Tungsten T5 Stability/Usability?

peste

New member
Hey all,

I'm seriously looking into a Tungsten T5, it seems to do everything I'd need a PDA for. Specifically, document viewing, transport and editing, note- and idea-taking and basic PIM on a large screen (the largest and highest-resolution in its price range, barring the T3) with reasonable battery life. The vast amount of memory helps, too, as does the inclusion of Documents to Go 7. I like the idea of being able to type reports on any computer handy and grab what I've got with the T5's Drive Mode, then edit and view on the go.

But I'm worried about the stability and bugs on the thing, and about the issues that come about with its use of Flash Memory. I hear that the T5 is very crash-happy, that many older programs may not work with it, that hard resets (which will be needed in the event of a crash) wipe ALL flash memory, that said memory cannot be backed up on a SD card, that because of said memory, the memory-management issue (the memory being addressed in blocks, and resultant increase in space that most files will require) present in the Treo 650 is also here, and that long-term durability might be an issue (flash memory used is only rated for 100,000 rewrites, which may go - forgive the pun - in a flash when the memory is being used as RAM).

This is all very scary to me, but I think the T5's been out for quite some time now, and that most new devices come with lengthy bug-lists anyhow, and the nastiest of those (like the ones I've mentioned) get fixed soon after release. Have these bugs been fixed, and if they haven't, are they really a concern for the average user?

On a side note, is it possible for the T5 to grab contacts off of a Series 60 mobile phone via Bluetooth? My Nokia 6600 doubles as my phonebook, with all my contacts and numbers on it, and I'm not really looking forward to retyping every single one of them, whether on a PDA or in any included software.
_________________
 
The T5 is still new and is going through the bug update fix stage. It was pretty bad when it first came out but PalmOne seems to have fixed the showstopper bugs with the current set of patches. The T5 does not have a "vast" amount of memory, however. If you read the fine print, you'll see there's only 55 mb available to run programs. The rest of the memory is flash RAM and even that only has 215 mb available, not the 256 mb as stated in the large print. I'm not sure where your got the 100,000 flash RAM read/write limitation from but it doesn't jibe with my understanding of flash RAM. There shouldn't be any practical limit to the amount of times you can read or right from flash RAM. The Flash RAM can backed up to an SD card so I don't think losing what's in flash is really an issue.

The operating system is new and some programs don't work or cause crashes. Most programs have been or are in the process of being updated to work with OS 5.4 so this is becoming less of an issue.

You should be able to transfer the contacts from your phone using Bluetooth in vCard format, which is supported by both Symbian and Palm. I don't know this for sure so you should confirm that this is true since this is an important issue for you.

I would say go ahead and buy the T5 but get it from a store that has a thirty day return policy. That should give you enoough time to evaluate the T5 and decide if it's right for you.
 
I've had my T5 for a bit over a month, and I'm very satisfied with it. All of the programs that I used on my previous T3 carried over accept for two. MobileDB and Backupman.

Companies are still working to put out a 3rd party backup program that works properly. Other than this, I don't have any complaints.

I copied the entire addressbook from my Sony E. T610 into my T5 without any problems at all.

Get the T5....
 
Back
Top