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Your Guide to Palmtops / PDAs.
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Over the last year, palmOne has added many new features to their PDAs, many of which helped close the gap between Palm and Pocket PC based PDAs. One of our favorite PDAs from palmOne was the Tungsten T3 which sports a 320x480 screen and also supports landscape mode. So what features does palmOne add to enhance the T5? Let's take a look, shall we?

What's under the hood?

Let's start with the basic specs of the T5:

• Processor:416MHz Intel XScale Processor
• Operating System:Palm OS software version v5.4
• Memory:Total 256 MB (215MB actual storage capacity; 160MB internal flash drive, 55MB program memory)
• Display:TFT color display with backlight, 320 x 480, 65,000 colors
• Interface:USB, Infrared, Bluetooth
• Dimensions and Weight:4.76 x 3.08 x 0.61in, 5.1 oz.
• Power:120VAC, 60Hz, 100mA
• Battery:1300mHa Lithium-ion polymer rechargeable battery (internal - non user removable)
• Expansion:SD card slot (Secure Digital), supports MMC and SDIO cards

For comparison purposes, let's take a quick peek at the T3 specs:

• Processor:400MHz Intel XScale Processor
• Operating System:Palm OS software version v5.2.1
• Memory:Total 64 MB (51.6 MB available)
• Display:TFT color display with backlight, 320 x 480, 65,000 colors
• Interface:USB, Infrared
• Dimensions and Weight:4.3(closed, 5.2 open) x 3.0 x 0.66in, 5.5 oz.
• Power:120VAC, 60Hz, 100mA
• Battery:900mHa Lithium-ion polymer rechargeable battery (internal - non user removable)
• Expansion:SD card slot (Secure Digital), supports MMC and SDIO cards

Let's talk about the features

The first thing you'll notice about the T5 is that the slider is gone and the design is based on the Tungsten E line. Here you can see a larger image comparing the T5, T3, and TE. What suprised many people about the T5 is that it is based on Palm OS5 and not Palm OS6, which hasn't been released to the public yet.

Another feature of the T5 is that it has has built-in Bluetooth. While we're happy to see wireless technology in a palmOne product, we're disappointed that there's no built-in WiFi. Wireless connectivity has become an important part of Mobile computing, and we've been suprised at how slow palmOne has been to embrace 802.11b WiFi. Since the SD expansion slot is SDIO, you will be able to use a palmOne wireless card once the drivers are released for it.

The Tungsten T5 has a 416MHz processor, which is more than enough power to run any Palm based software. The processor speed also makes the T5 a great multimedia machine to play MP3 and movies. Besides having 256MB of memory (more on that in the next section), you'll be able to carry MP3s and movies around on an SD card if you like. The only multimedia feature that's missing is the presence of a mic to do voice recordings with.

Some of the coolest features

What's amazing about the T5 is the amount of memory. We're definitely impressed with 256MB of RAM (215MB of which is available to the user). Memory has become an inexpensive part of a PDA, so we expect to see more PDAs to be released with 256MB, if not more. One of the really cool features is that the T5 can be used as external drive. Basically, you attach the PDA to your computer with the USB cable and your computer will recognize it as an 160MB external drive (just like your thumbdrive). You don't even have to do a hotsync, just drag and drop any files you want onto your PDA.

Our favorite part of the T5 is the same thing that made us fall in love with the T3, the 320x480 resolution screen. It's amazing how nice a large screen looks and the ability to switch to landscape mode on the fly is a dream.

Overall, the software bundle is pretty much the standard for Palm PDAs besides the standard applications it includes:

• RealPlayer Desktop
• Adobe Acrobat Reader
• DataViz® Documents To Go® Professional Edition v7.0
• Drive Mode4
• VersaMail Email Client
• SMS Messaging
• Blazer Web Browser
• Phone Dialer
• Bluetooth Manager
• Multimedia
• Media2 for photos and video playback
• RealPlayer® for MP3 and Real Audio playback

Final thoughts

Overall, the T5 is a great PDA. If you're looking for your first PDA, this is one you'll want to look at. For PDA Power Users who are looking for the next great Palm PDA, this one is slightly dissapointing. We really felt this PDA should be a part of the Tungsten E line, since it carries the same design. While we are happy with the 256MB of RAM, we would of much rather seen 802.11b WiFi and most important we really wanted to see Palm OS6 on the T5. We're not trying to be critical of this nice PDA, we just feel that the T5 should have carried on what the T3 started (we really like the slider on the T3 and the abilty to make our PDA more compact). Another dream we had for the T5 was a built-in keyboard; but hey, we're pretty demanding!

While palmOne may not put the exact features some of us more demanding users want, we are extremely pleased that they are continually pushing the limits with new designs and features over the last few years.