Ditched PocketPC and gone back to Palm

T

Tjm

New member
Early last year I decided I wanted WiFi capability on my PDA. I had been in the Palm camp since the very beginning. I bought an iPaq 4150. I had to buy extra software to make it talk to my Mac, but was prepared for this before I bought the iPaq.

The iPaq is a nice PDA, but I didn't like the screen as much as my Tungsten T3. That was the first disappointment. Battery life was another. The clunky Windows interface left me cold and I found I was left behind at meetings because the time it takes to enter appointments etc. is longer on the iPaq.

It was also obvious from day one that Microsoft wanted to give the user a similar experience to the one they have using Windows on a PC. Hence I got crashes and freezes fairly often.

WiFi? I hardly used it. When I did it was because it was there and I used it a bit like a toy.

Foolishly I decided just before Christmas to buy an O2 XDA iis - also known as a GTEK 9090 - with integrated phone. What a monster!! It has a redundant keyboard, weighs a ton and fills out your pocket magnificently. I never heard phone calls, missed appointments and never saw texts. People commented that they 'didn't like' my new phone even where they hadn't seen it because they said I always used to answer immediately and return texts promptly.

Yesterday I decided I'd had enough. I went out and bought a Palm Tungsten T5. What a breath of fresh air!!! I have installed Slap which lets me very quickly enter data, and Jot which lets me easily write anywhere on the screen. If only I could stop the dratted virtual graffiti area popping up all the while I'd be even happier.

I'm now on the lookout for a case which doesn't add too much to the size of the T5, and some screen protectors. My favourites are from NuShield.
 
Hi,
Welcome back dude! I was deciding about a couple of months back whether to bite the bullet and join PPC. But I've found Palm to be more user-friendly and I've lived with it for my life. But Palm really has to improve on its hardware though. Nice hearing your testimony. Cheers.
 
I have to admit to being suprised somewhat. I agree totally that the T3 (and T5) has a much nicer screen to the 4150, but.....
You mention the battery life; I presume, saying that the battery life is better on the Palm than the Pocket PC. I find this strange, as my 4150 has probably double the battery life of my T3. I might get around 3-4 hours of use on the Palm, but on the Pocket PC, I get up to almost 8 hours.
WiFi I don't use much either, but it is great on the occasions when I do use it.
I don't get crashes on the Pocket PC. I find it extremely stable; more so than my Palm. You just have to remember to not open too many things on the pocket PC or rather to close apps completely when you've finished using them. Or you can get a small plugin that will close instead of minimise them, when you press the "x".
I am fairly fast at inputting graffiti on my Palm, but using the transcriber on the PPC is lightyears faster. Admittedly using the block recogniser/keyboard on the PPC isn't great. But I find the transcriber very accurate, and you can just write away using whole long words..

Sorry to stick up for the PPC lot :(

P.S. O2 XDA- not good! It's a bad advertisement for PPC's in general!
 
Slap is a small utility that you associate with one of your palm buttons. When opened you just write in normal language like: 'meeting with Bill tomorrow 10a' then click on the contacts icon and Slap will insert your item into the agenda. It understands things like 'tomorrow', 'Wednesday', 12 Jan and so on. It makes data entry so much quicker. You can also add memos, contacts etc.. Worth looking at.

Today I was out and about on the train for three hours. I used my Palm almost continuously to browse the web, send and receive email etc.. At the end of the day I was amazed to see the battery was still very healthy. On my PPC devices I would have to be very careful about how much I used the device. I even had to buy an extended life battery for the iPaq.
 
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