Palm Tungsten E2 Handheld
by Palm
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Palm Tungsten E2 Handheld
Customer Review: perfect for an absent minded professor
Summary: 5 Stars
This is my first organizer ever. I'm totally impressed. After reading some of the reviews here I was scared to put my money on any of these things. Seems like someone had complained about every model out there. This one had at least above average reviews, and I liked the fact that fewer people complain about the soft boot issue.
Now it's two months later and I can't imagine living without it. I'm a college teacher, with lots of faculty meetings to track, plus a freelance business, and the usual dentist and car appointments. I used to keep a paper "to do" list in my shirt pocket, but it doesn't ring if I forget to scan it several times a day. In short, my life is so busy that I was beginning to drop appointments.
I'm happy to report that this tungsten e2 syncs perfectly with Microsoft Outlook 2002. There are a few minor anomalies, but nothing that is a deal breaker. I was disturbed at first to discover that the thing is never really off. I would have liked to be able to totally turn it off when I had no appointments coming up, to save juice. However I've found that this is a none issue. It runs for at least 4 days, sometimes a week and a half before needing a charge.
The operating system seems quite solid. It locks up maybe once every 2 to 3 weeks, but that requires just a tap of a pen on the reset button on the back, and it comes back all happy in a couple seconds. When I was installing third party software every couple days it would lock up more frequently, but I've got everything I need now, and things have settled down.
I don't use it for email, or for surfing the net. I have a laptop for that, and I didn't want to pay an extra hundred for the wifi card.
The coolest thing about this e2 is the calendar and alarm, the tasks list, and the contacts. With the hot buttons on the front to access these vital functions, this thing never leaves my person. I even take it climbing in my backpack. Never know when I might want to make a note about something, or meet a new friend and exchange phone numbers.
After I bought it and realized how useful it was, I was tempted to exchange it for the treo, which has all this, plus a phone...until I found out that you have to pay at least $50 a month to the phone service to make the internet stuff work. Scratch that! I love this thing. It's perfect for my needs. I did buy the 2 year replacement policy from circuit city. $30 seemed like a small price to pay for peace of mind.
The software you can get for Palms is amazing. Here is my list of essential software:
Uninstall Manager - Northglide
BDicty 5.9 Pro - dictionary, thesaurus and conjugator
Pocket Tunes from Normsoft (it is compatible with the "plays for sure" windows media player files. I can play free downloadable audio books from the library.)
Tide Tool 2.2 - toolworks dot com (if you live near saltwater, a must have)
MessageEase V.5 - faster than graffiti for entering text, and it's free!
AvantGo - captures websites off the net when synced, view them on the commute later. - free!
Customer Review: A Writer-Teacher's take
Summary: 5 Stars
I would like to offer a somewhat different perspective on this product. I am not a business person; my thinking and needs are very different from a business person's. I am a reader, writer, teacher. Moreover, I am a very disorganized person. I thought maybe if I had a device that could centralize all the various elements of my life effectively, I could have some peace of mind. I have never owned an electronic tool of this sort. After reading and investigation on various brands, I chose this one. I have to say, it is one of the easiest electronic tools I have ever used. I didn't buy it for the bluetooth capability, so I can't speak to that. But it is a wonderfully easy and handy tool for keeping apointments straight and having contact information handy anywhere. Reading through the description of the E2, I was initially afraid that I would have to buy Microsoft Outlook in order to be able to have a calendar and appointment capability, but this is not true. The CD that comes with the E2 has those features--and many more--on it. As a writer, I appreciate the "Documents to go" feature. It is so easy to transfer Word documents to the Palm, and I have put several of my favorite poems on it. I have also bought a little keyboard to go with my Palm so that I can work on poems/stories while away. It is so much more compact than my laptop (and I have the smallest laptop that Dell ever made). It probably wouldn't be a good choice for writing the "Great American Novel" on, but for capturing those ideas that just can't wait, and when your brain is working faster than you can write by hand, this is a great device. I write a lot when I travel. I can also put my lecture-PowerPoints on the device so that I can review them anywhere. Finally, with expansion cards, you can also carry music, photos, and video with you. I do have a 60GB iPod, but, frankly, I am reluctant to carry it with me on some of my more rugged road/boat trips. And, as much as I love my iPod, I still find putting photos on it to be a confusing process. (I am not that technically savvy.) But the E2 works like a dream; simply drag and drop the photos, music, video that you want and there it is! The E2 also has a small speaker which works surprising well and I use it for listening to poems. A headphone jack allows for a richer experience for listening to music. The only downside is that the E2 doesn't have much memory and the expansion cards can be expensive. But I've decided the expense is worth it because now I can carry so many of my precious documents with me in once device which is fairly rugged (at least compared to the iPod which does not have the more stable flash drive that the E2 does). So I can use my iPod to store ALL of my music, to plug into my home speakers, and to take on short, easy adventures. But the E2 can go with me practically everywhere. The E2 is small, light, fast, easy to use. I really, really like it.Customer Review: It does perfectly what I bought it to do!
Summary: 5 Stars
I have had absolutely not a single complaint about the E2 thus far, and I have been using it for a little over four months now.
I purchased this machine to upgrade from a Sony Clie NX70V that I found very useful for many years, but which had features I just did not find myself needing to use - like a voice recorder, digital camera, and even a moving images recorder (all stored on inserted sony stick memory). But it was the battery life that was the most frustrating thing about it - see below for more.
When I was looking for a palm to purchase, however, my main concern was battery life. I only use the thing to look at documents, contacts, ebooks, etc. Very little text input per se - that is done on my laptop or in a pinch from a wireless keyboard a friend gave to me for Christmas made by Palm which also works quite nicely. I do not use it for looking at photos or for wireless networking or bluetooth or email or the internet from a palm. It is merely an information organizer.
So ... I came across the E2 for under $130 in a CircuitCity and bought it. The thing gets over 16 hours of battery life with the things I use it for. I have had no problems with installation, or indeed with anything about the machine since then. I have not had to "soft boot" it once, and I use it daily.
The SD slot holds a 512mb card that easily holds the eBooks I normally access (over 35 volumes of reference material and many novels, non fiction, and daily documents). SD cards are cheap - so this was nice for me.
But there was one additional thing I was very happy to discover, and that is that it plays MP3 files very nicely. I have had no problems with the Realplayer software whatsoever - all I do is copy the mp3 files from my collection on my laptop to an SD card, put the SD card in and VOILA! a 512mb (or bigger I'd imagine, though I have not purchased any larger SD cards) portable mp3 player! I was very pleased with the sound quality too. AND it goes on like this for over 12 hours - comparable to recent iPods and other mp3 players battery life wise.
I am also thrilled with the flash memory feature. There do some times when one is just away from an outlet for a long period of time and then thing runs out of juice ... although I have not had that happen with the E2 yet, it did happen with my old Clie, and that was a royal pain in the neck. There were, of course tools that came with the machine to "recover" from this, and with some ease admittedly, but I still thought a pain in the neck.
So - I would recommend this to anyone who does simple tasks as I do but who needs long battery life at an affordable price. If you want to do ANYTHING else - look elsewhere.
Customer Review: Long term durability - update
Summary: 5 Stars
3/08 Update to this review:
We have now had the E2 in service for some time. Unfortunately, we are experiencing a large number of digitizer failures (many more that the power switch failures that the E model suffered from). I would now rate the E2 much lower than my previous rating. I would say 2 stars as opposed to 5.
We began placing these devices in service in March of 2005 (initially the Tungsten E, currently the Tungsten E2). We currently have 17 units issued to our staff in the field.
Since these units are used for data collection (data is up/downloaded to our server via Pendragon Forms software) our palm devices are in more-or-less continuous use. A great deal of wear and tear is to be expected.
Surprisingly, of the 17 units deployed we have only experienced three problems: Three Tungsten E power switch failures (all repairable) and an E2 main board failure. (The power switch weakness in the E seems to have been resolved in the E2.)
To me this is pretty remarkable given the 39,857 client contact records handled to date by these 17 units.
I think this speaks very well of the quality of the E/E2 line. I would, accordingly, recommend the E2 for anyone needing a very durable PDA.
Customer Review: Tungsten E2 is a great choice!
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm new to the PDA market and so this is my first one. I have found this very easy to set up and was even able to import my excel address database into the contacts folder. I prefer the Palm desktop so after importing the above into Microsoft outlook I changed to only sync with the Palm Desktop. I like how you can color code calender activities in the Palm, but found the color coding didn't all transfer to Outlook.
With the E2 one should get a 1 GB expansion card if you like to add alot to your palm. I use this for all my Ebooks, music/audiobooks/ and pictures. If you get another launcher program you could even launch applications from the card. I found the E2 very easy to install programs along with my ebooks, etc. It came with a good ebook reader that works with many free ebooks. Also comes with Real Player and I found it very easy to add music and before I wasn't quite sure what an MP3 was.
The calender and task lists work great. I've even set up lists for various stores for shopping, using the priority to help organize it by location.
I've purchased other game and bible software all interfacing well. I also downloaded the free FileZ software which is a File Manager application where you can see every file on your Palm.