Palm Tungsten E

After getting back from Paris on Sunday evening I had a used eBookMan EB-901 from France waiting for me. The new morning a reconditioned Palm Tungsten E from Ireland turned up. Both had been bought via eBay, the first for 50Euro (new these are 120GBP) and the second for 73GBP, (new these are around 140GBP) both including shipping.

I immediate set both units up with Mobipocket and copied over one of the eBooks I’d been reading on the Eurostar. I noted while using the 901 in bed that it had a nice interface, although it was quite difficult to read in low light. I didn’t really like Windows sync software. The screen on the 901 was quite large with a lower resolution than the Palm, which has a much smaller screen.

Since Monday afternoon I’ve been using the Palm to since completed a couple new space opera eBooks. I’ve found with the clean clear colour screen on the Palm that its much easy to read even at the lowest font size than both my Psion 5mx and the eBookman EB-901.

The other issue I noted is the 901 seem to lose its OS when the battery was removed. I’ve read that this is caused by a fault in the capacitors, which needs to be replaced by Franklin. Obviously this makes the 901 a bit useless. I’ll have to see how difficult it is to get the unit fixed.

I’ve been attempting to recondition the battery a little, but it seems that just reading an eBook gets about 4-5 hours of battery life. Today I went down to Maplin and after a couple tried managed to find someone to help me put together a 4xAA external battery pack to charge the Palm. I’ll see how things go with this charge over the next couple weeks.

How i’ve used the Palm I can see by Paul G. comment as he did about the screen on the hx4700. I’m quite keen to try this out now, especially with its external battery options. Its pretty hard to find one of these second hand on eBay, so I’ll probably get a new unit when I get back to NZ.

With regards to the PDA options of the Palm. I’m finding Graffiti 2 much easier to use than the older Palms I tried at various times. I’ve used the Tasks list a little today, and it seems nice. We’ll see how it goes, Its quite possible I might start using the Palm Tungsten E in its PDA role.

It’s also time to replace my P800, and I might consider a Treo 650. Everyone seems to rave about these. I’ll need to reconvince myself about a PDA+Phone choice though. As I didn’t really like the P800. Basically the interface wasn’t that great and I found it was too bulky, quite often slipping out of my pocket.

3 Comments

  1. Richard Parry Said,

    May 28, 2005 @ 8:45 am

    We’ve been playing around with the Harrier CDMA pocketwindows phone at work recently.

    I’d recommend staying away – on the surface it’s nifty, but it’s quite a bit heavier than my Pocket PC, and is nothing but a selection of moving parts that want to break.

    All in all I’m thinking that the PDA+Phone thing isn’t quite there. I could live with the P900 maybe, but it doesn’t run Pocket Windows (which is my fave, as I want MS Reader and stuff like that on there). Meh, maybe the market will change a little as it starts to mature; that can happen.

  2. Nicholas Lee Said,

    May 30, 2005 @ 4:18 am

    Mobipocket is a pretty good replacement for MS Reader on the P800/P900. This review seems to think the new P910i is a very good choice for a PDA phone. Certainly the keyboard on the inside of the flip cover is very clever. I almost was convinced by him that the P910i would be my next phone, but no. I'm enjoying reading books my the Tungsten E, I definitely going to get a hx4700 to try that out. So my primary phone plan now is a the cheapest bluetooth mobile that is functional and compact. Secondary to that plan is making sure the phone works with Linux or OSX for GPRS via bluetooth or USB.

    Few options I'm looking at under $400: V501/v500, E398, T630 or K700i. The 6230i is an option as well, although this is $550. Keep it cheap, use the cash saving for the extra PDA. Plus wait and see what the 3.5G or 4G phones are like next year. A cheap Nokia is some ways would be the best option. Especially since they have standard charge connectors which would work this the trick I've put together for the Tungsten with the battery pack. Motorola as well, with their mini-USB connector could work with this. SE, still seem though to have the best feature to cost ratio. Plus I must say that even though my P800 has been banged around, even its crapness it still goes. I'm not sure either you or Matt can say that for your 6820s?

    Maybe when I fix my mail problem, I'm put together a NumSum spreadsheet of the various phones I'm looking at. 🙂

  3. Richard Parry Said,

    June 1, 2005 @ 9:42 pm

    I like your thinking with the diverting cash for a PDA. The cost of phones at the moment – without 3G – is a bit insane. We’ve just got in a 910i for trial at work, I’ll let you know what it’s like “in the flesh” so to speak.

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