Pros: Wi-Fi; Large, Beautiful Screen; Ease of Use; Reliable
Cons: Graffiti Recognition; Battery (In some aspects)
The bottom line: Dissapointment will not result in the purchase of this stunning device!
This review is separated into two sections. The fist is just a general summary of what I think of the T|X, and the second part is a semi in-depth look at the T|X and its software/capabilities. Read one, read both, I hope you enjoy it!

Summary: The T|X is a great, full-featured device for the average Joe, or the VIP business person. Making Wi-Fi connections and surfing the web at in less than 6 seconds would rock the socks of anyone. But it doesn’t stop there. While, Wi-Fi is a nice plus, the Calendar, Contacts, etc… are easy to use and navigate. There is also the issue of stability. For me, my T|X has been VERY stable, only crashing twice, but that was when I had 3rd party applications installed. When I took those off, the T|X functioned like it was intended – Flawlessly.

In-Depth Look:

~The HotSync Cable

Okay, well... time to get critical. After designing an awesome machine, it looks like the engineers/designers got lazy. This might have been them: “How about we make all the pins on the cable exposed! Then we can make the connection extremely tight!” It’s actually not that difficult, but you do have to be careful with the exposed pins. When taking it out, you have to dance a little with it so it’ll snap out.

~The Flip Cover

The flip cover has a nice suede-like feel to it. Initially, I was going to buy a case for the Palm, but I decided that the flip cover does a good enough job not to. It has the Palm logo centered on the bottom with gray stitching along the edges. The cover slides into a silo on the left side of the TX, and overall, I feel comfortable with this being it’s only protection.

~The Casing

The T|X’s color scheme looks nothing like the other handhelds. It’s almost like comparing all the silver Toyota Camerys to a bunch of black Nissan Altimas. The “Midnight-Blue” contrasts with the hazel D-Pad (5-way) very well. A very welcome change in my books…

Unlike my Zire71, the T|X feels solid. There is no creaking, rattling, or other annoying sounds emitting from the Palm including the typical screen whine. Somehow Palm’s engineers devised a way to get rid of that high-pitched wail…thankfully! But, when the stylus is in the silo, and you gently shake the PDA, you can feel the stylus moving about slightly, but other than that, it’s concrete.

~The Stylus

The Zire71’s stylus has been called many things including, but not limited to: “a plastic toothpick.” I can whole-heartedly say that I concur with that statement, but I no longer have to live with such burdens because the T|X’s stylus is made from aluminum. It feels very nice in your hand, and it is nicely balanced. Also, the top of the stylus twists off to reveal a reset-pin (although the T|X’s reset hole is big enough to use with the tip end of the stylus.)

~The Hard Buttons

There are four buttons along the bottom edge of the device. They go like this: Home >> Calendar >> Contacts >> Blazer (Web). Pressing them, naturally, goes to their corresponding application.

~The 5-Way

The joystick on the Zire71 was nice to have, but sort of a pain since it was easy to go in a direction not intended. This problem is gone with the T|X because it wears the same “D-Pad” as some of the other (previous) Palm handhelds. Using this 5-Way navigator is great and very easy to use. It’s almost like there are invisible grips on the back of the device, much like some steering wheels. On my Zire, it felt like if I moved a little, the PDA would flip backwards onto the floor, but since the T|X’s weight is distributed pretty evenly, this isn’t a problem.

A lot of games support it (to move around), and of course, it’s usable in the Palm PIM applications. For example, to move around in calendar, just click around (go right to go to tomorrow, and left to go to yesterday.) The 5-Ways features are pretty self-explanatory. Again, they are nice to have when navigating documents or going though photos, etc…



~The Operating System (OS)

**First and foremost, let me get one thing out of the way. The T|X uses a different filing structure than other Palm handhelds! Palm has even stated that certain software, even though it is compatible with OS 5, may not be compatible with the T|X. The software in question can cause reset loops, fatal errors, freezing, etc… This is all due to 3rd party applications! They do not know how to handle the new filing system. So, just be careful what you put on your PDA. If you put something on, and the PDA starts to get spastic, take that program off. My T|X is very stable! (Also note there are NO third party applications installed aside from the programs pre-installed on the ROM)**

This is a nice version of the Palm OS, even though some may say that it is dated. I don’t mind really since I am used to this version, and I like it.

One of the things that may throw some people off is the lack of a Graffiti area. Palm has now (well, actually a long time ago; this isn’t new) made the Graffiti area “soft,” so you can pull it up when you want, and keep it closed when you want that extra screen realty. A nice new addition to this is customizable buttons. Before on the “hard” graffiti area, there were buttons like HotSync, Find, Home, and menu, but now, you can change these buttons to your liking! Cool huh? This button (to bring up Graffiti) is located in the “Status Bar.”

For some unexplained reason, there is a slight delay between your writing strokes and the letters appearing on screen. It's kind of annoying, but you get used to it.

The status bar is a gray, rectangular box thing that sits at the bottom of your screen telling you things like the time, alerts, the status for the Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth, as well at features like Find, Full-screen writing, Landscape/Horizontal screen orientation (more on this later). If you click the time, controls for the contrast settings appear, the battery and its percentage left appears, as well as other things like the time, and sound settings. Adding a quick way to get to the sounds is nice. When I go to church, I used to have to go through 4-Menus to turn the sound off. Now it’s two. Not a big deal, but the small things do make a large difference.

Having the ability to change the screen orientation from portrait to landscape in less than a second is quite cool especially if you are working with an Excel spreadsheet, or a PowerPoint file, not to mention Word documents as well. The other neat thing is that the 5-Way navigator changes as well to accommodate this change. If the screen is in Portrait, pressing up, naturally, makes the page go up. But the same button (up) when the screen is flipped turns into a button that goes to the right. Nice! (There is also an option to change which side the screen flips to in landscape for left/right handed people.) The status bar also moves.


~~Contacts:
The contacts PIM remains basically the same as pervious versions, but now you can add a picture/logo to the contact! There is also a field for birthday that now adds a little birthday cake on that day in Calendar! A nice touch!

~~Calendar:
Calendar has gained some nice improvements! The most obvious being the whole color-coding thing. You can make your business stuff blue, personal stuff green, kid’s soccer games orange, etc. This is nice so you can just associate color with event. It’s not really necessary, but it is neat! Also, these color-coded events show (in color) in the week view on the Palm! Before, they were all nasty looking, boring gray boxes. Now they are vibrant boxes!

~~The Agenda View in Calendar has grown to be one of my favorite things! It shows all your upcoming appointments, as well as tasks (To-Do List), and VersaMail information (assuming you have it setup.) The background picture can be changed to whatever picture you happened to have on your device. They also come pre-loaded with some “ambiance” pictures to use for Agenda view!

~~The Favorites Launcher:
~~The Favorites Launcher is just a customizable list of your most used programs. You can even put links to your favorite websites there! There are four pages you can tailor to your liking, and to get to them, just press the “Home” button twice!

~~Calculator:
Now, this calculator is not intended to replace your expensive TI-83 graphing calculator, but it’s nice to help calculate the tip on a restaurant bill, or figure out taxes or something. The only changes I can see are some slight aesthetic tweaks, and now your calculations are displayed underneath the calculator!

~~Tasks:
The To-Do list is almost the same, but now you can add repeating tasks and set alarms.

~~Other: VersaMail is a nice, easy to use email application (That doesn’t like Gmail). You can of course, set it up to check your email wirelessly, but it will also sync your email when you HotSync!

~Battery Life

Battery life is pretty on par with other handhelds in this range. Once the battery drops below ~80%, it goes down pretty fast, but not before a couple hours (6). The one thing I noticed is that Wi-Fi eats the battery for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Don’t expect to have any battery left after you surf the web for a few hours (3).

~~~All In All

The T|X is an amazing and very capable handheld with a price that used to mimic that of gas back when it was $.05. Fortunately, the T|X is cheap, and if anything, the dollar amount will sink...