Rating: Summary: BUYER BEWARE!!! Review: I received my Tungsten E free from my employer. The fact that I paid nothing for it is the only reason I am not more upset. The unit was working just fine until about two months into my ownership when I connected my PALM to my PC with the hot sync cord (which I had done many times before), hit the sync button, and BINGO... ALL my data was GONE... on both the PALM AND my PC. Phone numbers, calendar, tasks, all gone. I got product support on the phone and was jerked around for a half hour before the tech guy finally said, "Well, I guess the data is gone. Um. Is that OK?". No, not really. But thanks for asking. If your data is not important to you, by all means run out and buy the PALM Tungsten E.
Rating: Summary: Great for a MAC user!! Review: I purchased this for my wife. She loves it. We own a Mac with OS X their was no additional software to install it works great. I do however wish it came with a cradle. I would recommed this to any mac user who wants a pda with all of the basic features.
Rating: Summary: Needs Cradle Review: This Palm does not come with a docking cradle, which makes HotSync'ing cumbersome. It also prevents integration with add-on devices such as GPS. Not up to Palm's usual standards!
Rating: Summary: 5 way keypad is cheap Review: I only had this for a week or so. I love the display, the responsiveness, and features over what I had in my old Visor.But the darn 5-way keypad in the center drives me nuts! The down button didn't give feedback like the left/right/up/center, which was very annoying. I returned it last night and got a new one. All the buttons now give descent feedback, but the up button doesn't actually do anything unless it is really pressed hard. So hard, that I think I'm going to break it. Should I go back for a third try? Not sure. I may return this and wait for the next set of models to come out and keep my Visor.
Rating: Summary: WATCH OUT FOR THE NEW CONTACTS (Address Book) FIELDS! Review: I gave up my 6 year old Personal Palmpilot in favor of this beauty. I've found it has the best function for the price. Better than the ZIRE 71 if you give up the camera. Has 32MB of memory and comes with Documents to Go to process Excel and Word files. ZIRE doesn't have these two things. Also should mention that there's a terrific calculator included on the CD called Power One. Most amazing software I've seen for a calculator. It supports and provides templates for Loan Calculations, Metric Conversions, Math functions and many more. In all, this is definitely a 5-star product. Enough has been said here that I won't share my enthusiasm with you. I should say that the protective front cover that came with mine does not scratch my case, as has been mentioned frequently here. I was given the $40 Palm metal case as a gift and kept it. It's very protective but does interfere completely with the power button, hot-synch connection and charger input ... strong negatives. To the matter at hand, the title of this review. It is not well known that the Tungsten E and one other new T model have introduced a broadening of the fields available in the Address Book PIM application, now called "Contacts". This application in modeled after Msoft Outlook and has serious drawbacks, IF NOT UNDERSTOOD BY THE USER. Many fields have been added which are supported by the handheld and the desktop which will cause endless grief if you need to interface the Tungsten E later to another application by exporting data. Briefly, there are now 9 Custom fields (not 4), 7 Phone fields (not 5), 3 sets of Address fields (not 1), 2 IM fields (for Chat IDs), a Web Site field, and a Birthday field. In all, there are 21 extra fields compared to most other Palms. Generally speaking, this is very good and could be a compelling reason to buy the Tungsten E. However, here's what I've learned: My first 5 phone fields have default labels of WORK, HOME, MOBILE, E-MAIL and MAIN. While these can be changed as you enter new contacts, they are very poor choices for all users. WORK and MAIN are largely redundant, FAX is missing completely, and E-MAIL should be last because it's not a phone. This forces you to do a lot of tapping to enter the proper labels for each new contact. All earlier Palms had these default labels: WORK, HOME, FAX, OTHER and E-MAIL, a very sensible choice. Nothing can be done about this "bug" from my dialogues with Palm and I have yet to discover a fix on the Google message boards. This becomes critical to you from a productivity point of view and disastrous if you try to export your phone data to another program. Take this message with you: Whatever you choose to call your phone labels, be consistent from one Contact to another or your fields will export improperly. Palm's export will export all these fields in the physical order entered, top to bottom, REGARDLESS OF YOUR FIELD LABELS! So you must be consistent or you will never export them as you intend. Similarly, the 2 extra sets of address fields are called "H" and "O", in addition to the first set called "W". Please don't think that the Desktop software will honor these labels. The first one you enter will be exported as "WORK", the second as "HOME", etc., NO MATTER WHAT LABEL YOU GIVE IT! So ... if you ever plan to export a Contact's Home Address to Outlook or any other program, you must enter some dummy information as "Work" and then enter the Home information. The Palm sees these three sets of addresses as Address 1, 2, and 3, NOT Work, Home, Other. So if you enter Home first, then Work, you're headed for trouble if you Export. Finally, the Export dialogue is equally screwed up by showing the phone field names in a different order than above. My message here is to ignore those label names because they will Export in the same order you've entered them, regardless of what the dialogue says. This has caused me endless grief until I understood what was happening. These flaws will not affect many of you but they are well worthy of note and understanding. Palm surely must fix this one day, but that's the way it is now. Otherwise, this is a 5-star offering, despite this serious deficiency which can be worked around now that you understand it. Enjoy your Tungsten E if you take the plunge.
Rating: Summary: Good replacement for Vx Review: I have been a happy user of a Palm Vx for 3 years, but could not resist upgrading any longer. Let's see: Screen: everybody says it's impressive, I won't argue. Let's just say that it can double as a weak flashlight. Speed: plenty fast for most applications, the only problem is that quite often, when I tap on a vertical scroll bar, it scrolls twice. Battery: I used to charge my Vx just once a week, but this baby (its screen, actually) needs to be fed about twice that often. I never play games, but would guess they're probably battery hogs. The charger is quite small, multi-voltage and multi-plug. Memory: what can I say ? 32 MB is 4 times what I had, I don't see how I'm going to use it up. Software: very good bundle, with Docs to Go and a good calculator. MP3 player: I bought a 128 Mb Kingston SD card, and I find very handy to always have about 5 CDs on my Palm, at 64 Kbps encoding. Sound is plenty loud, but could be better musically, and you can hear a clic every 5 seconds or so when you'r listening at a very low volume. The included Real One player kind of sucks. Things improve if you shell out a few bucks (12.95) on Pocket Tunes. Just beware you will not be able to fully use its equalizer because of processor speed, only enough to get some bass and treble boost. If you set the player to turn off the screen after 30 seconds it won't drain much battery, I guess you can get about 7 hours of music per charge. Another caveat: the equalizer does not work on ogg files, and transferring them to the Palm is MUCH more slow than MP3s, somehow the Real Audio application that runs in your PC manages to transfer them fairly quickly, with the option to lower the Kbits to fit more songs. Construction: looks very much like the Vx, same kind of cover (leather flip, which I like) just a tad heavier. The "down" button works fine but does not give you feedback. Goes easy on the eyes. Cradle: some people complain about the lack of it, buy I don't really miss it. One less thing to lug around. Also, I like to keep my synch cable at the office, but the charger at home, in case my baby cries for food during the weekend. I seldom use the charger anyway, since the USB cable does a trickle charge. Grafitti 2: I don't agree with those who bark at it. Finally, the Tungsten E does not have the universal Palm connector, which means you won't be able to connect to some devices, unless you get a Bluetooth card, which I am not sure it works here. Overall, I you are, like me, an old Vx user looking for some improvement, you won't be disappointed. Or so I hope.
Rating: Summary: Love it! Review: A few years ago, I was the proud owner of an incredible Palm IIIxe. Now, I have just recently bought the new, super slick Tungsten E, and I couldn't be more satisfied with the transition. I use it in school to take notes during class and to write assignments, as well as a Game Boy to pass the time when I'm bored. There is a lot to love about this machine, including: -32 Megs of memory, meaning you can store quite a few programs (Palm apps average at about 35k, or at least what I download!) -SD slot for expansion cards and MP3 capability (I confess, I have yet to use this feature!) -Beautiful color screen at a high resolution (as PDAs go) of 320x320. Photos look great! -The new Graffiti 2 system is far more intuitive than Classic Graffiti (took me about five minutes to master. I can jot down notes reletively quickly.) -Rechargeable battery. Keep in mind that you have to charge it. I use my Palm quite a bit during the day, so my batteries are usually pretty low after a while. And, if you don't charge it, it will loose it's charge gradually (in theory, it should take about two weeks for that to happen, though I've never tested it out.) -This Palm can run anything currently written for the Palm without any speed bumps, and is compatible with all of yesteryear's software. -The improvements to the built in apps are terrific, as is the included software bundle. Still, I have a few small gripes, but they're really pretty trivial. -No Universal Connector. Still, there are a lot of SDIO expansion cards and many more on the way, so that's not a big issue. -It's included flip cover is flimsy and annoying. Trust me on that one. Spend the extra 20 dollars on any other cover for it. -The included clear plastic screen protector really sucks. It does it's job, but you need brain surgeon hands to put it on correctly. As I have it, the screen looks a little dirty, even though it's in mint condition. Overall, I'd reccommend this handheld to anyone who wants one and doesn't need all the bells and whistles of a more expensive model. The Tungsten T3 is a lot better, but it's also twice as expensive and has several features most people don't need like voice recording and Bluetooth.
Rating: Summary: Can be used only in North America. Review: A nice PDA, but the adaptor is 110 volts only so you can recharge it only in North America. It doesn't take batteries so you must recharge. There is no international adaptor kit available, so keep it at home! An international adaptor kit is listed under the Tungsten E accessories. It's excellent, but it works only with the previous Tungsten models. Why couldn't Palm have kept the same system for the E? How about some continuity?
Rating: Summary: Great Product Review: This little guy is a beast. I have already impressed my whole family with it, no one could believe how amazing the little speaker sounded, or how sharp and clear the pictures looked. I am a newcomer to the PDA market, but from what I see, this looks like a winner. One problem I encountered was the flip cover. If you buy this unit, take the flip cover, and throw it right in the trash, burn it, use it for a coaster etc. Whatever you do, do not attach it to the palm. The stitching in the cover scratched my brand new toy right away :( I recommend buying the hard case manufactured by palm for a palm, it's not some third party junk. The hard case is a little high in price, but trust me, it's worth it, it's a nifty little addition to the palm and it looks quite flashy when you pull it out of your pocket... not to mention the fact that it doesn't add much extra bulk to the unit. Overall I am totally impressed with the Tungsten E. If you need a nice solid PDA without a lot of useless junk (camera, bluetooth etc.) go for it.
Rating: Summary: Excellant application in the home as well as work. Review: I work in a postal processing and distribution facility where my duties include maintaining the equipment that cancels and sorts mail. The Tungsten e with its excel program allows me to quickly access part lists to easily locate spares within our stock room. This PDA replaced a bulky flip chart and other "cheat sheets" that were hard to update and impossible to share. More mechanics are switching to PDAs and the Tungsten e is turning some heads due to its capabilities and price. I only experienced one slight snag when I was trying to digitalize the screen. When touching the first target with the stylus the PDA would try to hotsync. After a few trial and error near hits to the target, it finally connected and gave the 2nd and 3rd target. No more problems after that. This thing is built tough. I hate to admit it but I have bent over far enough on several occasions for it to fall out of my pocket with no harm done. I would suggest getting a hard case as the stitches on the flip cover that comes with the e scratches the surface just above the screen. By the way, the hard cover does not deserve the bad reviews its been getting.
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