An HONEST T5 Review

[Gekko]

http://palmaddict.typepad.com/palmaddicts/2005/03/t5_update.html

[Cyker]

IMHO, 90% of the problems with the T|5 (And Treo 650) are to do with the NVFS.

It is a worse kludge than chained interrupts and EMS memory.

What Palm need to do is invest in something like M-RAM, then they can have their stupid NVFS and still have a REAL internal RAM structure instead of having to do all these sickening kludgy workarounds to run stuff from FlashRAM via a hidden 16MB RAM chunk...

[Verxion]

It cracks me up when I read about how people are having so much trouble with the T5. I have been away from Palm since I sold my Visor Prism four years ago, and JUST returned to the Palm world with my recent purchase of a T5.

I haven't had a SINGLE crash yet - not even a need for a soft reset.

I installed all the software I need, it all runs fine, its all stable, hotsync is stable, things are rocking.

Two bits of info:

1. PocketPC is a billion times worse than Palm when it comes to stability!

2. Back when I left Palm before, my Visor Prism had something like 300 apps on it, and was stable as anything could possibly be. And there were people just like Gekko back then too - complaining that everything was horribly unstable.

Take the "review" with a grain of salt.

-Verxion

[timepilot84]

I've been using the T5 for a couple months now and the only times I have issues are when with the Browser. I've gotten assurance from PalmOne that these are known issues, and are being taken care of, so we'll see how that goes. I don't think that the referenced article is any more honest than any other opinion piece.

[Cyker]

Yeah, Honesty is a such a relative word ;)

[Antoine]

Honest review? yes.
No more or less than others.

[Gekko]

Antoine - sorry to burst your bubble of a Utopian perfect world, but not everyone is honest. You should know that by now!

[raptor13]

Antoine did say "no more or less than others". I don't see what bubble you are trying to burst. Mike

[Antoine]

I wish my view of the world were perfect. But it isnt. I strive for integrity on my end, and hope that others do teh same. I know that everyone isnt honest, and have stopped expecting them to be. But I do not have the providence to discount another's review as I was not present with them when they made it to those situations that created the experiences that shaped the review. That being said, the reviewer that was linked above said exactly what they knew. I take it as being no more honest than any other review. Just a tick angry.

[spc:)]

With the current quality of Palmone T5,

1. Hissing from the headphone jack. Just compare the sound quality with your previous palm, you will notice.

If you guys have not noticed the default volume is so loud/out of tune, that I believe caused the amplification of the background static. Many reviews says that the volume of the T5 had increased a lot, to me it's a programming fault that causes the default volume to be made so high. using the realplayer, the volume at the lowest side of the volume bar, is already very very loud compare to the older palms.

2. Super slow reaction of the digitizer, same thing just need to compare the user experience with the older palms. If you are a person who uses the graffit a lot, you will hate the current speed T5 recognizes your input.

Using Jot as an alternative, the reaction became normal speed again. So I guess this is not hardware problem and purely software.

3. Fatal errors that requires hard/soft reset. My 2 weeks of owning the T5, had already exceeded all 2 years worth of hard/soft reset required for my zire71. T5 users will know, and I the hard resets i am counting is due to syn errors which then became unrecoverable. The only 3rd party software i had is mmplayer. all others came with the T5 box.

All the above I believe ain't hardware problems at all. I used to be a programmer and i can say that the current pocketpc/wince is much more stable. our current user experience with T5 is just like a wince 1.0 5 years ago, when frequent resets had to be performed on the ce devices every now and then just like the T5 now.

If Palmone doesn't issue any updates to their current problems of the T5, we users should ask them for a refund of the cost of the devices and also a compensation for time and effort and agony caused by buying their T5.

[Verxion]

Well, I still haven't had a single hard reset. . .

Still waiting.

Oh, and I have 32 3rd party apps installed so far.

-Verxion

[prayer4eev]

ffs, just ignore posts of this clown.

[SuperSaiyan]

In the beginning I did have many issues with my T5 but most of the apps I use have since been upgraded. It's quite a pleasure to use now. Guess it's time to change my avatar as I'm a T5 happy camper now. :D

spc:) (guest)
you either got a lemon or you stunk up your T5 with a lot of "crap apps" and aren't being entirely honest.

[E Ben G]

Though I love my T5 and therefore don't take the stark stance that spc took, I have to admit that I have experienced almost everything he has to a T.

1. Headphone static. This drives me crazy. Anyone who doesn't notice this doesn't care about sound quality - PERIOD (which is fine I guess, after all it is a business unit). And it's not just my unit. I have listened to MP3s on my classmates' T5s, and it's exactly the same. They better fix this on future models otherwise marketing Life Drive as an MP3 player will be a cruel joke.

2. G2 input speed. I've noticed some slowness here too. Actually, I think it recognizes the input at a proper speed, but some letters/numbers just take a half second or so to show up. (like 4 and 5 for some reason) But I have noticed that when I keep going ahead, all the letters I put in do come up. So they were all recognized. And I, like spc, noticed that when I went to 3rd party (MessagEase in my case) the speed returned to normal.

3. Resets - I haven't had any hard resets, but I definitely have more than my share of soft ones. I'm very jealous of those of you who have never had a reset, but I think you're in the minority from what I read on these boards.

I don't think spc:) is a troll. I love the T5, but mine has exactly the same 'problems'. (I guess there's a sense in which these things aren't really problems. Nobody seems to complain too much about the headphone static - so I guess it's not a problem for them.)

Anyway - if it exists, I hope LIfeDrive is better.

[smstnitc]

This is my first actual PalmOne device. I had a few Handsprings, and several Clie's, and so far, I'm really not impressed with this TT5 from the "mother company".

I don't put much use in listening to music, so I can't comment on that, but the other issues...


Graffiti is slow, so slow to respond. I never recall a device responding so slow to writing letters out. I could always crank out works on that graffiti area without using any 3rd party apps that are designed for fast writing. Now it's faster for me to just pop up the virtual keyboard and tap the letters out.

As far as the crashes go, they're so bad, so terribly bad. I cannot go a single day without several resets. On occasion, I have to restore the pref's databases, because it forgets my hotsync name on reset, and all my registered apps become unregistered. The sad part is, on most days, I only use DateBk5 (latest version, updated for TT5 and Treo650), AcidSolitare, and WordSmith.

I purchased the T5 because my Sony TH55 died (which btw, almost NEVER crashed, in the year that I've had it), and I wanted to get a "top of the line" product from a company still making Palm PDA's. Well, my TH55 is working again, mysteriously. Even though I don't fully trust it to stay alive long, I started copying my data back to it today, so I can start using it again until Palm decides to release an update to fix the NVFS bug that apparently is the cause of so many crashes.

Not to mention, email support from Palm is less then stellar. When I opened a case about these problems, they admitted it was a bug, and gave me NO other info, but said they were closing my case, and hoped the service I got was satisfactory. Each time I replied to the email, I got a different agent who gave me one-line answers and the same canned response after that.

Do I sound bitter? I am. I guess I expect better from a $400 piece of electronics.

Otherwise, I do like this device, nice features, the landscape thing is neat, the "graffiti anywhere" comes in handy too. That "!" alert icon in the status bar was neat when I saw how it alterted me to the daylight savings change. And it's fast, compaired to my TH55. AcidSolitare card movement FLIES, hehe. It's just that stability, cause I could even live with the graffiti slowness.

On that note, I'll stop.

Dan.

[Chiana]

Evening. I just registered here today and completed reading most of the 35 pages of the T5 post. Just want to give my take on it. First let me say that the T5 is a replacement for my Palm Vx. The Palm Vx being the first Palm device I had. Prior to that I had several WinCE devices. 2 sharps, one Phillips, 3 HPs. Some Palm tops, some Handhelds. The HP 620LX (IIRC) and below that was the Sharp mobilon. The Vx didn't have all the functions that any of those had, but was quite more stable. One reason I went with the T5. The other reason was that I wanted a portable MP3 player... but... that meant I would be carrying an MP3 player, cell phone and the Vx with me everyday.. didn't sound like fun to me. I also didn't want to worry about having to share the 1GB SD card with other software so the large internal memory is a plus for me. I thought about purchasing another WinCE PPC, but the only handhelds I had previously owned had left a bad taste in my mouth... much like windows 98 and XP Home edition. I also wanted more features that the Vx had... especially MS Office files on it. It also had to be compitable with WinXP, and Office and synch with Outlook.

1) Headphone hissing. Yes it is there, and yes it is annoying to an extent. Both with pTunes and Real player. However, once the MP3 is playing I don't even notice it is there. It is ony when the T5 is on and no sound coming from it, so no biggie really.

2) G2 seems to work fine. However, the system does seem to wait after strokes for input of additional parts of teh character, but if I keep going with writing I have no problems. I.e. don't wait for it to display the character you justw rote.

3) resets. I have had to do quite a few, but I had initally gone crazy and installed every piece of software I wanted... mistake. It was some of that software that caused most of the resets I required. Since doing a hard reset and a copletly new setup the T5 only required a reset once and that is when Avantgo's synch froze.

I would like it to me more stable, and it would be nice for the OS to be more compatiable with legacy software and external port devices. I do wish they had a vibrate setting though. I metal housing would be nice instead of the plastic one. And Palm could have supplied a better flap/cover/case for the screen than that flimsly pos it came with.

Do I like it? Yes

It a compromise? Somewhat, but I feel it was the best of my choices

If I could do it over would I purchase it again? Probably (80% sure)

So, despite its problems I like it.

-Chris

[E Ben G]

It a compromise? Somewhat, but I feel it was the best of my choices

If I could do it over would I purchase it again? Probably (80% sure)

So, despite its problems I like it.

-Chris

That's about the best summation of my feelings towards my T5 I have heard. It's the 'best of my choices'...mostly because in a sense we don't have very many choices these days. Hopefully LifeDrive will change that, and maybe Palm Linux will one day give us more choices.

But for now, I'm more or less 'happy'. (But not thrilled like I am with some of my other devices)

[ebernie]

Hi all, looks like this is a virgin post over here at 1src. Didn't know my submission over to PalmAddict would cause a stir here.

But firstly, let me get this straight: Gekko was right in saying that the 'review' was an honest one. Coming from years of PalmOS devices, the T5 has disappointed me in terms of stability.

I am hoping that I've got a lemon but judging from posts here, obviously, I didn't :(

Still holding on to it though. I guess I'm compromising too.

[madmaxmedia]

I think the best thing to do is to buy a Shuffle, it's small enough to fit in your pocket along with a cell phone or PDA!

I think in general people are being honest about their experiences (good and bad.) But human experience and memory is very subjective. People want to believe what they've bought is the best, or if they hate something will more than likely remember the negatives much more vividly.

But if there are people who are knowingly misrepresenting their experience of their T5 (saying it never crashes when it actually crashes a lot, or vice versa), then that's just sad.

[ErnieB]

I too have experienced numerous resets. It seems to happen most often when I have two appointment reminders queued up. As soon as I "OK" my way through them and switch applications, bingo--soft reset. I'd say this happens about 90% of the time. If I clear only one appointment reminder, I never get a soft reset--only with multiple reminders.

The other time it happens is during a hotsync. Not all the time--perhaps 1 out of 10 hotsyncs. Then again, it may only be an extension of the first circumstance. To be honest, I never really paid that close attention to it. I'm usually in a hurry when I hotsync.

Other than the stability, I'm happy with my T5. I upgraded from a Clie TJ27 (which was exceptionally stable) because of the virtual graffiti area. I'm a die-hard Fitaly user and missed FitalyVirtual on my TJ27. It's a cool PDA and I love the flash drive without drivers capability. I leave my "pen drive" at home now.

I'm sure palmOne will get around to fixing this issue, eventually. When I owned a T|C, the darned thing crashed constantly. Palm released a patch and the problem went completely away. I think they do listen. It may not seem like they're listening, but I really think they are.

[broth]

My two cents:

I have had my new T5 for a few weeks and was leary about all that I had read with regards to the stability and such. I had a Clie NX73 and it died such that Icouldn't use most of the software with any real stability.

I took the T5 and loaded up the most possible offending software first to see if things crashed. That way I was not out much if I had to do a hard reset.

I have since loaded most of what I had before except those items that aren't needed anymore. I didn't need the hack to make MP3's play or JackFlash for additional memory. I have not had a hard reset and have only a few (less then 10) soft resets. I have over 40 programs loaded and use the T5 for hours each day.

I am happy with the stability and enjoy the added memory. A few things I miss from the NX are the jog dial and the wow factor of the flip screen.