Palm T|X
========

I have got a "new" Palm T|X [1]. It is not for me but for my wife. Thus
I will  little possibility  to play  with so I'm  trying to  summary my
experience with the machine just now.

We already had the T|X at home long time ago. It was my wife's first an
only actual PDA device. It was in times when even the project Gutenberg
[2] offered books in Plucker format so  it was easy to read the e-books
on the device. But our original  T|X was not in perfect technical state
(the touchscreen was unable to calibrate properly, for example) and the
device died after few years. Then we replaced it with the Ainol Novo 7
Paladin tablet (a 7" thingy with a MIPS CPU but with the Android).

The "new" one is only little used and it seems to be fully functional.
My wife already tested it and she found no issues.


So what I like on the T|X:

1. Big color screen: it makes reading in bad light conditions very easy
(it is  important as she  is going to use  the device during  her train
rides, usually in morning and in  evening). The tiny screen of the Sony
UX50 is cute but this one is easier to read on.

2. Compact size: it's  even a bit smaller than the Palm  III so it fits
in most pockets. The 7" tablet doesn't.

3. Speed. Yes, I mean speed. The device is FAST. The PDF Viewer (it's a
port of the infamous XPdf) is much faster here than the same program on
the UX50.

4. Very good stylus. The tiny thing on  the UX50 is not bad but this is
the actual stylus. It's not worse than the stylus of the old Palm III.

5. Audio jack. The normal 3.5mm one.

6. SD  card port. Yes, it's  Palm so use  is limited and by  default it
supports card up to  1 GB only. But it is useful  for PDFs, music files
and such stuff.

7. About 100 MB of on-volatile user-accessible memory for Palm programs
and application (the UX50 has 16MB,  the Palm IIIxe has 8MB). It's more
than I can use, I think.


And what I dislike:

1.  Connectors: no  standard connector  is here.  It use  Palm-specific
something which can be  found on few other Palm models  at best. But we
have at least 2 cradles so we can live with that.

2. The battery. It's build-in and its soldered to the mainboard.
That's simply stupid.

3. The  OS: Actually  I have  little problem with  the Palm  OS. Except
language support.  To be able to  read Czech text  I have had to  buy a
commercial language package which even today  costs as much as the Palm
itself (for  OS 2.0-4.0 there was  a GPL-license one but  there is none
for the Palm OS 5.x).


References:
[1] gopher://gopherpedia.com:70/0/Palm%20TX
[2] gopher://dante.pglaf.org/