Features

A long-term user looks at the Palm Tungsten - and the case..

After his initial experience of the Palm Tungsten-T our reviewer was so impressed that when his trusty Palm V started to play up, he decided to buy a T. The honeymoon is over, how are they getting on? "Well, we're still together ... but there have been some domestic scraps. And then, there's the case ... "

It was love at first sight. Do I still think it's all lovely? Let's go through the features.

Screen? - Still brilliant. Very easy on the eye, digitiser still working fine, as I'd expect. (The digitiser is what eventually failed on my Palm V but that was after a number of years of heavy use.)

Speed? - Excellent.

Storage capacity? - More than an average Palm user will ever use, so far as I can see. This is still, after all, a PDA, despite the tendency in advertising to refer to it as "pocket computer". I have loaded all my original Palm data (I never do get around to purging old appointments nor clearing the dead wood from my address book) loaded all the applications that came with the Palm, including Documents to Go; and, with that available, I've even started using an Excel spreadsheet to carry some information around which couldn't conveniently be held in the address book or memopad. Of the 16Mb in the Tungsten, I still have 12Mb free. So given the internal storage and the option of an SD card, I can't see even the heaviest user running out of storage space any time soon.

Battery life? - Good enough, given it gets back to its cradle most evenings, and can charge from empty in only a short visit to the cradle. The only time I've run low is when playing games - and knowing that that stresses the battery I only do it on the way home. The only time I've run out completely was down to the case - of which more later.

Interoperability? - Excellent. Bluetooth just works. No trouble at all getting the PDA and phone (Nokia 6310i) linked up. When I put a Bluetooth USB adapter in my laptop the PDA and laptop got on famously. I haven't tried HotSyncing over Bluetooth yet, as the laptop is not where my PalmDesktop resides, but others have said this works fine, if slower than USB. Getting GPRS working properly took a few attempts.

The good news is once you get past the regular helpdesk people at Orange and talk to the data helpdesk team, you speak to someone with a clue. The bad news is, though they all have a clue, not all the clues are right! But on the third attempt I spoke to someone whose clue was correct, and the PDA now browses the web (within the constraints of the built- in browser and the small screen) and connects to Yahoo Messenger or IRC happily, via the phone. The only snag here is remembering that the Palm is NOT a multi-tasking device, you can't leave an IRC window open whilst you check your address book or make an entry in your diary - when you return to IRC you have to reconnect and start over.

So is everything good then?

Well, that would be a miracle. So, no; there are some things you only find out when you live with the device for a while.

After a very short while I got fed up with the little pop-off plastic guard that comes with the Tungsten-T. It's easy enough to put on and take off but then you have a lump of plastic in your hand. Needs to be put down and subsequently not forgotten, or put in a pocket… sounds trivial but it's a pain. Palm should look at the flip-front on the - very nicely done indeed - Handspring Treo.

So I repaired to the web to look for a suitable case. And there are any number of them out there. I decided that the delights of alligator skin were not for me. My Palm V had always lived in a Palm own-brand leather wallet which also had room in it for a credit card and a few business cards, so after looking at all the confusing options from various third party suppliers, and after looking at the Palm Aluminium Hard Case of a friend of mine, which I felt to be well built but which made the Tungsten too heavy and fat a "package" for my poor pocket linings, I opted for the Palm Slim Leather Case near in design to the one my Palm V had happily lived in for so long. It features slots for the credit card and business cards I like to carry with my PDA.

The leather case has a plastic clip which firmly grasps the waist of the Tungsten fitting in to the same slots the pop-off plastic cover uses. It's a little fiddly to slide the T open whilst it's in the case, I find I have to turn it sideways and pull with both hands. You can't put the T on the cradle with the case on, but the plastic waist clip makes it easy to pop the case off.

The problem? Despite putting two little loops of leather at the bottom of the cover, apparently in an attempt to avoid exactly this problem, the case presses one or more of the buttons. However carefully you put it in your pocket, arranging handkerchief, coins, whatever else may be in there (if anything), however careful you are when you sit down or move, sooner or later, one of the buttons will end up pressed. That turns the PDA on, of course, and makes a little "bip" noise.

And it doesn't end there. No, chances are if the button's been pressed once, it'll be either held down or else pressed again a few seconds later, emitting more "bips" and… eventually running the battery flat before you've even arrived at your meeting, so when you whip your PDA out to take a note or beam someone your card, it's dead as a dodo.

I've tried two or three Palm applications which offer to disable the buttons when the unit is off, so that you have to press the main "on/off" button to turn it on.

I tried PowerOn.

Once loaded and enabled, this is supposed to require a double-click of a front-panel button to turn the unit on. However, I found pressing any two buttons in quick succession was enough to turn it on, despite the instructions saying the same button would have to be double-pressed.

I tried disabling all except the power button from doing anything when the unit is off. This didn't seem to make any difference except now the power button won't turn it on reliably. All very odd. And I then found that in the process of trying to find a combination of clicks which will turn it on I had used up the ten tries the demo mode allows and the disabled itself. I'm not at all averse to software authors protecting their shareware by limiting the un-registered use in some way - but having software which completely disables itself before you've even managed to make it work (that's presuming it can be made to work reliably) is not going to encourage registration. In this case, I promptly deleted it from the T.

Next I tried Disabilita - this is based on the same idea but seems better put together, at least insofar as it does actually seem to do what it says on the tin. It's not perfect, I find that it's not sufficient to install it and enable it, you actually have to select the app from the main menu and enable it each time you intend to turn the T off and have the protection operative. If this isn't the intended mode of operation it's hard to say, my Italian isn't good enough (non existent you mean? - Ed) (yes - well I can order a coffee!) to pursue the matter with the author.

However, even if this software solves the problem, it's still an ugly work-around to a rather poor design problem, all the more irritating that having spent some £300 on the PDA, I've then had to spend a further £20 (with the same company) to obtain a case for it, and it's further very irritating that this problem exists with Palm's own case - had it been a third party case, an oversight like this may have been more understandable, if no less tiresome.

And there are third-party cases. I suppose I shall have to try a few. They're not cheap however. So here's a note to the manufacturers - if you think your case solves my problem, send me one to try. If it works, I'll even pay for it as well as sing its praises in this tome.