27 out of 27 people found this review helpful.
Tungsten's Got Nothing To Do With It
Date of Review: Mar 23, 2006
The Bottom Line: Great for contacts, tasks, appointments, photos and portability of some MS Office documents.
OVERVIEW
For some reason Palm decided to name this little PDA "Tungsten" - but their isn't an ounce of Tungsten in it. Well, its an OK name, but I didn't buy it for the name, I bought it due to an unfortunate accident.
After four wonderful years with my Handspring Visor Edge (silver), my wife dropped it on the hardwood floor (just happened to NOT be in its case at the time) and shattered the glass. I dearly miss my Visor Edge - but when I went to EBay, they were going for $60 (and that's well used). Amazon had a special running on the Tungsten E2 for $129 (free shipping) and because it was color and had the latest Palm OS on it, I couldn't resist.
Installation
I don't put any crap on my computer - so when I say installation went without a hitch I don't know how much weight that carries. When I installed the software, it found the old software - removed it - and then I sync'd my Palm to my home PC.
I recommend NOT registering your Palm (just save your receipt). After registering, Palm sent me email after email until I unsubscribed. They sent a coupon to their store, but it is only good on about five extremely over priced accessories - when you don't use this coupon they will KEEP sending it to you.
Where's the Power Cord
The Tungsten E2 is powered and sync'd using one cord. That sounds cool, but compared to my Visor is SERIOUSLY SUCKS! The Visor Edge came with a little cradle and it just slid in - almost like it had grease on it. Need to run to an appointment - just pick up the Visor and go.
That's NOT happening with the Tungsten E2. No cradle, and the cord has to "snap" in. Need to run - carefully unsnap the cord - be careful you don't want to bend the connectors. What's a guy to do? I spent ANOTHER $27 on a cradle from Palm (no the coupon wasn't good for use on a cradle). Once the cradle is hooked up, just slide the E2 into place and it will fall out. Yes, I said FALL OUT - you need to SNAP it into place - this isn't a great cradle. There is a little blue/purple light that always glows - big deal.
Protective Cover
The E2 comes with a piece of vinyl (stitched to look like real leather) to protect the glass from scratches. It's OK, but doesn't compare to the Visor's flip top metal cover. I put the stickers on the inside of the cover that tell you the special characters (which I don't use much, but when you want to use them its a pain to remember how to make a copyright or trademark symbol.
New Palm OS Software
One thing that frustrated me with my Visor Edge, was it couldn't figure out repeating appointments if they were for the 3rd Wednesday of every month. This was the first thing I checked into when I synced the Palm and NO PROBLEMS! OK, now I'm starting to like this thing.
But it gets better - the E2 comes bundled with "Applications to Go" - a way of porting Word/Excel/Powerpoint files. Its very good - though I do have a very complicated Excel file that uses functions it doesn't understand. I called tech support and they stated they don't have all the functions available - so I can't use that Excel file. Overall I do like this software and never bought it for my Visor because it costs $50.
Graffiti
The new graffiti is a sad replacement for the old one (Palm was being sued and had to change Graffiti, but they won the lawsuit - SO PALM PLEASE BRING BACK OLD GRAFFITI!). It works mostly the same, but you now need two strokes for making the letters t / i / f. Since these are used a lot, it is a pain as Graffiti has to wait until the 2nd stroke to know what character you're making. This causes a pause and when I'm writing fast it means I get ahead of the Palm and have to wait to make sure it writes the characters properly.
Color
One thing I never did with the Visor was have pretty color pictures of my wife and kids to show. At first I thought this was a novelty, but I use it so often and the quality is fairly decent, that I now have come to rely on it at all types of social events.
Different E2's?
A co-worker of mine has an E2 and the stylus has a ball point pen built into it. Mine has no such thing (though the top of the stylus can be unscrewed - for what purpose I don't know.
Conclusion
The E2 (which I've had for three months now) is growing on me. At first I hated it, but aside from a poorly designed cradle, the unit is actually quite a bargain.
