Palm T|X

The market in standalone PDAs is in serious decline as smart phones get cheaper and regular cell phones get smarter, both of which are a lot more fun than even the most stylish handheld computer. The pioneer in this category, Palm, has already shown that it can make great combo units with its popular Treo, but it refuses to give up the PDA market for dead. Its new and generally excellent T|X model gives us a state-of-the-art handheld, light and fully packed with features, that tries to catch some of that multimedia vibe from the likes of the PSP and iPod.

The T|X is a dazzler. The 320 x 480-pixel touchscreen is among the crispest we have seen on a Palm, and we love how the usually annoying Palm input interface at the bottom of the screen receded at the touch of a button to give you even more display real estate. The stylus is solid in hand, and the 5.3-ounce weight is remarkable for the power this device holds. The 312-MHz Bulverde processor and 128MB of flash memory made all operation snappy, and the SD slot can add gigabytes of storage if needed.

Both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are built in, and unlike many PDAs, connecting to a local network is almost as easy as on Windows XP. The system quickly sniffs out available signals, and we were tapped into our wireless Web connection in no time with decent speed. There is room for improvement.  The browsing experience was good, but we wish that we could tweak the view to see full-size Web pages. The T|X switches easily to the more viewable landscape mode, but the browser really needs some sort of shrink-to-fit scaling.

Like all recent Palms, the T|X has an excellent line-up of applications. For business use, there is the very good Documents-to-Go program that works with Excel, Word, and PowerPoint files. Along with the usual assortment of contact manager, calendar, and expense tracking functions there is VersaMail, which made easy work of sending messages and handling even large attachments. Palm makes it easier to get new applications with the AddIt tool, which buys software offline and pulls it down to your T|X the next time you log onto the network and HotSync. The new Palm gives you access to Avvenu, a free service that links to your own PC files remotely, including music files.

The T|X tries to pack in video, photo, and audio playback, but the results are mixed. The familiar HotSync and Palm Desktop combo now moves photos and video to your handheld for slideshows and little movie presentations. We are happy to see that the T|X supports a wide range of image and video types, including TIFF, JPG, BMP, most MPEG codecs, and QuickTime.

Both photo and video play back work well enough, but the display quality and flexibility cannot approach the stellar PSP experience. With the photo viewer, you can use your stylus to pan around an oversized image, but there is no convenient zoom mechanism. Most frustrating is the video playback, which has awkward controls for pausing and fast forwarding that frequently just dropped us out of the clip altogether. Clearly the Palm OS is not quite ready for the kind of portable multimedia most of us have in mind.

The T|X actually is most versatile as a music playback device. Palm’s Pocket Tunes software on the desktop and on the device pushes MP3s to the T|X and arranges and manages playlists well with Windows Media Player 9.0 or higher. The single speaker on the T|X won’t get your toes tapping, but the audio quality with headphones was as good and as loud as most dedicated digital audio players.

Multimedia is really a value-add in this reasonably priced PDA. Nevertheless, Palm has succeeded in giving us a powerful yet very portable handheld that won’t break the bank. If you’re not sold on a carrying a bulky smart phone and want to be able to access important data without having to boot up your PC, the T|X deserves to be a part of your mobile arsenal.