Should I buy a TX?

F

facep1ant

New member
I'm thinking of buying a TX, but I wanted to get some feedback from real users:

1) How does it's WiFi compare to say a portable computer? As a New Yorker, I often use hotspots to check my email around town on my iBook. Would the TX work just as well in terms of range and connecting? Does it's browser allow you to surf any site or just ones that are optimized for PDA's?*

2) How easy is it to rip DVD's to it? I'd love to be able to take a couple of TV shows along with me for downtime.

3) What cool games are available? My last Palm device was a Vx. Seeing as how I can now play Doom on my phone, I figure there must be some pretty cool stuff available for a TX.

* regarding #1: I've never surfed the web on anything less than a laptop so I'm really not up to date on PDA/phone browsers.

Thanks. :)
 
If you live in NY go to best buy and try it. It's usually online in the store. I took mine back. It was pretty kludgy. It uses the wap browser. While it is fast enough, it's not the easiest thing to navigate with especially entering text. Could have been my rusty grafitti.
Some may find these units hardy but I find them fragile. You really should try it yourself however. You can always take it back.

Paul Krupa
 
Yeah, great advice. I tried to check it out at a Staples but the unit was totally busted. I wasn't finding them out on display anywhere else but I haven't tried Best Buy yet. Thanks.
 
I'm a stickler (anal retentive synonym). Wap is not a browser that is used on the TX. Blazer is the browser. WAP is the security protocol.

That said, Blazer still is pretty clunky but if someone really wants to surf the net on a PDA as compared to a laptop - then any PDA surfing is going to be clunky.

Range will also not be as good as a laptop (even a Mac's) but if you are near a hot spot that's indoors and your indoors it should work. Typical laptop range is about 150 feet with a full battery. You'll get around 1/3rd of that if your lucky but in the winter time in New York.....probably work.

DVD ripping - it's not too tough but you'll need a couple of large SD cards and they need to be fast if your going to watch 3hours and 45 minutes of Lord of the Rings.

The TX is a good device but it's a new device and there will be bumps until all of the developers have updated their software for it.
 
Alright, I just got back from Best Buy and nearly pulled the trigger there. The display is awesome. The question now is, can I wait a month to try and get my girlfriend to buy me one for Xmass?

Regarding NYC hotspots, that will probably work for me. I think I'd mainly be using it for email and maybe checking movie times, weather, etc. No heavy duty, long-term surfing.

And with the ripping, I wasn't thinking of full movies anyway. Maybe just a couple episodes of Aquateen Hunger Force to keep on hand for moments of boredom.
 
Brad, I think that it would work great for you, I have a wireless router set up in my house and I surf the net @ night from my bed, without the laptop on, also as far getting your email, it works great, attachments and all, even if they are docs,xls,xlt, etc...and there are free pdf readers for that too, you can also install a package called verichat and you can do your IMs thru that, and that comes with a few built in bots for movies,currency,directions,ebay,flights,shipment tracking thru fedex,ups,dhl and usps, it also does stocks and a few others, and check this out, I went up to my dads office the other day, and while he was inside, I hung outside to grab a smoke and figured what the heck, lets try this out, so I fired up the wifi, found a couple of wifi spots in the area, one was locked so no go there, but I did find one that wasnt locked, so I checked my email and did a couple of other downloads right in the parking lot in the middle of an office complex...pretty cool!!!!!!! I LOVE my T|X.....Rich
 
I also really like my TX.

Basically, I'll download my e-mail, and do some light web surfing while having a coffee at a local coffee house.

The screen is excellent, it's an excellent size (not quite a Palm Vx, but certainly smaller then my previous Clie NX 80) and basically works great.

Also has very sufficient internal memory!

Battery life is also excellent. Battery life on my Clie was also excellent, but the Clie took soooooooo long to charge. The T|X, if it's battery is low, I plug it in, and within about 30 minutes, it's good to go. The Clie would need a couple of hours to recharge to a decent level.
 
I have a TX and I am really happy with it. I use the WiFi all the time. I have a Wifi router at home. Now when I come home, I park the car and hotsync as I'm walking in. By the time I've kissed the wife and kids, I've backed up my TX, synched MS-Word documents on my PDA and have downloaded my mail -- very nice!

And, like somebody previously said, the browser (Blazer) doesn't compare to browsing on your PC. The screen size is the biggest problem. I have come across some sites where they have some javascript behind a button and Blazer can't handle it, (and yet it seems to handle javascript on other sites - go fig.

I upgraded from a Zire 71. The TX is MUCH nicer. It's got much more memory (13MB vs 128MB). However, one of the first things that became obvious to me quickly is that if I wanted to play some songs and/or videos on my TX, I was going to need to invest in a 1GB SD card (which I did). You mentioned ripping some DVD's to it. That will take some serious space! You might want to consider getting a life drive. For the cost of a TX and a 2 GB card, you come pretty close to the cost of a LifeDrive (which has twice as much memory). For this reason (and only this reason) I wish that I bought the LifeDrive instead of the TX.

One of the nice things about the TX is that it recharges fast. It seems to get back to full charge w/in about 30 minutes.

As far as compatibility, I have not found ANY software for Palm that it won't run. Most of the software that I have is freeware.

Hope this helps!
 
I really like my TX. I've been using it for about six weeks now and took it and the Palm keyboard on a business trip to Europe instead of my laptop. I stayed in a hotel in Paris on a residential street and managed to connect with an open wireless router from some French guy next door! The wireless strength is not as good as a laptop but in a cafe or at home it's fine. I also connected easily with wireless router in the hotel lobby in Paris and the signal was strong.

I find Versamail kind of slow so when I got home, I sprung for Snapper which is a really good program and I recommend it.

I don't recommend doing a lot of web surfing with the TX - but I've only used Blazer on it so I can't really say if other programs would be better.

I've also been watching video on the TX and it's an amazing experience. I use the software which others have recommended - TCMPC (or whatever it's called). I use a Mac and you can transfer DVDs to your hard drive using a range of programs out there, and then convert that file to MP4 (Handbrake is a fantastic program) to whatever size suits you, and then transfer that to a SD card. It takes some time (the processing of the audio video files to MP4) but I was amazed by the quality. I transferred two feature length films to a 512 mb SD card and they were very watchable. Some pixellation during the the playback but no real freezing and great audio. If this is your area of interest, the best is to set up a "library" of MP4 files on your hard drive that are good to go for transfer to the SD card when you prepare for a trip. The transfer to SD card is just like moving any large file from hard drive to removable card.

I almost bought the Life Drive a few months ago but the size, and some user comments about the 4GB drive crashing or some delay in reading data etc, as well as the cost made me think twice. I am really glad I hesitated because the TX is a much better machine for my needs.
 
OK, just for a sense of scale...is this kiss a quick peck on the cheek or is it a "from here to eternity" long kiss? It's important to know so we can guage the actual time to hotsync via wifi...Oh, and if it IS the 'eternity' kiss...be sure to keep your PDA in a waterproof bag cause those waves on the beach are murder on a PDA!

I've enjoyed reading all this user info, the TX has been catching my eye lately and this only helps reinforce the idea that it is a good choice for me.
 
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