Can't live without your Palm? Or - alternatives for repair/repurchase

S

Silent Requiem

New member
As I reported previously, ma good ole' TT3 stopped synching and I sent it to Palm for repair. I knew I had to shell out $170 and that I would have to wait a week. Nevertheless I wanted to confirm that the problem was indeed hardware related (as deemed inevitable based on all the tests I?d conducted). During the week that I was deprived of the little machine's services my professional life was seriously impaired. After I got it back and restored it from my SD card I vowed that I wouldn't have this trauma again.

Since I don't need Wi Fi (bought recently a sub notebook with all the possible wireless connections) the TT3 is a great PDA for me (except for the stupid recording button on the side.)
I checked eBay and found out that there are available there all the time TT3s at very good prices. I ended up buying a brand new store return for $150. This includes everything, like a new package.
Got it today, restored it from my SD card and got a twin TT3 just like my other one. Now I'm fully backed up and ready for a rainy day.

Paul - you asked where you can get accessories for your TT3. eBay has plenty! You name it - it's there.

You may ask why not getting new machines. The answer is the hassle involved in moving all my apps and data from one machine to another. Questions of compatibility etc. As posted elsewhere, I upgraded recently to the newest Doc2Go and everything works like a charm. I'm not concerned about battery, because, to the best of my knowledge it's Ni Metal Hydride , not Lithium - polymer and it is supposed to have a long cycle life. So far so good. Even if the batt dies on me I?m sure I can get a new one.

Nevertheless, if there?s another machine out there, which can beat the TT3 to pieces (the only feature I may be interested in is extremely bright screen, suitable for outdoors) I have an open mind to explore other models.

Oh, BTW. I met a Sony rep at Circuit City by the notebook dept and I asked him why Sony abandoned the PDA market after it had been a leader in the field. Let?s not forget, ladies and gentlemen, that all recent improvements in Palm came after Sony showed them the way (this excludes the phone feature, of course.) His answer was ? there?s not enough money in the PDA business. Well, go figure.
 
TealLaunch will enable remapping that to something else (I use for "TealCalc" when pressed, vox record if "press and hold"). There is also a YAHM hack that will remap it to "page down."

That is NOT a good button placement, as you tend to press it lifting the T3 out of a "vertical leather case," as I have. Besides, my phone has a better vox recorder, and plays back in private in my ear, the way it should be.

Good going EZ - I'd take another T3 any day. Although the TX does have the permanent landscape, I'm not at all crazy about the "NVFS" or whatever its memory is, and I also don't feel like going through the arduous process of seeing which apps "fit" and hotsynching them on one @ a time. I also don't want to be without JackFlash/Sprat, and that isn't a TX option. Yikes!

Cheers, double T3'er.
 
I know how you must have felt. My Palm T|X has my life in it. Everything from the last family vacation, to spreadsheets and word-files, at times its not even funny.
 
I agree, but my Palm of choice is the T|C and will remain so until I can't keep buying them when the prior one dies. I tried a T|X for a few months and sold my first T|C. What a mistake! NFVS and (Franken)Garnet are a HORRIBLE combination. I had so many problems with app compatibility, and you'd think that it wouldn't be such a problem with the T|E2, T|5, and LifeDrive leading the way with NVFS and FrankenGarnet many months prior to the T|X's release, but it was. Of course, Palm and a lot of Palm zealots blame it on the 3rd-party software companies, but why would a hardware company purposely release a new Palm that was so blatantly incompatible with so much 3rd-party software? Most software companies released compatible versions of their software for the T|E2, T|5, and LifeDrive, but these same version wouldn't work on the T|X? Why not? And all this for what? Non-volatile memory? That all sounds good, but the T|X had so many spontaneous hard resets (and soft reset loops that forced a hard reset) that you still needed backup software which defeats the purpose of the much-touted NVFS. The other really scary part of the T|X was getting data completely off it when troubleshooting these resets and especially when finally reselling it on eBay (I wanted all my info off). Even after a hard reset, when I would setup my mail accounts again, it would tell me I was replacing a mail account with the same name and confirm that I wanted to do that! I was beginning to think that stupid NVFS had flashed my personal data/configuration on the ROM! When I sold it on eBay, I had to do a warm reset and go in with FileZ to manually change the attributes and remove every file that I could in order to ensure my data/config was off that T|X. It took me over an hour. No, the zero-out reset for the Treos doesn't work with T|X.

Anyway, I ran back to a T|C, sold the T|X on eBay, and haven't looked back. Stable, reliable, has wi-fi, still the fastest Palm, and isn't missing what has become basic PDA features like a microphone, vibrating alarms, charge/alarm light, cradle, STANDARD connector that doesn't require purchasing all new accessories, etc. My T|X experience definitely cured my upgrade itch, especially when it turned out to not be much of an upgrade. I'm still tempted by the LifeDrive, but my T|X experience is still way too fresh on my mind.

Palm just doesn't make 'em like they used to.
 
I did not like accidently activating the voice recording function on my T3, so I remapped the voice recording button to Applications. This is done inside of Prefs --> Buttons.

Once I remapped the button, I gained an easy way to exit applications. I just press the button on the side and get an instantaneous response. I don't have to wait 2 or 3 seconds while pressing the select button on the navigator.

I love my T3 and feel like I would be lost without it. There are no other Palm OS devices on the market that I care for. I don't want to downgrade to a 300MHz CPU, eliminate microphone and vibration alerts. If I wanted to keep a microphone and vibration alerts, I would be forced to get a smartphone. However, none of the Palm OS smartphones have large screens or Wi-Fi. I like the Palm operating system, but feel the hardware is lagging behind the Windows Mobile alternatives. I am trying to make my 3 year old T3 work until the new Access models come out next year. I have my fingers crossed.
 
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