Palm TX vs. iPod Touch - revisited

I say get one and if you really, really don't like it, return it. Amazon will take it back without penalty. I sent back a 3 week old 1st gen Mini when the 2nd gen came out. The 1st gen mini had lousy battery life, so I didn't feel bad about returning it. My wife and I think our Touch's are the coolest gadgets we have--far cooler than either of us anticipated. A phone it isn't. A camera it isn't. COOL...it is super cool. WE use ours everyday for every function the Touch accomodates. Games, email, video,weather, stocks, music, IM'ing. IMO it's WELL worth the cost of admission. ANd new apps appear every day. Not a week goes by I don't add new apps.

I've got a not-wireless Palm with a dying battery (need to recharge it every night) so I picked up the new iPod Touch for a number of reasons:

1. a highly-needed app that is currently on the Palm has moved to the iPod and is very well written, very stable
2. wireless access & ssh access
3. I discovered a great weather app that really does provide the info I need
4. It's cool.

As much as I like the iPod, it's going back to the store today (3 weeks of playing) for a number of reasons
1. most of the add-on apps out there are not at the level of maturity to make them really useful
2. there's not a decent spreadsheet
3. I already have a perfectly good mp3 player
4. altho the wifi works perfectly well, it doesn't play nicely with my mail server. Fortunately, I can read most of the email thru webmail
5. i have no interest in watching movies on a 3 inch screen
6. i have no interest in playing games on a 3 inch screen
7. I want a linear list of contacts, not a series of "cards"
8. I, too, miss Graffiti. Keyboard touch is extremely slow

Perhaps in a year or so the product and add-on apps will have matured but right now, it's not suitable for what I need. Guess I'll just keep recharging the Palm every night.

🙂 Wow, you are hard to please! Just teasing! I watched Back to the Future in bed last night on my Touch, w/o disturbing my wife. There are some fun games to play on the small screen. I've no trouble with comcast or yahoo email. yes, keyboarding on Touch might be considered problematic. Have you tried Pandora on the Touch?? What's wrong with the weather apps available on the Touch?? Graffiti?? I HATE it! I have a Handspring Visor. what a waste of money that turkey was!

"5) Functional RSS Readers"
there are many free too
problem is when you want to add an address because
copy paste is not supported you have to use a piece of
paper to write down the rss address to write it back
in the rss reader :S

Hi,

This past July I replaced an old aging Palm IIIe (which still works!) with an 8 gig iPod Touch and haven't looked back yet!! Mind you, the ole Palm does have one advantage over the iPod Touch - it uses AAA batteries which can be gotten anywhere anytime 🙂

Have fun!

Did I actually hear someone say they missed Graffiti? I needed a good laugh!

If they must linger on the screen to input characters they might look at the apps Writepad or, even more interesting, Writingpad.

Actually, all I ever used was the Graffiti because once I learned it and got very proficient with it as I did, it was much much faster than the keyboard. The Palm IIIe was my 2nd one having first had the 1st original Palm Pilot.

For me, the keyboard on my iPod Touch is a big step backwards and certainly much slower and I make much more typo errors than I did even with my 1st generation Palm Pilot. I find my finger just a bit too big for the iPod's keyboard, hence the typo errors.

Perhaps one day the iPhone and iPod Touch will have this advanced feature that was available with the Palm Pilot in 1997 (I believe that's when I got my 1st one). The Graffiti is the only thing I miss from my Palms

I am on the fence as well. I don't really have the money to spend but I really want an iPod Touch. I am so tired of looking at this scratched up ol' T|X. And syncing is a PITA.

I may miss graffiti but I think I'll get over it.

I was a long-time Palm user... power user I'd say. The usual calendar/contacts/tasks stuff plus eBooks. I did not need another iPod.

Short version: there are a few things lacking (that I hope will arrive), but for the most part I am very happy about my move to iPod touch. Two things -- the replacement battery in my Palm Tungsten E2 was no longer holding a charge and the times when syncing would take all night -- pushed me over the fence.

The longer version is in blogs iPod Touch as a PDA and My New PDA: iPod Touch

-fred

I had been using Palm devices for about 6 years, most recently a TX. I've had it for 3 years and the battery was beginning to be a problem, and the screen was losing sensitivity. I did NOT want to go to Pocket PC but wasn't sure what I could get to replace my TX.

I have now had a 16gb Ipod Touch for a little over a month and love it. Yes, there are areas where I hope to see improvement -- cut/copy/paste of course, and the calendar could be improved. I sync with Outlook 2003 and would love to see categories supported. Would also like to see a year view, and have a way to go to a specific date. But for now I am happy with the calendar function and even figured out a workaround for Notes -- I created a separate Contacts folder called Notes and use the memo field. This allows me to sync notes to the Ipod and works well. (And frankly this works better even in Outlook than Outlooks own Notes.)

Internet and email I could do on the TX of course, but both are better on the Ipod. I was able to download the free eReader app and download all the ebooks I have purchased without any problem. And I was to either find Ipod versions or replacements for other Palm software I used (Splashshopper, SplashID to replace Passwords Plus, Bible software, etc.).

I thought I would miss Graffiti, but frankly, with a little practice, I like the keyboard better, and find it faster. Especially since Graffiti was becoming a problem with the loss of touch sensitivity on the TX.

In addition to all that I can watch videos and do other things I couldn't do on the Palm. I am really enjoying it and so far not missing the Palm at all! It is indeed a 'cool' device.

Judy

Compare the brightness of the screens. That made me to buy an iPod Touch! Sometimes I miss Graffiti and Quicken, otherwise it's so much better than Palm. Just my 2 cents 🙂

🙂 You know how Apple loves to make our stuff "obsolete" very quickly. If you wait a bit, I'm sure you will be rewarded with an even better Touch next year.