Journal of a TX Upgrade

I've upgraded! Below are some journal entries I made along the way, chronicling the ups and downs of my switch to a Palm TX. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact me.


Before buying:

I had only bought a Zire 72 a little over a year, so I had no real reason to upgrade. However, the T3 and T5 both had that high-res plus screen that kept tempting me. It wasn't until the TX came out that I decided I would get a new Palm. And while my Zire 72 is still current in the Palm marketplace, the TX had so much more to offer. The TX's sleek design and dark outer shell first made me give that Palm a second look. And the wifi, bluetooth, widescreen and memory seemed fantastic. I personally have no use Zire 72's built-in camera (it doesn't exactly take the best pictures anyway). With the amazing features of the TX, I began to have some doubts it would live up to expectations. Some things are just too good to be true...



Waiting for the TX to arrive:

So here's the deal. I purchased a new-in-box Palm TX off of eBay for approx. $306 CAD ($270 USD). The auction ended on Feb. 5 and due to various different factors I paid via money order, which I sent out the next day. The seller received the payment on Feb. 14 and I waited until Mar. 3 before I recieved the item. While I was waiting, I began contemplating if I had done the right thing buying a TX when I already have a Zire 72. I know a lot of you people reading this probably consider me a fool for even getting a second current-model Palm. However, the money's spent and there's no going back. I've been reading some more reviews about the TX which give me some concern. Like reports of unresponsive hard buttons, slow Blazer loading, crashes, oversensitive DIA, and mostly program incompatibilities (such is the case with many of the backup utilities). However, I've heard far more positive feedback than negative, especially related to stability of the OS compare to other Palms, like the T5 and LifeDrive. We'll see...



After arrival:

Well it's finally here. After many different incidents and over a month of waiting, I've finally received my new Palm TX.

I opened the box and found the usual stuff, software CD, documentation, sync cable, charger, flip case, and then the device itself. I attached the flip case/flap, which was pretty stiff and to this day won't go completely closed without something on top of it. I'm pretty sure the stiffness will wear down as time goes by. I then plugged my new TX into the charge cable and began to wait for the battery to charge. In the meantime I decided to install Palm Desktop onto my computer from the included disk. Installation from several time, but eventually worked out for me.

By the time I finally got to use my device, I was a little apprehensive to say the least.

The highres plus screen was an amazing difference compared to my Zire 72. The colour on the TX seemed slightly washed out compare to the the Zire 72, but still amazing nonetheless. The screen had a slight spotlight effect in which the edges fade a bit. The ability to collapse the DIA and rotate at a moment's notice really enchanced the experience. I also found that graffitti on the Palm TX is very slow. Now know a lot of users out there just love the one-handed-navigation, but personally I find it very tacky and now very well implimented. In many programs the blue halo is cut off by the edge of the screen. I hate how the home button brings you to the built-in rom-based launcher and I especially hate that whole Favourites program. I know a lot of people complained about a lack of a Home button in the bottom status bar. I don't mind the Find button, but I does slow things down a bit when the DIA is collapsed and I have to press the hard button. I'm picky, I know. The other thing I noticed is that while wi-fi is really fast to setup and connect with, Blazer is terribly slow to launch and isn't especially well at handling complex webpages. It seems that after about 30 minutes of wi-fi, the TX gets considerable warm. Also, it surprised me how long lasting the battery was. I could easily get for several hours on wifi and watch a movie in a single charge. As well, contratry to earlier reviews I've read, the TX seems pretty fast, although reset take much longer than a Zire 72.



Settled in:

Well, I've had the TX for about two weeks now and I've found software solutions to almost all of my earlier complaints. I've used the Home button program by Mobile-Stream to replace the find button in the status bar with a Home button. I used ButtonsEx to change the hard button configuration and now have the Home hard button going to ZLauncher, which I now use religiously. After digging through various 1src forum pages, I came accross the famous Netfront browser. Nefront, with the small Clie fonts installed provides a great internet experience. Then I went to Dmitry's PalmPowerups website. He himself owns a TX and has fixed many of it's flaws. It install a freeware of his called Graffitti 1.999, which sped up my TX's graffitti input considerably. I then installed his BrightnessFix.TX which now allows me to bring the brightness all the way off. I then installed MaxX and my Netfront internet exprience increased tenfold. Landscape Netfront truely is the ultimate! I installed severall other of Dmitry's programs, including PowerClip, UDMH, warpSpeed, skinUI and UnCache. I made a modified version of Cobalt White that has custom commandbar icons, darker text field lines and is a version 8 skin, meaning no more one-handed-navigation, which really made me happy. UnCache really sped up my resets and reduced the number of resets I've had. As for backup, the only program I trust with this NVFS device is Resco Backup, which I've had no problems with. I was honestly surprised to find out that the Targus Universal Wireless Keyboard that I bought almost two years ago works flawlessly on my TX. I've also installed DALauncher along with DBCache and it's DA so I can clear my DBCache in any program. Clearing the DBCache seems to speed up the system immensly.

There are many other programs I use on my TX, especially since there is 100MB user-accessable RAM, so I'll just highlight a few. In terms of games, I have to say Bejewled, Bike or Die, MicroQuad, and Warfare Inc. are my current favourites. For multimedia, I use the built-in Pocket Tunes for music, GrxView for my images, and TCPMP for my videos. I've got all the plug-ins installed, so I can play almost any video (with the exception of Windows Media files, grr). Videos with TCPMP in landscape in breathtaking. And unlike with my Zire 72, TCPMP is able to remove the 2pixel white border in fullscreen mode. Absolutely fantastic. I also frequently use 4cast, because of it's ZLauncher plugin, and, well, it's simplicity. As a student, I also find that the program Due Yesterday comes in handy quite often. And for office documents, I stick with the included Documents To Go, along with the free program PalmPDF. Great combionation and together with my Targus keyboard, I'm able to do fair amount of work on my TX.



My Conclusion:

In conclusion, I have definately found an amazing Palm, worthy to replace my Zire 72. I honestly don't miss the Zire 72's camera as much as I thought I would, especially since I have a cameraphone. I find the wifi, large screen, mega memory, low price, and overall stability to be an amazing combination. The TX is definately a winner and it has overwhelmingly exceeded my expectations. I recommend it to anybody looking for a great Palm at a low price.