talking about. But when I put the T3 back into the charger for a while, it came back to life, and we were happy, he and I -and none the wiser. I have tried once more to run the keyboard, and again the dread White Screen of Death appeared. Maybe the T3 will run tomorrow, maybe not. The PalmOne (Emotional) Support Forum indicates that the problem has been known since the UWK was released in September, with nary a fix nor even an acknowledgement from PalmOne. If you must buy this wonder, do so BUT DON'T BUY IT OPEN BOX AND DON'T EVEN THINK OF BUYING THE KEYBOARD.
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