Palm TX Handheld

Author's Rating:

Pros: Powerful, WiFi and Bluetooth enabled and nice display

Cons: Battery life could use to be better

The Bottom Line: 
I would definitely recommend this device to anyone that is looking for a WiFi and Bluetooth enable PDA.

Author's Review
I have used a couple of different PDA's at work to help me carry important reference materials that I use. I am a computer repair specialist for a medium size manufacturing company and I have a lot of information that I have refer back to. Most of this information is contained in MS Excel or MS Word documents on our network.

I was using my personal PDA which a HP iPAQ hx4700 that I received as a gift a couple years ago to connect to our business network using the WiFi connection. I was able to convince my boss to purchase some new PDA's for our workcenter, that way I could keep my PDA at home. The two key features that we needed in the PDA we were looking for was the WiFi
capability and its ability to open MS Office documents (Excel and Word, to be more specific).

So the search began, I checked out several of the reviews here on Epinions and I found that many people had good things to say about the Palm TX handheld and I have used a Palm PDA before, Palm Zire. I recommended that we purchase three of these devices for our workcenter and I am very glad we did.

Palm TX

After opening the package and pulling out all of the contents, I picked up the devices and gave it the once over. The over all size was very acceptable for a PDA, it is approximately 3" X 5" and a little over 5 oz. I am glad to see they didn't remove the 5-way navigation button that I really like on the Palm Zire I used to use. The navigation button makes it really easy to scroll through applications. It also includes quick launch buttons, located right next to the 5-way navigation button.

The four quick launch buttons; Home, Calendar, Contacts and Web Browser. The home button is pretty self explanatory, listing of your applications. Calendar brings you to the Calendar feature that lets you set up appointments and everything you can use to keep track of
your daily, weekly or monthly routines. Contact button brings you where all of your contacts are organized and lets you add a new contact or edit a current contact. This feature comes in handy almost on a daily basis for me when I need to get in touch with a vendor to get parts or just tech support. The last of the quick launch buttons is the Web Browser button and this is one that I end up using quite a bit for finding phone numbers. I can simply launch the browser and gain access to our company Intranet and find phone numbers.

That brings me to another great feature of the Palm TX; WiFi. Using the built in WLAN 802.11b feature I can access any of our wireless access points throughout the plant and I am instantly connected to our company LAN. This gives me connection to all of my saved reference
documents and the Internet for technical information that I need to do my job.

The screen resolution is a very important feature of any PDA, especially one that will be used to browse the web and display pictures. The Palm TX has a resolution of 320 x 480 pixels and 64K colors, this makes viewing pictures and web pages very easy on the eyes. I also like the brightness of the back light, it makes it easy to see the screen in a variety of lighting conditions.

The applications that are included in the Palm TX, make the whole device very useful in my job and I am sure anyone would find them useful for them. Using the USB sync cable I am able to open MS Excel and MS Word documents and make changes to the documents while I am away from my PC. Once I get back to my desk I can update the saved document with any changes I have made during the day. The image
viewing software I allows me to organize pictures that I have loaded on the Palm TX and also transfer them from my PC and carry them where ever I go. As I said earlier, the screen resolution of the TX makes viewing pictures a dream, this includes photographs as well as images
of documents that were scanned in to a folder on my PC.

The Palm TX uses the Blazer 4.3 web browser to surf the web and it is a very acceptable browser. Being used to Internet Explorer on my desktop, I wasn't sure at first how well the Blazer browser would work. I am pleasant surprised that it has worked pretty well so far.

Software included

*Quick Tour *Addit (adding software) *Calculator *Calendar *Card Info *Contacts *Documents To Go *Expense *Favorites *Hotsync *Media *Memos *Note Pad *pTunes *SMS *Solitaire *Tasks *VersaMail *Blazer Web Browser *World Clock

Some of the software I listed is probably easy to figure out their uses, but I will describe a couple of them; Documents to Go and pTunes.

Documents to Go:This is the software that allows you to open and edit MS documents on your Palm devices. I am pretty happy with this program since most of the documents I use on my PC areeither MW Word of MS Excel files.

pTunes: This program helps to organize and play your music on the Palm TX. I am not much on listening to music at work, but if I was I think this would be a very useful feature of the Palm TX.

Hotsync software: This is the application that is used by the device to transfer files back and forth to your PC using the sync cable that is included in the package. I have found this program to be very easy to use and it basically works with little user intervention.

Blazer 4.3 browser: The Blazer 4.3 browser, is the application that is used to connect to the Internet and view websites. This is a very capable web browser.

Hardware inside

The power of a PDA is hidden within its circuitry and unlike a PC it isn't upgradable. The only way to add storage capability the Palm TX is to pop in a storage card into the expansion slot. By using the storage card you can increase the amount of files that can be stored and accessed with your PDA. Unlike your PC most PDA don't have a hard drive to load program and to save files on so PDA's use built in RAM (random access memory) and it uses this memory to store your contacts, files, images to be recalled when you want them.

The Palm TX has a pretty powerful processor chip built in to handle all of the processing needs to run all of the operations of the PDA; Intel PXA270 ARM 312 MHz processor and 128 MB of RAM. It also has an expansion slot for additional storage that accommodates MMC, SD and SDIO memory cards. These memory cards can be used to add a lot of extra storage to be used to hold pictures, video clips, music (MP3's) or just data files. The amount of additional storage will depend on what size memory card you pop into the expansion slot, you have a lot of capacity to choose from; 128MB - 2GB memory cards.

The awesome display of the Palm TX is provided by the 320 x 480 TFT (transreflective) that has 64K colors and a nice back light to provide a really nice display in varied lighting conditions.

Palm included both Bluetooth and WiFi adapters to handle the wireless connections and it also has IR or Infra-Red beaming capability. The WLAN is handled by a 802.11b radio and this allows you to connect to a wireless router or access point to connect to the Intranet or LAN. The
Bluetooth adapter allows you to use any Bluetooth accessory to connect to your Palm TX.

My final thoughts

Since purchasing these Palm TX handhelds we have been using them heavily ever day and haven't had any problems. The only thing I would say that is negative about the Palm TX is battery isn't as good as I would like to see. We are having to put them on charge halfway through the workday because we are using the WiFi all day. I would imagine if we weren't using the WiFi all the time the battery would last the full 8 hour day.

The Intel ARM PXA270 312 MHz processor provides plenty of power and the install 128 MB RAM seems to be plenty to run the included software without causing too many slow downs. We added 1GB SD memory cards to all three Palms and this has helped load several of our reference documents that we use on a daily basis and with the built in WiFi adapter we connect to our LAN through wireless access points situated
throughout our plant.

I have used the Document to Go application on the Palm Zire a couple years ago and so I am familiar with what it can do; convert MS Office documents like Word, PowerPoint and Excel.

To make our Palm TX handheld a little better for us we purchased the optional USB Cradle that doubles as a charging base.

I would definitely recommend this PDA to anyone looking to purchase a handheld device.