Lately, Palm Inc. has been developing PDAs for everyone's needs. If you need a camera on your device, get a
Palm Zire 71. If you need lots of raw power and Bluetooth connectivity, get a Tungsten T3. The Zire 21, Tungsten C and Tungsten W are also good choices for those that need PDAs for various purposes. But finally, they have created a PDA for those that need a nice powerful PDA with lots of necessities and without an extremely large price tag. This, my friends, is the Tungsten E, retailing at $199.99. This model is perfect for those that need a mid-end PDA to do most of the basic and some advanced functions, and is quite a deal in my opinion. It is also the perfect replacement for a
Palm m130, which can be viewed as an older Tungsten E.
This slick, metallic-silver colored PDA easily fits into one's hand and with my measurements seems to be roughly 4.5-by-3-by-0.5 inches. It weighs 4.6 ounces, therefore it is quite light and small. The top of this PDA has a power button, an infrared port, a 3.5 mm headphone jack and an expansion card slot. The bottom of the PDA features a port for the USB and power cables. The sides of the Tungsten E has two grooves, one on each side. One of them, the one of the right, is home to the stylus, while the groove on the left is where the protective cover slips in. The back of this PDA has the Palm logo, an audio speaker, as well as the standard reset button. The front of the PDA features the beautiful screen, Palm and Tungsten E logos, the graffiti area as well as the Calendar, Contacts, Tasks and Notepad buttons. The five-way directional pad is positioned between the Contacts and Tasks buttons.
The screen is a 16-bit TFT active matrix screen, capable of displaying up to 64,000 colors. The resolution is 320x320, so when viewing pictures, everything looks crisp and sharp. The Zire 71 actually has the exact same screen, and it is a beautiful one indeed. The backlight cannot be turned off, which is not a problem for me because you can alter the contrast if necessary. You can now play most high-resolution games because this screen is exactly what you need for high-resolution games. Also, when you are outside, you can still view the screen pretty well because this screen somehow negates the suns glare.
The processor is a Texas Instruments OMAP311 126 MHz, which is actually a very nice and fast processor. It is four times more powerful than the processor found in the Palm m130 and m515, and after you use a PDA with a processor atleast as fast as this one, you will not be able to return to your old Palm because the speed difference is recognized by viewers right away. Everything loads much faster and although you might think a few seconds is nothing, after a while it is a very big deal.
The Tungsten E comes with 32 MB of internal memory, which is sufficient for most PDA users to begin with. 32 MB, believe it or not, can hold about 100 programs and thousands of contacts. To be honest, only 28.3 MB of this memory is available for use, while the other 4 are for system back-up and essential files that cannot be erased. If you are not going to be keeping a lot of pictures, games, movies and music files, then 28.3 MB should be sufficient. However, if you plan to play lots of games, upload movie clips, MP3s and pictures, then purchasing an expansion card is a must. The Tungsten E supports SD and MMC cards, but SD cards are faster and probably better. I recommend picking up a 128 or 256 MB expansion card if you will be listening to music, and if you find a good deal, then it will cost you under $100 probably.
The battery is a lithium-ion rechargeable battery. The battery life is decent – about six hours of non-stop use is what I get from it. If you are listening to music, playing battery draining games or using an infrared keyboard, then you battery will only last for about half the time. To recharge, just hoop up the provided power cable up to a power outlet and the PDA, and the battery will fully recharge in less than twenty minutes. Unfortunately, a cradle was not supplied with this PDA, which might be due to a lack of a universal connector.
The Tungsten E does not have a universal connector, which was located on the bottom of most PDAs, and allowed the PDA to be hooked up to many accessories, such as charging cradles and keyboards. This was very convenient but unfortunately this PDA does not have one. To make up for it, Palm created an infrared keyboard, but this will drain your battery quicker than keyboards did in the past and is quite expensive.
This PDA is capable of playing MP3 files, so you can store your favorite songs on your PDA and listen to them! To do this, purchasing an expansion card is necessary. Each song is around 3 MB, so the larger the expansion card, the more songs you can fit. I would recommend a 256-MB card if you intend to store a lot of music, as that is enough to hold 80 songs. However, I prefer to use my
Sony MiniDisk player to listen to music, and that is why I own only a
Lexar 64MB SD card. The built-in audio speaker is not too great for volume or sound quality, but if you use headphones, then the player is remarkably good to my surprise. By the way, to play music, RealOne Player is available for you to use, and uploaded songs from your computer is a simple process that involves hooking up the PDA to a computer with your provided USB cable and making a few selections on your computer. Everything is explained in the manual and the song transfer is fairly fast.
The Tungsten E runs on Palm OS 5.2.1, which is the newest and most up-to-date Palm Operating System as of now. Almost all popular programs are compatible with Palm OS 5, while most new programs that are coming out can only be used with a OS 5 operating system. One of the major differences between PDAs with Palm OS 5 or higher from lower OS PDAs is that they have Graffiti 2. Graffiti is a way of inputting characters onto a PDA, and with Graffiti 2, most characters are input with two, not one stroke on the stylus. It way a bit disappointing for me to relearn Graffiti, although for people that have never dealt with Graffiti, Graffiti 2 is probably much simpler. Also, you can input Graffiti characters anywhere you want, not just in the Graffiti pad area, however, I still input it only there just in case the system doesn't recognize what I am doing and opens up a program or does something else instead.
Along with the PDA itself and the accessories included, Palm has included a few CD-ROMs with lots and lots of valuable software. As I said, RealOne Mobile Player is for listening to music. Adobe Acrobat Reader for Palm OS gives you the ability to view Adobe files on your PDA, which is especially useful for reading e-books. Palm Reader is the standard program for reading e-books, while with Palm Photos you can view any photos or pictures that you upload from your computer. The PowerOne Calculator and Calculator are the two calculators that you get, and they have many of the most essential functions, but you can get a more complex calculator online. The World Clock is for keeping track of the time, setting an alarm and you can set it to show the time in other cities simultaneously. Kinoma Player and Kinoma Producer are two programs that are used for viewed video files. All types of video formats are supported. Movies are too large to be viewed on a PDA, but an episode of a show can fit (although not recommended). I only use it to store movie trailers, which take up only a couple of MBs. The player itself is pretty good. A few expenses programs, such as Expense are provided, as well as a few decent games by Handmark, e.g. Magic Dogs. The newest version of DataViz Documents To Go (version 6.0) is included, which is the single best program in my opinion. It lets you create, edit and view Word, Excel and PowerPoint files straight on your PDA. To transfer files to your PDA and vice versa, just HotSync it, which takes only a few minutes or less. You can store addresses, phone numbers, IM names, email addresses, birthdays and much more in Contacts. In Tasks, you record what you need to do in a to-do-list way, and all of this shows up in Calendar. In Calendar, you can view daily, weekly, monthly and even yearly schedules, all of which are color-coded for convenience. The birthdays will automatically show up on your Calendar! With Memos, you can store typed messages, while you can jog notes quickly on Note Pad, which is a bit like Paint for Windows. This program makes any PDA into a mini-laptop if you own a keyboard. A few other miscellaneous programs are thrown in as well.
My only complaint about the software selection is that Avantgo, a web clipping program used to view many web sites straight on your PDA is still unavailable for Palm OS 5.0 , which is a real shame. I still use my m130 for that every single day.
Overall, the Tungsten E is a great entry-level PDA. If you are not looking for fancy features such as a camera, then this is the perfect model. For the mere price of $199, you get a fast, powerful and feature packed PDA with a decent battery life. I think that this is a great gift for students and by those that need a new PDA to upgrade from their previous model. Finally, Palm has a great line-up of PDAs to match all other companies and is quickly gaining ground on the PocketPCs.
