Comments on: palmOne Delivers T5 WiFi Drivers, PhoneLink Update

I set it up on my demo T5 and it didn't seeem to impact the battery to much though I only had it on for about an hour. I worked very well I had it doing wireless hotsyncs through the wifi and browsing pages in less then 5 min.

Good question. I am tempted but if it ain't broke.....
I am hoping for a "smarter" driver which will automatically disable Bluetooth when you turn on the Wifi. But I doubt if palmOne has done the obvious yet :(

T3 user

Well I haven't had WiFi on my T3 long enough to probably notice any subtle benefits from the updated driver. But since at least one person installed it and it worked, I'll probably just do it anyway for the warm fuzzy feeling.

http://vtbsd.net/winhelp/

Please compare apple with apple.
dell is PPC based. did you count how many times more palm program there are?
Did you consider how heavy and how big the dell is?
After all, is wifi really an important feature of everyone? To my understanding, No.
and pls check out the street price of T5. it's just about $150 cheaper than the x50v. lol

I'd have to agree with fly on this one. I have a Dell sitting in front of me and i've held and played with the T5. The two devices for intents and purposes are equally sized.
This is the problem I am having with P1 rigth now. They used to offer something special in their devices, wether that be pocketablility, higher resolution(not too long ago), or stability.
All those points have been taken away in the T5 and they have removed features common to just about every device out there, and to top it all off they priced it as a high end unit!
When as big a fan of the Palm OS as I am has a Dell X50V as his main unit, Palm is falling WAAAAY short.

http://www.senacases.com/catalog/DELL-AXIM-X50-X50v-CASES-p-1-c-313.html

Just to be contrarian..

(Yes, I know the T|T5 is missing vibro-alarms (vibrolarms?), my support box is full of T|T5 device bugs ;)

But lets just get down to it -- PalmOne and PalmSource still have a pretty good thing going; sure, the T|T5 doesn't offer a lot over the T|T3 (and loses a few things), but if you're looking for a new PDA, the T|T5 is a pretty good bet. Gorgeous screen, decent size, fast processor, good softare bundle, etc etc. Look at it for what it is, and not in relatoin to hat it could have been.. (at least for now.) If you've got a T|T3 or TH55 you don't need to look again (until your digitizer gets shot!)...

Flash ram is *great* for the Treo 650 I'd say; for the T|T5 it'd be nice if they'd used a larger cache chip and provided as much heap RAM as a T|T3 has, but they didn't.. but then again, most people wouldn't notice. Its got a few glitches.. fine. (Well more than a few....) They'll fix most of them. I'm sure you're used to glitches in this world these days.. PalmOne is not alone there.

Once they fix up a few bugs (sector sizing, speed of cache perhaps, etc.), it'll be pretty sweet.

Its the flagship PDA (not smartphone) for PalmOne; compare to the Axim if you will and the Axim wins hands down for hardware value, but its still Pocket PC (you can debate that if you will.) But then compare to the top of the iPaq's.. that new one with the pseudo-glidepoint-mouse on the bottom.. we're talking *tall*.. won't fit in my jeans pocket! Then compare to e800 Toshiba.. same problem.. way too tall. I think the Axim X50 and X50v are pretty good balances, but the other top line PoPC's are missing something badlyin the ergonomics department (but then again, they may wellbe targetted to those who don't mind tall bricky devices.)

Naturally, everyone has to pick what best suits their needs, but I still think PalmOne knows something well -- they know how to make some pretty good mix and match "lots of what people *need* and still fit in your pocket and look attractive". So if you need Pocket PC, go PoPC; if you need Palm, go Palm; if you need a new PAlmOne device.. the T|T5 is pretty good stuff. So its not all that you wanted... what could be?

It *is* depressing to hear so many people talking about switching camps but it works both ways; people are sarming to the PalmOne smartphones, a lot of people sure love their T|E (and presumably their T|E2's if my inbox is anything to say about it). Others who've beed waiting for Wifi so bad it hurts have either moved to T|C, gotten the SDIO card, or moved to Pocket PC; they'll be happy where they go I'm sure, but its for each person to decide..

I'm sticking with my T|T3 baby, but when the Treo 650 comes to Canada I'm jumping in front of that train.

jeff

(If the above makes no sense or shames me, I justify it by being up for far too many hours while being paged constantly.... frazlled! ;)

The Shadow knows!

skeezix,

Thanks for the thoughtful post. Can't wait for the next version of ShadowPlan (handheld).

(From a grateful admirer of your work.)

>>>Yes, there's a million old OS4 programs, but you can crash an OS5 device faster than a Windows ME computer with half of them.

Yeah. What he said.

(Although SmartDOC, an obsolete **OS3** program, still runs on my TE. But the Find feature, which OS*4* broke, still doesn't work. Hence, I bought MiniWrite just to do Finds...)

That 1.1 oz difference in weight really makes a difference between the Axim and the T5. While the T5 is "missing features" who is buying it for all of these features? Wankers on this web site, but not many else.

PDAs follow more consumer electronic trends and not desktop computer "feature hounds." Thus, those who really pay the bills for PalmOne are buying the unit well as shown in the latest market stats.

Did I whine? No. Did I declare PPC to be all-powerful and superior to the Palm OS? No. I gave a device-to-device comparison to someone who I thought was being one-track minded and somewhat ignorant.

For whatever purpose, I might as well add that I don't consider the T|5 to be a terrible device. It's a logical evolution; with the exception of WiFi and PalmSource's inability to get OS6 out in a reason amount of time, it's really a good device.

You see user backlash here, and to be honest, it's mostly the people here who are the ones paying $400+ for PDAs. People who are going to spend that much on one of these are generally going to want WiFi and other enhanced features. The PDA market hasn't lent itself to the common person as well as we all seem to have thought; us geeks, if I may use the term, are a large number of the prospective buyers.

So yeah, WiFi drivers. Good for PalmOne, good for T|5 owners.

"The Palm apologists are having to really stretch on this one...they sound like all the Republicans who say if you don't like Bush you should leave the country."

If you don't like Palm, go to PPC and stay in the same country. You PPC lovers are really stretching it with a lame analogy like that. Switching from Palm to PPC is nothing like leaving your country.

" I'm sure Palm loves the T5 fanboys who let Palm do their thinking for them. Don't complain, just buy whatever Palm decides to let you have."

I've got nothing to complain about,...duh, You are the one who is unhappy not me. The T5 is a machine custom made for me, it's almost as though Palm was reading my mind! I chose the T5: I could have just as well chosen any number of PDAs including PPC. I'm rich, I don't have any restraints on my spending and I chose a T5. To use a political analogy, which you may appreciate, I think the problem is that you a tyrant of sorts who will not accept dissent and opposing views to your own. You are adamant that you are right in your opinions and that everyone should agree with you.

"If you think that atittude is good for the Palm community think again. Then take a look at the sales numbers for this year and think one more time."

The sales numbers will be just fine without the geeks. Palm is not about Geeks.

BTW is it too much to ask you whiners to stick to the topic rather than rant and rave and lead everyone off topic? Just make a post on your favorite user group and invite all the other whiners to vent there instead of wandering the web messing up discussion groups with your complaints.

The article says that the installer takes up that much space.
I'm pretty sure the driver itself won't be that big.

At least I hope not!
Why would some special installer be required I wonder?

I don't have the wifi card so I can't test myself to see how much actual space the driver takes. Can anyone else chime in?

Like the others have said you just need 7MB free to install the driver, then the app deletes itself after it runs. It does not take up 7MB of space.

"notably absent in this update is support for the Treo 650 smartphone"

They oughta try supporting, say, the Zire 31. Why does Palm only do things like WiFi SD cards that are compatible on their higher-end models? Let people jump in the Zire trap. They buy a Palm Zire 31-compatible SD WifiCard, but want more range after they find out Palm wrote the driver to limit the WiFi range. They purcahse a T|3 so they can get a lot better range, of course, they already spent the money on the first WiFi Card, so Palm people have their paycheck, not to mention they bought the Z31 & The T|3, so what's preventing them from making a Zire 31 SD WiFi Card to make more money? I mean heck, I'd buy it, even though I am only a (student), at 14.

Palm Zire -> Palm Zire 31

I have to agree that palmOne should start having some of their SDIOs made by themselves support the lower-end models such as the Zire 31. Man, palmOne would have better sales if their lower-end models were feature-rich and/or their SDIOs had unconditional support for the lower-end models.

Powered by Palm OS since March 2002

Vesther & others:

It's all the age-old marketing game. Intentionally omit or "cripple" features at the lower end of your lineup in order to push buyers to the next model higher up. Car companies & electronic manufacturers have been doing this for decades.

I really cannot begrudge P1 for leaving that support out of Z31 & T|E if it really does come down to a power management issue or something. If it's simply a driver issue--well then, do you expect any different from P1?

Now the lack of OS5 drivers for their old Bluetooth card, that's entirely P1's fault. They just want to push the remaining m5xx users to a newer BT model such as the Z72 or T5.

P1ss off back to PPC land you moronic troll...!

JLM.

I use a Mac at home and sync with Pocket Mac. Palm is abandoning the Mac market so your going to have to buy Missing Sync sooner or later anyway.

Get a T3 + BT phone. If you are frequently somewhere with WiFi, consider getting the WiFi card. T5 has no signficant advantages over T3, but:

plastic instead of metal
no voice recorder
no vibration alarm
75USD more expensive
No more UC connector (might not matter to you)

MST

Yea, I noticed the 6820 driver, but I have a 6800 phone--don't know how well that driver would work. Oh well, at least I still have my 3650 so I won't be totally a$$ed out.

According to the schedule on my pda/phone/gps/multimedia center with built in rice cooker, the Gadget Addicts Anonymous meeting is in 30 minutes.

phones.txt defines a bunch of phones that use the UPDD.prc file, including the T630.

Don't buy products based on promises.

Buy based on performance.

Ahhh, thank you for the clarification.

Yes, I too would be upset by this, were I in your situation.

This story should have been featured here on PIC by now.

I see that you have never dealt with PPC's on very large corporate networks using LEAP...

Pain in the rear, I forget how many device combinations we went through to get one that worked reliably with the security protocols and roaming.