Palm TX PDA - any users?
 

Looking for feedback from folks that are using this PDA... whats been your experience?

Thanks,
Alex

I might be able to tell you in 41...no 40 minutes...
Bidding on E-bay

I'm actually buying it solely as a WiFi remote for my iTunes setup....

OK, thanks.

Not the best, sorry to say.
Mine crashes often when I run very large programs, something to do with the small cache and the use of permanent memory, or so I've read.
Also my touch screen is now off, touch it and it "touches" a bit high or low at the screen top and bottom - just enough to select the wrong thing.

I presume that the first problem affects everyone who uses very large programs and that for the second - I'm just one of the unlucky few.

I have "adapted" to both of these and still use mine daily, but I miss my T3 that was stolen.

I'd advise that you do some more research, Palm forums, etc. before you decide to buy.

It may be that you'd be happier with a E2 or even (god forgive me) a windows PDA - Dell or HP

I have a Palm E2 and have a friend with a TX.

E2
+ Pros
-pretty good battery life
-seamless integration with outlook (I use the calendar function a lot)
-works pretty well for MP3's-if you want to use it like an ipod, buy pocket tunes

-Cons
-small onboard storage (have to use SD card)
-first one I bought had a broken bluetooth adapter (returned it for a replacement)
-had a problem with the speaker for a while (fixed by tapping on the case-it hasn't been a problem since)
-to access internet, have to use a card that fits in the SD slot, it sticks out (can't use hard case) and is a HUGE battery hog (I get about 25-45 min of wifi on a full battery charge depending on what I'm running)
-after a couple of years of use (2) the screen now whines (imaging high pitched noise) due to the touch screen. I normally doesn't bug me (~90% of time that palm is on, I use it to play music through headphones)


TX (not mine, but have used a friend's)
Pros
-integrated wireless
-same outlook integration
-decent battery life (with wifi OFF)
-faster (opening apps doesn't take as long as E2)
-more built in storage space than E2

Cons
-Wifi drains battery quickly (but not as fast as the E2)

Thanks for the feedback... ^

Can you give an example of large programs you run that make your TX crash?

When it does crash... do you have to reset the unit or how do you boot it up again? Do you experience data loss?

Mapolopus and Garmin GPS when showing too much detail on the screen,
Large audio books when FFwd or rewinding,
Whole newspapers on Repligo,
Hot Syncing large files,
and a few other things.

But they all seem to be caused when dealing with extra large files.
All of my applications still work for me, I've just learned to be gentle when using large files. I keep the GPS zoomed into "side street" level. I pause my audio book before rewinding, I read my newspaper front to back (instead of jumping between favorite sections, I transfer most large files directly to my SD card rather than Hot syncing them.

So my TX is still quite usable, just not the experience I expected from the latest and greatest Palm.

As for losing data, the crashes are really "soft resets" so the only stuff lost is something you just did. For example my audio bookmark might go back to the time before. Or my saved GPS destination might be lost. But I've never lost any real data like whole files or emails.

Maybe I'm a power user and expecting too much, I've got thousands of appointments in my calendar, I like to read Barron's (50MB) on my Palm, I put all of Germany, Texas and half of France on the GPS, I keep bunches of business cards scanned as tiffs on it... or maybe I'm not. But anyway my T3 behaved much better.

If you only need phone numbers, emails without giant attachments and some pictures of the kids, you'll probably be fine.

A guy I work with never complains about his, but he doesn't do much with it.

FWIW, another guy I work with has Tom Tom GPS on a HP PDA and he has to reboot his from time to time. So maybe all these PDAs have trouble.

Any way, I would not choose your next PDA by the Specs alone. Check out some PDA forums and see what people are complaining about as well

Thanks Richard, great feedback.

I will check out the Palm Forums.

Also take a look at the Palm TX forums on here: http://forum.brighthand.com/forumdisplay.php?f=12

Thanks JT, Ive been reading up for 2 days now... tons of information... ^

I've had mine from the very beginning (since it was released). I use it for calendar and contacts and sync with Outlook. I use it to play games, keep track of my miles ;), and occasionally the wifi for surfing. I've never used it for email since I have a blackberry as well. For just the basics, everything works well. Games play quite well on it and I, fortunately, have not had significant issues with it crashing. The wifi however is slow and not my first choice to access the internet. All in all I still like it albeit I'm a bit of a Palm PDA fan having had the m500, T1, T3, Lifedrive, etc. The TX has been my favorite so far balancing form factor, performance, useability, etc.

I bought one. I had to take it back as the software that came with it was uninstallable on a Vista machine. I was able to go on their website and download a different version that seemed to do every thing but it took a few iterations to get to the point where I could transfer data between my laptop and the PDA. It was also unstable and would crash often. The first time it crashed, I had no clue what to do. Googling led me to the "reset" solution. I am looking for something else now.