Palm TX (Palm T|X) Review

I've had my Palm TX (or Palm T|X) for about 2 years and I thought that I would write a review on it since it can still be purchased from some retailers, some private sellers, as well as on eBay.

I've been a PalmOS user for about 8 years. As part of my job approximately 9 years ago, I was given a Palm III for my personal/work use. After having it for approximately 1 year, I was asked to return it to the department when I transferred to a different department within the same company. In the 1 year that I was using my Palm III, I was relying on it heavily for appointments, contacts, etc.. I had also purchased some 3rd party programs and found that since I relied heavily on a PalmOS device, I purchased a Handspring Visor Deluxe. After about 2 years, using the Handspring Visor Deluxe, I upgraded to the Handspring Visor Prism and later purchase a VisorPhone handspring attachment for the Prism. When my Visor Prism got somewhat physically/cosmetically damaged), I purchased a Handspring Treo 600. I later sold the Handspring Treo 600 and upgraded to a Palm Treo 650 (Palm had since purchased Handspring). After getting the Treo 650, I found that I did not have a lot of RAM on the device for 3rd party applications so when I saw the Palm TX on special, I purchased it in order to use with my Palm GPS bluetooth module and TomTom Navigator software.

The Palm TX has bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and has a 320 x 480 screen resolution screen capable of approximately 64,000 colours.. It also has approximately 128MB of non-volatile flash memory where 100 MB of actual storage capacity. It has an SD slot which supports SD cards up to 2 GB (does not support SDHC cards). It runs the PalmOS v 5.4.9. For those of you interested in whether the Palm TX supports non-SSID broadcasting Wi-Fi access points, it does. Because of the enhanced/large screen resolution for a PalmOS device, I find the PDA to be somewhat large.

I occasionally will use my Palm TX for web browsing, RSS reading, and Slingbox viewing since even though it is possible for me to do these things with my Palm Treo 650 or my Palm Treo 680, generally, the GSM SIM card that I put in these smartphones don't have access to the carrier's data network and I don't really like swapping SIM cards. I also have access to Wi-Fi access points at home and at work. I will also use my Palm TX occasionally to watch videos (using a 3rd party program called Kinoma Player) and listen to MP3 (using the included pTunes). Since I have a few dictionaries (including some translation dictionaries) installed on it, I will sometimes use my Palm TX to look up words.

In terms of the construction of the Palm TX, I find that it is constructed very well. My only complaint about it (or at least mine) is that the on/off button on the upper right corner of the device seems a bit difficult to turn on or off. The button is slightly recessed and sometimes when I press the button, my Palm TX does not turn on or turn off. Because of this, when I want to turn on my Palm TX, I will generally use one of the 4 shortcut buttons on it.

For those of you interested in my experience with using the Palm TX and SlingPlayer Mobile for the PalmOS, I find that it works quite well. The only thing is that after a few minutes of viewing, the audio and video will go out of synch. This can be temporarily fixed by disconnecting from the Slingbox, waiting a few seconds, and then reconnecting to the same Slingbox again.

If you have any questions/comments regarding my comments/review on the Palm TX (Palm T|X), please don't hesitate to leave a comment in the comments section.