There was a time that Palm reigned the palmtop computer business. They still own much in terms of units out there but sales figures are crumbling.

A brief tour through history. After Apple burried the Newton it was Palm that rose from the ashes with the original Palm Pilot. It was a smart little device giving you what you needed right in the palm of your hand. Fast forward to the present time. Today Pockect PC's have gained much ground and offer a lot of functionality we grew to appreciate on our desktop PC's.

To secure the Palm dominating spot Palm gave licencees the oppertunity to develop their own product. Even the founder of Palm went to create a new company "Handspring" that offered more flexability from a Palm for a short while (springboard, expensionslot). Sony broke in the multimedia capabilities Palm thought not aible nor neccesairy.

A new era
Enter the Tungsten T. Tungsten is the material used in lightbulbs and hopefully this will light the way Palm is going. So the long awaited "super" Palm has arrived. Long time afficinados of Palm products waited in the dugout for a long time before slugging a bat in their own game. But is it the homerun we expect it to be?

To stay ahead or at least in the game Palm had to change their course. Customers demanded more than just the basics right out the box. With the M-series in came the SD-slot and wordprocessing and e-mail software came bundled. With multimedia being a spearpoint in making or braking a deal at the counter, Palm slowly introduced colourscreens.

Screen envy
Colour is fine but at 160x160 you had not much to show off for. It even took two tries to get it farly right in the M515. At the same time Sony already had Highres screens and putting out second or third generation machines whith highres . The Tungsten screen is 320x320 reflective that does well in bright light or indoors under halogen/spotlight. Compared to Sony's translective screens the Tungsten is pale and lacks contrast. Reds are not that bright and blacks are more muddy grey. Anyway it is still the best Palm screen to date. Due to the new screen or digitizer Graffiti strokes seem to react more accurate and faster.

What you get
The Tungsten is the first Palm with the new OS5. Under the bonnet you get a new faster processor that is split in two. 144mhz of raw processing power and a seperate DSP for multimedia purposes. The latest Sony sport a 200mhz chip by comparison or 400mhz if you talk PPC.

In practical terms this means the tungsten is faster than it's predecessors but there is virtually no software that make specific use of the processor. 80 to 90 percent of existing Palm software will run under OS5 but it runs in an emulated state. The Tungsten is backward compatible and uses just half or less of the processing power it posesses. In time this will change but for now it is like driving a ferarri in a constant trafficjam.

Bells and whistles
Maybe to counter the Sony N-series fliptwist wow factor Palm decided to build in a slide mechanism. While closed, the Tungsten is very short and hides the graffiti area leaving the hard buttons for navigating through your basic apps. For find/look up purposes the new 5-way navigator button works well. But when it comes time to input data whith the handheld closed it is only possible with the notepadapp which accepts handwriting direct on the screen. Anything else you want to input through graffiti you have to slide open the Tungsten to acces the speciffic fields. Not much work you say but cumbersome at times. Now third party software adresses this problem like "Graffiti anywhere" by a push of a button. In the race of putting product out Palm might have overlooked this problem.

Software
Besides the usual capabilities Palm is known for, the Tungsten comes with a basic photoviewer and Dataviz office software containing Word-Sheet-and presenter to go. A build in voicerecorder is a nice touch. record on the device itself or straight to an SDcard. Playback is good (an audio patch is available at Palm to boost the quality). Headphone output would make it possible to listen to MP3 if only Palm had provided a player (big miss). The hardware is video ready but again no player is provided. Want to up the geewhiz factor by downloading a remotecontrol program? Toughluck Omniremote does not support OS5 yet and the infraredport is not aspowerfull as the Sony counterpart.

Connectivity
The Tungsten does sport a build in Bluetooth module making connecting to a bluetooth compatible phone a breeze. SMS software and Versamail are bundled to keep you in touch with the rest. Syncing with the desktop is speedy. Direct upload to the SDcard is not supported (still looking for a third party solution).

Final thoughts
Considering the initial retail price of this machine what you get is a very basic PDA in a hightech jacket. Fortunately prices are dropping but for the early adopters out there the Tungsten is a bit of a let down. Too many possibilities are left out for this to be the killer PDA Palm has hoped for. Compared to the other contenders out there, the Sony T665/675 with it's 66mhz dragonball beats the Tungsten if you don't need build in Bluethooth. For now the Tungsten is the first with OS5 and we have to wait and see what this new OS will do in the future. And the wait might proof long if you look at Palm's product cycle. Maybe two models further down the road (like in three to four years from now) Palm will get it right. Maybe the name Tungsten is a bad choice. Remember the Newton logo Apple used for their messagepads? You guessed right, a lightbulb. And we know what happened to that.

For now My bet is on the next Sony T-series to show us what is next.


Recommended: No

Amount Paid (US$): 299