I’ve had the palmOne Tungsten E for almost a week now and I thought I’d post some additional thoughts.
I insisted on checking the T|E’s 5-way navigator button at the store when I bought it because of the reports of T|E units with poorly assembled navigator buttons. Mine seems to be fine and here’s hoping it stays that way because I use it frequently to scroll down when reading ebooks.
The beautiful and surprisingly bright colour transflective TFT display screen is a mere 5.5cm by 5.5cm but I had no problems whatsoever reading text. (You can enlarge the screen text if you’re having trouble.) The screen is thankfully free of the buzzing sound some T|E users have reported.
The battery life doesn’t seem to be great. Unless you use the T|E strictly for its PIM abilities, you will end up topping up the battery almost on a daily basis because the TFT screen and MP3 playback, in particular, will suck up juice quickly.
Speaking of music, I downloaded Aeroplayer, a Palm OS music player, in order to try out the T|E’s music playback. (The T|E software bundle includes RealOne Mobile Player but I was leery of Real products because of the company’s history.) Aeroplayer is free but only if you stick to music in the Ogg Vorbis format. Aeroplayer does play MP3s but you’ll have to pony up to get that functionality once the 14-day trial period is over. I didn’t feel like paying so I ended up using Quintessential Player and its Ogg Vorbis plug-in to convert a couple MP3s to the Ogg Vorbis format. Converting one lossy format to another will result in a hit to audio quality but if you’re using a PDA to listen to music I think it’s fair to assume you’re not especially concerned about audio quality.
And if you happen to be particularly unfussy about audio quality you might very well be satisfied by the audio produced by the T|E’s built-in speaker. Folks who care little for tinny sound, on the other hand, would be better off shopping for a good pair of headphones.
The T|E’s software bundle also includes Handmark’s MobileDB database software. MobileDB seems to be a tad basic but its users have been producing (and freely sharing) some cool databases. If you’re looking for a list of EPL 2004/2005 fixtures, a list of WWI German aces or a Futurama episode guide, head to the MobileDB archive and download away.
As far as I can tell, the T|E doesn’t seem to have native support for HTML files. I had to first convert HTML files with Plucker Desktop on my PC before I could read them on the T|E with the Plucker reader. Both programs are free but this seems more work than should be necessary for something so simple as reading a HTML document.
