 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Home >> Handheld & PDA Reviews: PalmOne Tungsten T3 Handheld | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
User Submitted PalmOne Tungsten T3 Handheld Reviews (cont...)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. Date: 2004-12-14 Good basic PDA This unit is a good basic e-notebook. However I was somewhat disappointed that I could not upload any mp3s or any other non-MS files to the internal memory (need to have an SD memory card)? This is a bizarre restriction. I like to use my PDA as a memory stick but cannot due to the filetype restrictions unless I buy an SD card? The apps are good basic tools and the hand writing recognition software is excellent. The screen is bright and clear. I do not have any other blue-tooth compatible hardware so have not been able to test its wireless capability. If you just want to replace your paper diary/notbook in a compact format, this is a reasonable option. It is nowhere near as good/functional as my Zaurus 5600L, but it is smaller and ligther. Date: 2004-12-11 The T3 is Ok, but dissapointment with Amazon shipment The T3 is the best pda i`ve seen from palmone to the date, but i have to say that i am very concerned in the form that AMAZON shipped this product, the box was very deteriorated, with multiples areas of struck in the box of the t3, at first look it appeared to me that it was not a new product, however the box was sealed, Dont understand why Amazon have to ship this product in such condition VERY dissapointment! I gave 5 stars to T3 but to Amazon I gave 1 star for bad quality control of their shipment Date: 2004-11-26 Large screen, compact size I've used PDAs for a number of years now and find them an indispensible part of my life. I started with one of the iniital Palm Pilots, and then a Palm 3. When I foolishly dropped my Palm 3 I went to buy a new Palm but got talked into a Toshiba e310 PocketPC, which I've had for the last couple of years. I liked the unit's good integration with Windows and large screen, but was disappointed with the battery life, and general instability of the system. I also found it harder to find cheap or free 3rd party applications for some of my hobbies. Finally, though I liked the big screen I preferred the more compact size of my previous palms. Time to upgrade again. I was drawn to the T3 principally because of its stretch screen and virtual graffiti area. This gives you the large screen of a PocketPC but it's a much better fit for my pockets. I'm enjoying the bluetooth connectivity and better handling of a lot of other media by the prebundled software. A few points to note: - Battery life is still unspectacular. My older palms ran on 2xAAA batteries and I would get a couple of months out of them. Rechargeable batteries on both the e310 and Palm tend to run down very quickly. This is fine if you're always able to visit a power outlet each night, but when I'm travelling that's not always possible. If you can't extend the battery life a removeable/replaceable battery would be a great idea. This is a big problem when the Palm doesn't use flash memory and so all data can potentially be lost during a powerdown. - While the stretch screen is great, not all applications have been redesigned to accommodate it. Some applications designed for other Palm models won't stretch their screens and can only be used in small screen mode. I'm particularly disappointed that AvantGo only uses small-screen mode as that's an application I use a lot. - Setup seemed a lot more fiddly this time than before. A number of the bundled applicatons have to be loaded and configured separately, which takes time. There was also a problem with installing VersaMail which required tech support help - upgrading the desktop uninstalled it, and the installation file is not easy to find on the CD. - The fonts used for many applications seem more old-fashioned and clunky. The T3 is a slick-looking device and the on-screen presentation doesn't quite match that. Palm needs to upgrade its graphics which are still very similar to those included on the original Pilots. - Integration with the SD card is not the best. You can't 'explore' the SD card and easily see all files on it. Some files can only be 'seen' by specific applications - for instance, audio files can only be 'seen' by RealPlayer, and images can only be seen by PalmPhotos, and you can't use the general menu or the memory/delete function to examine such files. You need to manage them from within the individual applications.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Contact Us | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ©2004 SimplyHandhelds, All rights reserved. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
