Palm TX Bluetooth Wi-Fi Handheld PDA 1047NA

Multimedia
The TX includes Palm's media application for viewing photos and videos. The media application has been greatly speed up to display photo thumbnails, even from large megapixel digital cameras. You can manage and create photo albums on the device or an expansion card. The program can also display slide shows with a number of different animated transitions. The video player has been updated with full screen mode, but still does not support many video codec's such as Divx. Fortunately there is a more than excellent free media player available, TCPMP to pick up the slack.

Palm includes Pocket-Tunes v3.09 for digital audio. This is a much nicer player than RealPlayer and offers support for background play, on device playlists and skins. It supports MP3, WAV and Ogg Vorbis files.

The TX includes Palm's Blazer web browser v4.3 for wireless web surfing. Blazer is an excellent and very speedy browser. It renders web pages significantly faster because it displays the text first, before loading the formatting and images. Sometimes its rendering leaves a bit to be desired and I wish it would support smaller fonts. It has both an optimized and a widescreen mode and supports javascript and VPN connections (with VPN software). The browser also has excellent support for bookmarks and offers proxy and proxyless browsing modes.

VersaMail v3.1 is the included email client. It supports both POP and IMAP email servers, users can download mail wirelessly or by synchronizing with their desktops. For Enterprise users whose companies run Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, VersaMail has built in Microsoft Exchange Server ActiveSync that will directly import and enable corporate email and calendar synchronization.

One Handed Navigation
The Palm TX incorporates the one handed navigation system that debuted on the Treo series for a superb one handed user experience. The 5-way navigator and new code make it possible to perform many tasks without using the stylus or needing to tap the screen. There is a light blue glow that highlights dialogs and form elements, that acts much like an on screen cursor. It really makes using the handheld with one hand easy and much more intuitive. It works well within many of the included apps and also works on many existing third party programs.

The one-handhed experience has further been improved with the addition of a dedicated Home button that can link back the launcher or the favorites application. Holding down the home button for a few seconds will also bring up a list of your last six apps used.

Graffiti 2 handwriting recognition is included for data input on the handheld. The dynamic input area can also be used as an onscreen keyboard and you can also write Graffiti anywhere on the screen. For those that prefer classic Graffiti, you can install the old libraries to enable Graffiti 1.