Eight days later on the new PDA

Palm TX v. iPAQ 110 Classic

Palm TX	iPAQ 110 Classic
Palm OS Garnet	Windows Mobile 6.1

The pictures are close to relative scale in that the TX is slightly larger, with a larger and better screen. While browsing available forums I read much wailing and gnashing of teeth by TX owners having to switch for almost all the same reasons that I did; the Palm TX is now an orphan¹ . While it worked, it was great and basically set the standard of PDA functionality. However, Hotsync and Vista do not play well together. Actually, the fault is Vista and exacerbated by Palm’s inept failure to support.

This is worth a few words in the context of the new Palm Pre; Do NOT buy one! Palm is an inept organization that has absolutely NO loyalty to its customer base. The Pre, like the TX uses Palm’s proprietary OS, albeit a new one. When Palm stops supporting it’s OS, like they did the Palm OS, your expensive smart phone will quickly become an expensive paperweight. It takes continuous effort to keep up with M$’s fluid standards and Palm has a ten year proven track record of failing to make the required investment in software development and support. They even went so far as to spin the Palm OS off into a separate company so that they would not have to support it² .

This getting dangerously close to becoming an anti-Palm rant so I won’t go further in that direction.

Functionality

Palm OS is not a multi-tasking OS. When you switch to another application, the previous application is halted with its state saved until it gets called back into the foreground. Yes, that’s Computer Science Tech talk. What that boils down to is that unless you are actually doing something in the foreground thread the Palm’s processor is completely halted. This is why Palm battery life is in terms of weeks. My Palm TX has gone as long as six weeks without a recharge³ . But the more you use it, the shorter its battery charge will last. This also why I never ran multimedia applications on it. The built-in MP3 player cuts battery life down to days but still far longer than the iPAQ’s few hours. This also applies to the TX’s Bluetooth and WiFi radios.

Windows Mobile 6.1 (WM6.1, from now on) is a real multi-tasking OS. One key indicator of this is that the iPAQ automatically detects the presence of its Host⁴ and runs a continuous sync, whether it is via Bluetooth or the USB cable. The TX has to explicitly run a Hotsync session and once done, will not run another until you explicitly tell it to again. The impact on battery life is enormous⁵ . But the trade-off is some really cool potential for the iPAQ⁶ . For one thing, I can record a meeting on the built-in voice recorder while taking notes at the same time.

Oh yes, stroke recognition is much better on the iPAQ whereas the Palm TX only recognizes Graffiti ™.

So far …

All in all, I like it. I am already up to the day-timer/planner functionality I am used to with the Palm TX (even reading eBooks) and I am looking into List managers and Project planners.

More later …

1. No longer supported by Palm or anyone else. [↩]
2. One of the dumbest moves possible [↩]
3. My Palm III typically went three months on a set of batteries. [↩]
4. My HP Pavilion DV6505ez laptop. [↩]
5. 4-6 hours max autonomy [↩]
6. It comes with a 1200 mAhr battery and I have seen 4000 mAhr expansion packs for it, which takes autonomy out to about 15 hours. I also have a rechargeable Nickel Metal Hydride (NMH) battery pack that can quickly field charge any micro-USB device from 4 AA or AAA NMH batteries. A trick not possible with the TX. Neither can the TX charge from my laptop USB outlets where both my phone and the iPAQ can. [↩]

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