That "mandatory 3 hour charge" is not some kind of holy ritual that cannot be broken. Palm just wants you to fully charge your battery before you stick the PDA in your pocket and go to work. Some folks don't really understand that devices with recharchable batteries must have the battery charged, even though the device is brand new. They assume the battery will be charged in a new device. That is why Palm says to charge it for three hours. It is for the benefit of those who don't understand. There is not some special process that happens during that first charge that will screw up your battery if not done "by the book". In otherwords, you can turn your TX on and play with it while it is charging. It will take more than 3 hours to chargbe if you do, but not if you only turn it on for a bit to see if it is indeed charging by looking at the lightning bolt in the battery icon on the screen. More evidence of this is the fact that some place in the literature that came with my TX it said to charge it for two hours or more (not 3). They just don't want you to start out with a barely charged battery because then you will be calling their support line right away instead of the next day or so. ;-)
