Reasons why I should buy a Tungsten

[maflynn]

I currently own an iPaq 3835, and begun thinking about the Tungsten. I guess why should I give the ipaq up. I've browsed the forum reading various posts and it seems almost like a religious debate which I don't want to get into.

I use my iPaq for office apps, I keep a lot of spreadsheets, notes (in word) and pdfs. I also use it for my appointments and tasks. Reading Excel spreadhseets is a must have.

So far the iPaq has the following
1. screen is bigger
2. shorter battery life
3. Bulkier unit

Conversly
Palm
1. Screen is smaller
2. Battery life is better
3. Smaller form factor.

I use a mac at home and so the tungsten would probably be better on that front and I don't play games on my ipaq.

I guess what I'm asking for in lite of the differeances noted above why should I buy one.

Thanks
Mike

[Bill Gamble]

http://discussion.brighthand.com/palmhandhelds/showthread.php?s=&threadid=24076

[NSi]

I will try to be as objective as possible.

If your main activity is reading office documents, I really think the iPaq is the simpler alternative. I would buy a new, smaller iPaq, like the 1910. The advantage of the iPaq in this field lies on the fact that you can simply drag and drop the docs you need to read on the iPaq and you're done. With the Palm, you need to convert everything.
If conversion is not a problem for you, then a Palm will give you far superior PIM functions like tasks, notes, journals, calculators, password keeping, record keeping, reminders, calendars, etc. There is a staggering amount of choices in Palm software for each of those tasks.
I guess in the screen department they are roughly at the same level, with the palm having the smaller screen at a higher density for better definition, and the iPaq having the bigger screen with less density but with fully antialiased text. Graphics do look a lot better on the Tungsten though.

Another word of warning: depending on the formatting of your pdf documents, a lot of them might not be readable at all on the Palm because they will fail conversion, whereas the PocketPC verison of Acrobat has never failed me and reads native documents.

Battery life is not very different on my T|T from my 1910.

I guess it comes down what's more important to you: viewing documents, or PIM functions. For the former, my money is squarely on the iPaq, for the latter, nothing beats a Palm.

[woodworks]

If you use a Mac at home (and syncing it with your PDA is important to you), you're pretty much locked out of the PocketPC world. Microsoft hasn't seen fit to provide any sort of syncing capability betwen the Mac and PocketPCs. There may be kludges out there that I'm unaware of, but chances are they make you jump through a lot of hoops to exchange any sort of data.

[Ben S]

You might find this interesting. I know I did, as it mirrored my own experiences with Office documents on both the PalmOS and the PPC platforms.

[maflynn]

Thanks for the input especially with documents to go. As for the mac there is a product called pocketmac that provides some syncing ability and what that does not do I use VirtualPc for the Mac which allows me to sync everything else.

The Tungsten looks cool, seems simple to use and is small. Things that I like. The memory seems to be meager from a ppc perspective and pdf rendering is important. I'll take a look at one in the next couple of days.

Any issues with dust under the screen, the iPaq had problems with that when it was first released and so I'm wondering of the TT has the same issue.

Regards
Mike

[palmtt]

As a mac user i have never liked pocket pc's mainly cuz no mac support out of box. even if you do get pocketmac no everything's compatible. So unless you have virtualpc i don't recommend them. One last thing isync offers full support for tunsten and it has built in bt software.

[Ben S]

I've read a few posts about dust in Tungstens, but the number seems to have been very few and it was right at the beginning of the production run, IIRC.

PDFs on a handheld have always been a problem. I haven't looked at the available PPC software in quite a while but last time I did look it was pretty primitive (it looked OK but you had to pan around to see everything).

[Alanjp3]

Reason you should buy a Tungsten?

Because you're smart.

[maflynn]

Because you're smart.

Thats the best reason I've heard so far

What about the screen size, I'm going to compare it aganst my ipaq tomorrow if compusa/best buy/staples has a tungsten.

The screen seems smaller how readable is it?

As for the Mac, I own pocketmac (I'm disapointed in the features/stability/speed/) and VPC which is ok but my mac is my main machine and so syncing with it is becoming more important.

Thanks
Mike

Oh yeah one more question the pocket pc only allows syncing with two computers, does the palm have any such restrictions?