Using Palm products and Style Tap on a PocketPC

[George Herzog]

My Tungsten E finally broke down and I need to replace it.

I have exchanged several emails with both Michael Love and with Style Tap in order to figure out if it is worthwhile to currently purchase a PocketPC for use with Pleco products. Style Tap claims to sucessfully import Palm software programs into the PocketPC.

Style Tap is very optimistic, Michael Love is more cautious [which I appreciate].

I love the Pleco interface and fully support the software because it makes Chinese readily accessible to me, especialy when I want to read new characters while out and about in Asia. The flash cards and the stack [for review of input] also are important to me as they ease learning and review.

I would be interested to hear what others think of all this as it seems that some are waiting for Palm to come out with Cobalt 6.0 as bugs seem to be limiting the use of the T5 and the Treo 650 for Chinese.

It seems three areas require resolution.

1. The visual appearance of the screen on a QVGA device [Palms are VGA for PDA]. Apparently there is an automatic magnification of 1.5x that degrades the image [you can use an older PocketPC VGA without the problem]. If you remove the QVGAs magnification, the image is too small.

2. Style Tap software requires Pleco to issue a new second registration for the software to work on PocketPC. [I have asked Michael Love to try to figure out what he wants to do about that.]

3. Some limitations may exist on the size of files that Style Tap can accept and so some dictionaries may not work [even though the program software is functional]. This seems to be something that we would have to turn to Style Tap to correct and it isn't in the realms of the Palm OS or the Pleco software where file size limitation arise.

If all of these matters are resolved, we can purchase simply Style Tap and use Pleco Software without waiting for development of a PocketPC version.

Of course, if you have other Palm software that you want to use, similar issues will have to be resolved.

 

[George Herzog]

Really find that I would prefer to stay with Palm

Having spent a bit of time shopping for a replacement, I keep returning to Palm as the best value.

While the other systems have more manufacturers out there, all are more expensive and there is less application software available for the other products.

So, it looks like I would really like to get a Tungsten T5. The only problem is that it has unresolved bugs. Some are due to Palm's shift to slower non-volitile RAM.

Can anyone steer me in the right direction with this? Should I really hold out and wait for Palm to solve the defects? Or, can I just buy one now and expect Palm to fix the problems with downloadable software patches?

 

[mikelove]

Don't buy a T5, buy a T3, it's better in almost every respect and it's significantly cheaper if you can find one. (I've heard they can go as low as $170 at some retailers) It also has far fewer bugs than the T5.

If you don't want a T3, then at least wait a few weeks until palmOne announces this new "LifeDrive" PDA they're talking about - the LifeDrive itself may not work well with PlecoDict (in fact, after the T5 mess we're planning to put a warning on our website advising LifeDrive owners not to buy PlecoDict until we've had a chance to test it) but it will probably bring with it some price decreases and maybe even a refresh of the T5.

I don't know for certain whether or not palmOne is planning to fix the T5's bugs, but there's at least a decent chance they won't (they have a history in the past of ignoring problems, e.g. with the m505) and hence it might make sense to look at another model.

 

[George Herzog]

Thanks, Taiwan is a difficult place to buy a PDA these days

I went by the stores today and saw the Zire72s and T5 are the only available Palms in town. I cannot buy a T3 without going to Hong Kong or USA for a retailer.

My fierce loyalty to Pleco's Chinese dictionary has helped me conclude that I should stay with Palm.

But all these unfortunate bugs really created a bottleneck. I can wait.

By the way, I have learned to Goggle PDAs in regards to bugs and it is a good idea. PDAs have firmware issues that normal computers do not have. Upon doing so, I found that many of the Windows based PDAs have their own bug problems.

So, the best strategy is to try to wait for a better version. This is like the old Microsoft DOS versions - some were good and some were bad.

I intend to upgrade to Pleco's best Chinese dictionary, once I can identify which hardware to buy. It has been a struggle to wander about Kaohsiung without my PDA as I really came to rely on it for sorting out all sorts of street signs, menus, and sundry information. Also, it kept me practising my Chinese writing on a daily basis.