The Speculist

About a month ago I bought another PDA. I've had "personal digital assistants" before – a first generation Palm and then a Handspring - but neither ever became an essential device the way this new one has.

The device I went with was the Palm TX. The TX is no longer the flagship of the Palm company the way it was late last year. The newer "Lifedrive" Palm is everything the TX is, but with a 4 gig hard drive and a $400 price tag.

The TX has 100 megabytes of usable storage. This might not sound like much compared to your desktop, but it also accepts SD chips. If you're switching out 2 gig SD chips, storage is not really a big issue. The Palm and Handspring devices I used in the past required me to hotsync in order to move files back and forth from the PDA to a computer. Maybe it was just me, but hotsyncing with two computers (one at home, one at work) was too complicated to bother with. The TX still hotsyncs – that's the way you load new software - but I use the little SD chips like I used floppy discs ten years ago. Word files, Excel files move back and forth between home and the office as if I were carrying a floppy disc with me, BUT I also have use of those files on the road thanks to the "Documents To Go" suite on the Palm.

That alone is enough reason to carry the TX everyday. This literally frees me from the office. I can leave the office anytime secure in the knowledge that I'll have the files with me to get the job done when the cell phone rings.

The TX is not all work. I can load a ton of music on a 2 gig SD chip and play it on the included pTunes player. MP3 players will disappear into PDA's and phones just as completely as dedicated word processors disappeared into PCs.

I've been told that you can put a couple of full length movies on a 1 gig SD. I'm going to try that this weekend. I also have a port of several of the old Atari 2600 games that play very close to the originals. And I play Sudoku and other puzzle games.

With the TX we finally have a worthy eReader. I've downloaded and enjoyed a couple of public domain classics, but I intend to read new books this way too. Note to publishers: from here on out, if you neglect to publish your authors electronically, you will lose significant business.

A couple of the features that drew me to the TX have turned out not to be all that important. The TX is a wifi device. I could use it to get on the Internet, read the Speculist, Instapundit, etc. But I've found that I don't really use it that way very often. I have wifi at home and the office, but why use the TX when I can log onto the Internet with a regular computer? When I'm away from the home and office I'm usually not in a hotspot.

If having the Internet everywhere were a priority for me, I could use the TX's Bluetooth capability to log on wirelessly with a Bluetooth equipped cell phone. For now, I don't see the necessity.

I did purchase a folding keyboard for the PDA made by Belkin. The good news first: it fits nicely in my pocket while being large enough to be useful. Here's the bad news...it's wireless. Why would that be a problem? Well, instead of using radio (Bluetooth would be nice), it uses infrared light. It actually comes with a little mirror that has to be set just right to reflect the signal from the keyboard into the top of the unit. Heaven forbid you need to touch the PDA with the stylus. You'll have to sit there and play with that stupid little mirror again – which is complicated by the fact that you're aiming invisible light. Isn't wireless supposed to add convenience? If you intend to get a keyboard for your PDA, let me recommend one that plugs into your PDA or uses some form of wireless that doesn't require little mirrors.

Lastly, I was a little concerned about getting a Palm OS device as opposed to a Microsoft Pocket PC. The word on the Palm OS is that version 5 is so cobbled together that it's not nearly as stable as older versions of the Palm OS.

This may be true. My first Palm never crashed. Well...it never crashed until I dropped it and it hit the floor. The TX has crashed, but only when running certain nonessential programs. Apparently Palm OS 5 doesn't like the Kasparov's chess program. This is not a real problem for me. If I decide I have to have chess, there are plenty of other software choices. The TX is running fine now...knock on wood.

I am a little jealous of the Pocket PC's true multitasking ability. The Palm simulates multitasking in some ways, but it's not possible to have a couple of Word or Excel files open at the same time. You have to exit one document and then slowly load another one.

I was asked why I didn't get a Treo smart phone. I was tempted, but I didn't want to compromise between the undersized PDA and the oversized cell phone. So I get to carry both. Yes, I realize that this means I'm wearing a utility belt. I've embraced my inner nerd.

Unlike former Palms, this PDA does not permanently dedicate 1/3 of the screen to Grafitti input. The whole screen is available for displaying pictures, movies, or Excel spreadsheets. The one-button toggle between portrait and landscape functions is really nice also.

The Palm TX is not perfect, but it proves to me, finally, that a PDA is worth the belt space. My days of walking around without a computer are over. The TX retails for $300, but you might want to buy it the way I did – find a reputable eBay seller and pay about $200.