Palm TX vs Palm T5?

[Anonymous]

Hi All, Looking for a new Palm since my trusty old Zire 71 is starting to get a little flakey.

Any thoughts about these two models yet? I really want the 802.11 but is the T5 a lot faster?

Primary use will be PlecoDict of course!

thanks, -willy

 

[mikelove]

I don't think the processor speed is likely to make much of a difference for running PlecoDict - the biggest limiting factor for us is the speed of the storage medium and that should be pretty much the same on both models. And built-in WiFi is nice, it's amazing how often you'll be sitting somewhere waiting for something and randomly discover that there's an open hotspot nearby.

I should caution that we haven't actually tested PlecoDict on the TX yet (nor have we received a report from any TX-using customers) - I don't see anything in the spec to indicate that it would be likely to have problems, but nonetheless if you want to be as safe as possible it might be best to wait a few weeks and let us or someone else try it out on the TX first. That being said, the T5 is not without its share of (systemwide) bugs, so even if you do encounter a few problems, it's doubtful they'd be more serious than the problems you'll almost certainly encounter with a T5. And of course if we did find any serious TX-specific bugs we'd try to release a bug-fix at some point in the not too distant future.

 

[Anonymous]

Hey Michael, many thanks for your ultra fast reply and help as always.

Sigh, I keep waffling back and forth between the TX and the T5 which is being pretty steeply discounted. I can't make up my mind! Ah well, if I go for the TX I'll certainly report back on how I like it.

I've been using PlecoDict on my Zire71 for just a couple of weeks now and I do want to let you know that I think it is a great product! A noticeable improvement over Oxford. I'll probably invest in the add'l dictionaries soon.

thanks -willy

 

[Anonymous]

I got the TX! Very nice machine, definitely an improvement over my old zire71. Haven't had time to play around with all of its functions yet. Not exactly mind-numbingly fast but I'm known to be rather difficult to please.

Generally speaking, the parts I normally use in PlecoDict seems to be working beautifully! (dictionary, flashcards, external dictionaries, oxford HW recognition)

So far, I've run into 2 issues,

When I tried to install directly to internal Palm memory the sync would hang for hours at synchronizing documents. I would finally give up and cancel. I tried this about 4 times with the same resukts. When tried the install with the "put as much as possible into external SD memory" checkbox, it worked!

Twice, I used a file management program (filez and fileprog) to move some mp3 files around and also to move the flashcard export file. After both times I would try to start PlecoDict and the TX would immediately soft boot. Not positively sure if this is an interaction with Pleco ... but I haven't tried moving any files around since.

Just thought I'd report in fwiw, Thanks! -willy

 

[mikelove]

Thanks for the update on the TX - I'm delighted to know that it (mostly) works. Maybe at long last we've had a Palm release cycle where we don't immediately need to run out and buy 2 or 3 new handhelds just to fix the latest crop of bugs lovingly sent our way by Palm hardware engineers.

On the first issue, this sounds like a bug in the installer, but it should be pretty easy to fix - we'll just tweak the installer settings so it always tries to put as much as possible into SD memory. We were actually planning to do that anyway, since it with PlecoDict's caching system there's barely any performance hit when keeping font files on an SD card instead of in RAM.

The file management thing is a bit more peculiar - PlecoDict doesn't even look for flashcard import files until you actually bring up the import screen, so it's unlikely that it would notice or care where you had put that exported file. This could be a bug in the TX (or in Filez, I suppose) - we'll keep an eye on the developer mailing lists and see if anyone else runs into something similar. Sadly, if this is the worst bug in the TX it'll be Palm's most stable hardware release in years :?

 

[Anonymous]

Hi All, it's looking like I may have gotten a bum TX! The weird soft reboot problem happened again and I know I didn't play around with with any file moving programs this time. That was the last straw plus my return period was almost up so I decided to go exchange my unit for another one. Guess that's one good thing about brick and mortar.

This replacement TX works differently! It seems to load PlecoDict into main memory without any problems! I'm also finding out that the USB Sync Cable on the old one was defective because it would not start the hotsync when I pressed the button on the cable.

Hopefully the weird soft reboot problem has also gone away. I'll report back when I have more time to run it thru it's paces.

Thanks for all of your help, -willy

 

[mikelove]

Great! That's a relief, it would be nice if we could get through this latest round of Palm releases without having to do yet another bug fix. Though it doesn't reflect well on the hardware quality of the TX (but it's not like everyone's T5 works reliably either).

 

[Anonymous]

T|X Experience

I just purchased a T|X and the Complete version of the dictionary. I had the hang during the installation (I installed into main memory). But luckily it was when syncing documents, after program install.

I reset the device and the dictionary was fine.

Everything works perfectly, including character recognition and assigning the dictionary to the "web" button.

I started with a clean unit with no prior version of any Chinese language software.

 

[mikelove]

Great! Glad to hear it, this is yet more evidence that the old handwriting recognizer was the culprit. And this document sync bug is still very puzzling... perhaps HotSync Manager has a memory leak or some other issue that can cause problems after installing large files like the ABC database. Since the workaround is so simple I suppose it's not worth worrying about too much.

 

[Jim]

Great! Glad to hear it, this is yet more evidence that the old handwriting recognizer was the culprit. And this document sync bug is still very puzzling... perhaps HotSync Manager has a memory leak or some other issue that can cause problems after installing large files like the ABC database. Since the workaround is so simple I suppose it's not worth worrying about too much.

If you left the original flashcard files in memory after import or even if they are anywhere on the memory card Docs To Go will find them and they will show up in the list of files. This shouldn't be a problem but if you marked them to be syncronized it could cause a problem because of their size. You only need to tap once where the sync icon is in the Docs To Go file list to set them to sync so it would be easy to do by accident if you were not aware. Since hotsync is hanging during the document sync phase it is one possibility.

 

[mikelove]

Well I don't know that they're actually all that big by DocsToGo standards, but the number of lines or the use of Chinese characters might be a problem I suppose... or perhaps there's some issue with carried-over document files from a previous Palm setup.