Tungsten T5 - Post Here (Part 2)

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ParkO

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Posted by XeonRebel in thread "Tungsten T5 - Post Here (Part 1)"

im just curious: with this excitment that tt5 has caused, good or bad, i was thinking:

if you take away the bigger screen and more memory factor (that last which i dont know if its going to represent a huge leap in palm pda's), i was thinking that zire 72 seems to actually be better in some aspects against tt5. you all know the specs of zire 72, so no need to repeat them in this thread. i also forgot the processor speed factor (312 vs 416), but it doesnt seems like a BIG improvment (if tt5 were 500+, well, thats something)

what d u think?
thankss

by the way, a question for kimH: i was looking at the specs of that vga Hp PPC. what do u think of dell x30? i liked dell's benchmark results more than hp's (though it clearly says that vga needs or uses more processor power). i dont know if the difference is that big in practice (cause a benchmark can throw a lot of fireworks, but it doesnt necessarily means that this product is better than the other one)

thanks again

xeonrebel
 
Advantages right off as far as I'm concerned:

1. Cradle holds 2 batteries, ready to go
2. Variable power 624/520/416
3. 128 MB OR 64MB Intel "strataflash" (!!)
4. Voice Record!
5. Compact Flash and SD (typical, but GREAT)
6. 6 oz!!
7. ONE YAR WARRANTY Standard, 3 year extended available with next-day business return

Pretty impressive - now if I can solve the "Docs2Go is better" thing; I'd like to see what Excel sheets look like (I'll look for screengrabs, or someone post one here) and how easy "synching them" is.

But man alive, I love my T3. AARRGH!!! Well, at least all isn't lost if OS6 isn't great. Depends how long two T3s take to break and whether I end up having been a "nellie" for worrying about OS6. For all I know 85% of the apps will work and my worries were for nothing.

Still, it's nice to know what's out there. Good find kimh - as usual.
 
im drooling over the x50v!
just f. impressive!.....
i like the fact of 3d capabilities. and i dont mean software enabled capabalities but hardware accelerated 3d, :)

to be honest, i dont know those pocket word, excel, etc...but i can tell you that docs2go its a must.
microsoft should really make better ports of those office programs.

by the way, any idea of how much will x50v cost?

and, hehe, another question kimH: what d u think of 3.7 inches of x50v vs 4.0 inches of hpVGA?

thankss
xeonrebel
 
I have some thoughts about the screen sizes:

1. The smaller screen does not require as much power and thus may extend the battery a little bit.

2. The larger screen is good for reading and might reduce the amount of required scrolling.

3. There is not much difference between 3.7" and 4". However, I have noticed that some devices with larger screens are easier to view outdoors, depending on how good the backlight is. Reflective and transflective screens are good.
 
I have a couple of XL and Word documents I simply "dragged" onto the PPC virtual drive from my desktop to the HP 4155 and opened/edited/viewed without any problems. Not sure where the concern comes from regarding Office compatibility issues :confused: I guess possibly before I was "assimilated" by PPC they had issues with M$ Office from desktop to PPC ;)

As far as the hpVGA I've heard very mixed feedback regarding the touch panel navigator button. It's the same tech found on most laptops and can be frustrating if you are not used to it. From what I hear is that gaming is a nightmare on it. Since these devices have 3D acceleration I'm excited about gaming potential and would prefer "solid" fourway buttons. Don't think the size 3.7 inches VS 4.0 inches would be that visualy noticeable as mentioned above. I would have jumped on the hpVGA but want to avoid the touchpad controller like the plague. :)

As soon as the X50 is shipping I'm on it. Rumors on prices I've heard is $349 for the the basic, $449 for the "middle" ware and $549 for the high end. Only the high end model will have VGA support with all the goodies.....and $549 is not bad for everything and the kitchen sink.

If you guys want I can post some feedback on the X50 once I get one.
KimH
 
The first palm I saw was the III, and I thought that was a nice product. I then started looking at palms, and pocket pc's. Years later a friend showed the m130. I was hooked, and bought it right away. Well palm lied a little on that one. Then came the V series. I guess the point I am trying to make, is no one had programs that were os5. Now os5 high rise and so on. Well when, and if os6/cobalt comes out, it will be the same. Very few programs, then they will be all over the place. As far as the T5, it is now listed in the support section on palmone. May be the T5 came out too soon. Palmone is always asking for comments/serveys. Do they read them? I know they look at the fourms. The T5 is a step in the right direction, but we all would liked to have seen a better top end product. May be with treo 700 or the cobalt. Kind of makes you want to wait. Thanks for the air time, Russ the guitar picker.
 
These are supposed to ship until around mid-November. This will give me time to decide and since it appears that with PPC 2003 SE software that you can view native word and excel.

Perhaps P1 will surprise us and announce some whiz bang device that will top the T5.....but since they haven't shipped the T5 yet, as of yesterday at least, I think P1 should be listening to these forums and recall the debacle that they created when the announced the M500 series and it fell on its face.

PalmOne: don't release a device until you have sufficient quantities to ship. Don't pre-order a device until you have sufficient quantities to ship.

If HTC can make a Dell X50v why can't you follow suit and ask them to build you a similar device. For the same price as a T5 you can get an X50 that has both an SD slot and CF slot (sounds like a 160mb internal drive) and a replaceable battery and BT plus WiFi. For another $100 you can get all of this plus a true VGA screen....makes me wonder.

And PalmOne, you should wonder why I cancelled my order for the T5.

You have until mid-November to wow! me. Othewise, I may have to become a PPC convert.
 
Mooseman - I hear your words. When P1 shipped the WiFi card with no memory on it - that did it for me. I had a 512MB SD card on my T3 and the thought of having to remove it every time I required WiFi (which is often) was simply not a workable solution. And for $150?!

Similiar alternate WiFi cards offer 128 or 256MB of RAM on the same card so I failed to see how P1 was not able to follow suit or at least offer support. I suspect it has something to do with P1's marketing practice in that they are forcing folks to buy their WiFi card instead of allowing us to pick between multiple choices. I'm not having any of that...

Then I look over at the PPC camp...and what do I get for $100 to $150 more? Don't get me wrong - I think Palm OS is still the most rock solid stable PDA OS on the market but the company P1 has become to comfortable with launching "minor revisions" instead of "innovations and raising the bar". This was P1's vision - IMHO.


-KimH
 
MooseMan,

The reason P1 announced early is because if they hadn't, most people's christmas shopping would be over. They wanted it to be an option.

Everyone (if they haven't already) should check out this: http://palminfocenter.com/view_story.asp?ID=7210

It's from someone who's actually played with the device, and he makes it sound pretty good. It's not without its shortcomings, but so is every other planet under the sun. The Dell's don't exatly have 256MB of Flash RAM built right in, now do they?
 
We always go back to the idea that when you decide to add a new, top of the line pda, you add to it and not take away. The 256 flash memory is great, well 160 I should say, but as memory prices drop, and they are dropping, they should have just drop a 512. then it would have made a huge difference. I outgrew my 256. Not really faster proccessor and when I looked at the list of pros and cons, the bottom line was the flash memory and the software (which you can go around it by getting your own programs in some cases). If you own a t3 and have peripherals, you might need to sell them with your T3 (the universal connector wasnt so universal). In other words there was no upgrade to the T3. They just changed the Palm (again). That leaves a lot of people scratching their heads that were hopping for a T3 upgrade and not a totaly new Palm that overall did not improved as the T3 did when it came out. Great for present non T3 users ....
I think the T5 is a nice palm, but to call it top of the line..... well not sure. What about the Z72 users, how do they feel after spending $300 on their machine, would they move to the T5...No likely, unless they break it.

Well those are my thoughts on this matter. T5 is a nice PDA, but its anew direction from Palm, for better or for worst. They have to make sure they are different from PPC (it has been their strong point) or they will loose the race. Maybe they were in a hurry to release, but will people buy into it is the question. The T3 gave users many new things when it came out, can the T5 repeat that!

mas
 
Matthew:

I might need to be more specific: when I ordered the T5 on Sunday night October 3rd - there was no mention on the web site that the unit would not ship immediately. It wasn't listed as a preorder and my original email confirmation from PalmOne did not stipulate that it wouldn't ship immediately.

They did the same thing with the M505 unit to me, which was the first time that I actually "ordered" a Palm unit because up until that time I had been a public beta tester and got advanced notice of units - even though I was under non-disclosure agreements.

I can understand their reasoning for announcing the device to get it into the Christmas "rush" but to not be specific on their web site and then when I called an checked with C.S. they couldn't tell me any date that it would ship....just poor service.

I'm certain that Dell is getting onto the Christmas bandwagon with their X50 series as well but their web site stipulates Mid-November.

Compare a T5 at $399 to a Dell X50V at $499 and what have you got.....Wifi and BT plus two types of Storage and a better screen perhaps on the Dell. I'll opt for the two types of removal storage of SD and CF over the 160 internal flash and mountable drive just about any day. If P1 were to announce a T6 with a CF slot/SD slot and both Wifi and BT then it would be a no brainer.....I'd stick with the Palm device no more questions asked.

Until the true SVGA PPC devices came out....there was never a question. But now you've got similar resolution on similar sized platforms - replaceable batteries on one and not the other - it's become more complex to decide.

I'm still waiting for Palm to drop the other hat and "wow" me - but they'd better do it soon. I would still opt for a Treo with 320 X 480 sans Wifi but with BT over the Dell's but I must admit that unless that is going to happen on the so called Release Tuesday - I may go with a Dell unit and leap into an area that I swore I'd never go to - Pocket PC Land.

I think mas said it best:


But I think that a Dell X50v is pretty much top of the line and it's made by HTC which is supposedly the cream of Quality which is also supposedly the same manufacturer of the T5?

The choices and the differences between Palm and Microsoft used to be a no brainer......that gap has narrowed and may be closed and perhaps headed in the other direction if P1 doesn't wow me on Tuesday.
 
As a side note, the Treo 650 has gone to HTC and manufacturing has begun. It should be available from Verizon (or was it Sprint?) next month. (Don't hold me to that though.)

As for a T6, everyone's just dreaming. Maybe next Spring. Thing is, I have an unreliable m505. The screen is terrible (although great in sunlight, and I like the fact that you can turn the backlight off.) But for me, the T5 is a HUGE improvement. I could argue that since it's got audio, it should have a built in radio antenna, but that would drive up the cost of the device. Everyone knows that the WiFi card P1 sells is like $120 or something. Where do you think that extra $100 in between the Dell and the T5 are? In that WiFi module to be sure.

Another thing about PPCs is, I really don't want to have to deal with MS's "Blue Screen of Death" on more than my PC. I've seen Pocket PCs just shrivel up and die too many times for me to want one. Maybe it's just that when I touch one it dies, who knows?

I don't remember who said it here (it might have been in another thread.) But anyway, someone said they wouldn't buy a P1 device until they came with Hard Drives instead of RAM. Obviously they have no clue what they're talking about. Hard drives weight a TON compared to Flash. So basically if you were to add a HD, you'd have a device as thick as a laptop, that runs for an hour, and that weighs a pound. Nobody I know wants to put a brick in their pocket. (Just to set that straight :D)

For all you people getting the "better" (yeah right) deal by switching to PPC...you go right ahead. If you go look at PocketPC City boards, you'll see that there's complaints over there as well. People not happy with the fact that they bought an X30 Axim and now there's an X50 3 mos later. Now you tell me what kind of marketing scheme that is?? Not one I see as all that great.

Then we come back to the processor. The T5 has the same processor as the X50 except that it's the mid-range processor. mspadaro said that the T5's processor isn't much of an improvement. Let me assure you, this is NOT the case. The T5 uses less power, puts out more performance (not speed, but performance THERE IS A DIFFERENCE), and has a much better support for music and video. I think I'd rather have that extra than the T3. I use a lot of memory (dictionaries, music, bibles, ebooks, etc) and the extra Internal RAM will be quite nice. I have 3 SD cards I can swap between my T5 and Camera which will be nice for compatability's sake.

The T5 is not everything, but it's enough. When I need WiFi, I'll go buy the card on eBay, or wait for one that has memory included. I figure P1 will get that straight before too long. :D

"A Palm Loyal for Life"
 
I think it might have been me about the hard drive mhamann.
I mention it a while back in another thread about what would be cool for the T5 to have.
But the problem with the drive is not the weight of the drive. The 4 gb once are small and one that is coming out is the size of a quarter. the problem is the drainage on the battery.
I am a PALM USER, the T3 is my third one. So I have nothing against the T5.
In reference to the benchmark on the processor, well I can only go with what I have read. but as an upgrade from a T3 I dont think its enough when you take into consideration that the T3 came out almost 2 years ago.
The extra $100 for wifi is not true..... Palm make U pay $129. if you check out other places for sd cards with memory are much cheaper (the code only changes). Example the wifi for the z71
you can get it for $109 with 256mg. So you see, the hardware is the same, its the codes that change and what palm is charging you. BTW I got the WiFi card for the T3.
Now back to PPC and windows... yeah I used the dreaded word, but its a standard. When it comes to palm well I think it might be changing. The way the "universal connector no longer universal" deal.
When you put something new out there you have to take into consideration the differrences between old and new, and how much you are charging. Lets not forget moving the stuff you had to the new one, both hardware and sofware. I cant see people that have the T3 just dropping everything for soemthing that is not a leap forward on an assumption that they are getting something better.
The difference in price is minimal, which is surprising, but for what you get with the T5 it seems correct.

You say you have a M505, well for you it would be an improvement and you must go with the latest palm out there, but to say that the T5 is way out there better than the T3, well time will tell. The only down side of the T3.... Battery life. I am the first to admit it, because I love the slider. It fits better in teh hand.

mas
 
The T5 has a 416mhz XScale CPU and the Dell X50v has a 624mhz XScale CPU which would explain partially why the Dell consumes more power. Not to mention the built in Wifi, blue tooth and dual SD and CF slots. Let's not forget the hires VGA display :)

Can you explain to us what you mean by ", puts out more performance (not speed, but performance THERE IS A DIFFERENCE)"? Did you know the X50v has a 3D accelerator (Intel 2700G) with dedicated 16MB of video memory & supports dual display? As far as video and sound performance: Windows Media 10, Shoutcast live internet audio streaming, XBMC etc.....on the PPC... The 3D games I've seen running on the X50 on the various review sites are jaw-dropping....to say the least.

Windows PPC PDA's do not have "blue screen of death" as far as I've ever seen...the screen simply turns white as it does with Palm.

I think what has upset folks is that a $399 T5 + $150 for a WiFi card still puts you at least one year behind the technology curve compared to what the competiton has available.
-KimH
 
KimH,

I wasn't comparing the processor in the T5 to the x50v (though maybe it sounded like it. If it did, my bad). I was comparing it to the T3. The x50v will obviously have a better overall performance. However, with the PPC OS, I'm guessing they'd run more or less around the same relative "speed." Basically meaning that you wouldn't notice that one is faster than the other because the PPC OS is bigger and more resource intensive than PalmOS. The Dell's 3D card I'm sure gives it more oomph. Although, I've seen some nicely built 3D games for Palm as well. Some of them eyepopping like you said.

The difference between speed and performance...yes there is a difference, and yes it's hard to explain, but I'll try...

Speed is how many clock cycles the processor goes through in a given amount of time. The T5's CPU will go through 16 more cycles than the T3's in..let's say a second. That sounds like a lousy speed improvement, I know, but that's where performance comes in.

Performance is how effeciently the CPU will run. The PXA270 was tuned so it can put more data through per clock cycle. So it runs through 16 cycles more than the T3, BUT it also puts more data through per cycle. (You'd have to look closely at the specs to find out how much that is. I'm not going to do it for you.) But anyway, you would then multiply the increase in data rate * 16 to get your improvement.

The processor was also built to use less circuits so that you save on power, and then was built with "MMX-like" technology. (For those of you who paid attention to your Pentium I :D)


A(nother) side note I wanted to mention, somewhat unrelated, but yet still related to the quality control issue.
Everyone remembers the SUDS problem that 505s and some 515s had. Does anyone know who manufactured those handhelds? I had an IBM Workpad C505. It was made by Palm and had the Palm logo on back, etc. IBM had just branded it's logo on to the front and put Workpad. I never ever experienced the SUDS issue...never. I had a hypothesis on that. The Workpads had a black....compound that sat over the aluminum casing. It still felt totally like metal, but wasn't quite. The m505s had the aluminum exposed pretty much. Could the SUDS issue have been caused by the fact that static electricity flowed through the aluminum, but not through the black on IBMs product? Just a comment.
 
I think the SUDS issue was caused by a lack of a ferrite in line to protect the serial port that is now common on all USB devices because of the feedback from the first rechargeable batteries.

It might of had something to do on the WorkPad's not "grounding" through the back though as you mentioned.
 
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