LINKS
Palm
no comment :-)
SSH clients
TuSSH
pssh
Jabber
Chatopus
Other
PXA clocker
Being a person who would almost forget his own birthday if his girlfriend didn't remind him, a PDA is my best friend...
Well, not that I forget a lot of things, but I forget to think about them until it's too late. In this case a PDA is ideal, because it starts to beep and vibrate when I have an appointment I shouldn't miss. It's also very useful to keep an (encrypted) list of passwords, keep your addresses with you and so on, but I guess you already knew all that.
What some people may not know is that these little devices, when combined with some kind of wireless service, can be very useful tools too. With the right software, you can do quite some nice things with a simple PDA, which you may never have tought to be possible:
- read your emails (even on an IMAP server over an SSL connection)
- log in on your linux box using an SSH client
- IM chat using protocols like ICQ, Yahoo, jabber
- use as a little photo album
First impressions
- When I first got my Tungsten T3, I was really amazed by the quality and the size of the screen. With it's 320x480 resolution (or 480x320 in landscape mode), I think this is the biggest screen real estate you'll find on a mainstream PDA (measured in pixels at least). The display provides a sharp image with rich colors under normal viewing conditions. In direct sunlight, the display looks quite dim, but still readable.
- I don't like the design of the new 5-way navigator as much as the one on my Tungsten T. It's still very functional, but I found the round button easier to use. Furthermore the Tungsten T came with a plastic cover, which wasn't that great, but at least allowed easy access to the 5-way button when the palm is in your pocket, while still providing enough cover to protect against accidental keypresses. I guess I mainly miss this because I like to use it as a portable music player and now I have to take it out whenever I want to control the player.
- The leather flip cover is easier to use than the plastic cover on the earlier Tungsten models (except for the covered 5-way navigator), and it's also more convenient than the cover on the old m5xx series.
- Battery life doesn't seem to be as good as with my Tungsten T, but that may also be because I tend to use this one a lot more with an active bluetooth connection to the internet.
- Graffiti 2 is a BAD THING (tm), but more on that later on. (also... I'll tell you how to replace it with the original graffiti).
- The speaker volume seems to have increased from the previous models.
- Comes with a very nice software bundle. I'd have liked some of these applications in flash ROM (replacing realplayer and photos for example) instead of on the install CD, but that's just a minor issue.
- The PIM apps are improved, with some nice added features, while still being as user-friendly as before.
Overall, I'm very impressed with this little device. Its compact shapes makes it easy to carry around, and the ease of use is still incredible in the good old Palm tradition. These things may not be packed with features like CF expansion slots, WiFi and fingerprint scanners like their PocketPC brothers, but IMHO they do a much better job at the main task of a PDA: being an agenda, address book and such.
A drawback is that multitasking is still quite limited, but some applications, like Aeroplayer (MP3/ogg player) and Chatopus (jabber client) can keep on running in the background. On the other hand this means that out-of-memory-errors are a rare thing on a PalmOS based handheld...
(to be continued...)