palmOne Tungsten T5

Features

The Tungsten T5 is the newest PDA from palmOne. Not only that but it is the top-of-the-line professional model for palmOne, with the latest Palm OS (5.4). It is jam packed with a plethora of features.

One of the biggest selling points, besides the blazing fast processor, is the 256 MB built-in flash memory. Along with this palmOne has included a 'Drive Mode' which allows the T5 to act like a USB Mass Storage drive. Easy to transfer files from one computer to another, because it does not require any software to be installed on the computer side.

The T5 is 3.08" x 4.76" x 0.61" and weighs in at a mere 5.1 oz. Its slim and fit comfortably in my pocket. Despite the small size it still has a high-resolution 320 x 480 display. You can also rotate it 90 degrees, on its side, to get a wider look at whatever document you happen to be viewing at the time.

Right out of the box, it has MP3 playback capability, with a headphone jack and a speaker on the rear, giving it the capability to function as a portable MP3 player. It comes preloaded with RealPlayer for the Palm OS, which allows you to easily create and manage playlists. In the media department it also has the ability to play movies and display pictures in many different formats.

The T5 still has the shortcut buttons of it predecessors, but there are some neat suprises there too. The 'Home' button which usually takes you to a view of your programs, now has a extra feature. When pressed twice, it takes you to the new 'Favorites' view, where you can assign your most used programs so that they are easy to access no matter what Category your 'Home' button is currently looking at. Also new is the 'File View' which is a useful file manager, which allows you to view and modify the internal files on your T5. From here you can open Word, Excel, or Powerpoint documents, and play MP3 or movies which you have copied over from your computer.

The computer-side File Transfer and HotSync applications that came with the T5 are easy to use and allow you greater interaction with the Palm than earlier versions. The T5 also comes with a handy pleather screen cover, a charger cable, an IR keyboard that interfaces with the T5, and a HotSync cable that allows the T5 to plug into any USB port.

Last and not least, the T5 has a rechargable Lithium Polymer battery, which palmOne claims will last up to one week with "normal handheld usage". I'm not sure what "normal handheld usage" entails, but I listened to MP3 for a whole morning and it didn't even dent the battery meter.

Review

The T5 has been able to handle almost everything I've thrown at it. I have found it incredibly useful, very easily finding its way into my routine throughout the day. For example, I have an approximately 20 minute drive to the office and in the morning I don't alway have the time to read as much as I'd like before I have to head for school. So, I simply downloaded some MP3 lectures that I'd been wanting to hear, transfered them to the T5 using the Drive Mode, and then listen to them via the built-in speaker. The MP3 playback is wonderful, especially consdiering the fact that if you are listening to an MP3 and the times comes for your Palm to go into "hibernate" it will continue to play the MP3 with no interuptions. If you have a playlist queued up, it will play the playlist clear through, with the screen blanked out so that you don't waste your battery life.

The 256 MB memory available has been great. At one point I had a 32 MB music video, about 2 albums worth of MP3s (encoded at 192 k), four or five ebooks, and various pictures and projects all stored on the thing, and I still had room to boot!

I've heard others assert that the screen is dull compared to the earlier T3 model, but having never seen the T3, I was fully satisfied with the display on the T5. The resolution was good, it could print small yet readable text in programs like Plucker which allow different font sizes. The screen also has enough resolution to play back movies satisfactoraly. The movie playback capability was nice, for the most part it was a novel feature that I used just to impress my friends. Although in most applications the Palm could be rotated 90-degrees to give a wider view, the media player did allow this. I was disappointed with this, as I think that this was one time this feature would come in particularly handy.

Another feature that I wish palmOne would have included is WLAN wifi. You can get an add-in card to give you that functionality, but it's something I would expect on the top-of-the-line model. The T5 does comes with Bluetooth, so it's possible to conect to the internet out-of-the-box if you have a Bluetooth enabled phone or computer. Since I have neither of these, I was unable to explore the web or email programs that came with the T5.

Above and beyond

I am a text editor junkie, and one thing that was lacking in the original software included with the T5 was a text editor. Sure you can edit Microsoft Word documents using Docs to Go 7.0 but I had some Perl scripts which I wanted to edit, but was unable to open. What I found was little short of amazing. SiEd is a text editor for Palm OS. Since I already used the T5 as an oversized USB flash drive, I had text-based files. Used in conjunction with the IR portable, folding keyboard, SiEd allowed me to setup shop anywhere I wanted an type with minimal hassle. I wrote half a research paper in Starbucks on my way home from school on the T5. I almost wrote this review on it.

Along with SiEd, I would also strongly recommend Plucker (mentioned before) and Sunrise. Plucker is an "ebook" document format, that allows images, high-resolution display settings, and hyperlinks. Sunrise is an application that goes on your computer that allows you to subscribe to webpages daily, so that you can wakeup and HotSync your Palm, and have all of your "must read" webpages neatly on your Palm in Plucker format to read at your leisure.

I've been reading a lot on my T5, one of the best resources for things to read has been manybooks.com. If you are looking for a good read check out Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky or Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig. Plenty of good stuff out there, and I found the T5 very condusive to reading. I typically don't like to read long papers on my computer screen, but reading off of the T5 was not as straining on the eyes and allowed me to take a break from my office and read papers outside.

Conclusion

All-in-all I was very impressed with the T5. Wish it had WiFi, but even lacking that it still proved useful. The large memory and the MP3 playback are both exceptionally convenient features, that I utilize daily. If being online is a major concern and you don't have the money to spend on the WiFi extension card, perhaps look elsewhere. Otherwise the Tungsten T5 from palmOne lives up to its billing, "a lightweight, portable powerhouse for the on-the-go professional."

We found the Tungsten T5 for $399 at Dell and Palm One.  The lowest price we could find was $325 at compulus.