My poor brain!

[gilana]

My palm pilot seems to have died last night. It suddenly stopped turning on. Tried a soft reset, tried charging it -- nothing. Of course it's out of warranty, and it's a Tungsten T3, which they don't make anymore, and none of the new models have the stretch display I love on this one. Just tried to call Palm to deal and was on hold for 11 minutes without speaking to a human, at which point they hung up on me. According to the web site it would cost $169 to have it repaired, and I'd probably be without it for a while.

So. Do I order a new one today? Get it repaired? Start hunting eBay for a used one which will probably also die on me soon? Any words of wisdom or comfort? I'm twitching without it already...

Comments

[candle-light.livejournal.com]

You might try talking to Phi about this when he gets back from Hawaii. I tend to use him for all my Palm questions/decisions. :-)

[ckd]

Irritatingly, it doesn't appear that they offer the "advance exchange" deal for the T3, either. If they did, they'd send you a refurb and then you'd send yours back, cutting the time you'd be without.

The new TX has a large screen, but no slider, so it's a larger unit. On the other hand, it also has built-in WiFi and Bluetooth, if those are of use to you.

this is rly wierd!!1

[quilla.livejournal.com]

i was watching a woman the other day on the metro looking through her palm pilot. i started thinking about these gadgets and how useful they are, and clearly how dependent we become on them. like my cellphone. when my first one fell into the ocean (don't ask), i was twitchy! and i had been using it for only three months at that point. i had a backup little black book, but it didn't have any of my new phone numbers. when i went to buy a new one, i had to have the exact kind, because i couldn't dream of trying to get used to a new one with different menu options etc. gah! so anyway, i inevitably thought of you and your palm pilot (now, with bluetooth technology! well, not any more. :P ) and what would happen if you, that most punctual of people, were to lose/ruin it...

and here we are.

Re: this is rly wierd!!1

[gilana]

Oh, so it's your fault! All the info is backed up on my desktop computers so I should stay organized, it's mostly playing games while my files save that I miss :)

Re: this is rly wierd!!1

[quilla.livejournal.com]

yep. i CURSED YOU. thas right.

it's mostly playing games while my files save that I miss :)

i figured!

[johnromkey.livejournal.com]

I recently replaced my T3 with a TX. I like the TX a lot. It's only slightly larger, and the increased size doesn't really bother me. Having built-in wireless is great. The only things that annoy me about the TX are the lack of a charging LED, the lack of a vibrating alarm, and the fact that they moved the home button off the row at the bottom of the screen to one of the physical buttons (in order to make room for the wifi thingie).

I'm very happy with mine. I also use Missing Sync on my Mac instead of Palm's software, and the latest version (5.0) has some great improvements, including syncing categories and doing some very smart syncing with itunes and iphoto.

I found mine for about $260 on Pricegrabber, which coincidentally is what I sold my old T3 for on Amazon.

I'd definitely recommend replacing your T3 with a new machine rather than a used T3. You may still be able to sell your broken T3, or at least the accessories, on ebay if you want to get a few bucks back for it.

The TX, of course, uses a new connector, so old accessories won't work with it. It uses the same connector as the T5, the LifeDrive, and the latest Zires (and probably latest Treo, though I'm not certain about that).

It's possible that it's just the battery. Or the backlight. Does the LED come on when you try charging it? If you try turning it on, even though you see nothing, try holding the screen up to a bright light... if you see it on, then it's the backlight (or if you can sync it even though it appears to be off). Which, of course, doesn't really help you to know.

[gilana]

Thanks for the input!

The LED does come on, but it doesn't make the little noise when it connects or disconnects, and it won't hotsync. Pretty sure it's dead, Jim.

I went to a Palm kiosk and took a look at the TX -- I expect I'd get used to it, but it does feel much larger in my hand. I really loved how small the T3 is when it's not open. Sigh. I am tempted by the bluetooth plus wifi, though; I've been using the bluetooth with my cell phone to get net on my palm when I need it, but that's so slow, and wifi seems to be getting a lot more common. And it seems like the only other real choice would be the E2, and that seems slow and low on memory after the T3. Man, this is worse than when they stop making your favorite style of jeans!

I like the Mac desktop program a lot more than iCal; can Missing Sync work with that, do you know?

[johnromkey.livejournal.com]

I'm a computer hacker, not a Palm Pilot doctor! ;-)

I liked how small the T3 felt, too... though I found that sometimes I was annoyed because I'd accidentally slide it shut while I was trying to do something with it. So the TX does solve that problem for me.

I use iCal because I like the integration with everything else... and I sync it with .mac and my cell phone and ipod, too. I *think* that you should be able to use Palm Desktop with Missing Sync by just selecting the correct conduits, but you might have to stand on your head for a bit to make it work. Missing Sync will uninstall (or at least disable) Palm Desktop's conduits when it installs. You'll probably have to manually copy over the Palm conduits and disable the Missing Sync ones that you don't want to use (the disabling part is easy; Missing Sync has a nice UI for doing that; the copying part is a pain though). I haven't verified this, though, since I don't use Palm Desktop anymore. You can use the TX on MacOS without Missing Sync, though Palm has had a lot of install problems with Tiger (if you're running it).

Now if only isync/Missing Sync would sync some of my bookmarks over too...

Good luck! Sorry it died on you.

[johnromkey.livejournal.com]

By the way, I should mention that the TX uses flash memory for its main storage. The good side effect of this is that if your battery dies, you don't lose everything. The bad side effect is that it means that starting some apps is noticably slower the first time as they're loaded into regular RAM.

I've had a few crashes on mine - I start something and it reboots. It doesn't happen often and I'm expecting Palm will release a firmware update that will fix it.

By the way - if you do get a TX - you should *not* just sync your old T3 data to it. Palm says that doing this can screw it up and make it unstable. Palm should have some directions on their site for moving old Palm data to it.

[gilana]

Thanks! Just bought the TX from the Palm kiosk in the mall here. I could have gotten it cheaper online, but then I would have had to pay a lot for shipping to get it here quickly, since I'm going so nuts without it. See what you started? ;)

And thanks a lot for the heads-up, I'll be careful transferring the data. Not sure I would have noticed that otherwise, which would suck.

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

I agree: the TX is Palm's first really compelling machine since the T3, and the price point is good, too. It sounds like it doesn't matter any more, but I'd be happy to try to revive the T3; often bad connections on the button board or dust in the bezel can keep the slider machines from powering up.

[gilana]

I bought a TX yesterday, but so far I'm really not liking it. It's too big, I miss the voice record button (had it mapped to a program switcher), it's slower to load programs, the side flip cover is a pain, it's not very lefty friendly... yes, the wifi is cool, but I would be sooooo happy to have the T3 working again. I would be thrilled if you could take a look! Can I drop it by tonight?

[johnromkey.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, I'm going to feel really guilty if you hate the TX!

[gilana]

Heh! Don't -- it really was the only decent option. Plus I made sure it was returnable before I bought it. If the T3 is truly dead, I'm sure I can live with it; I just hate to spend that much money on a new toy that I don't like as much as the old one! I intend to write a stern letter to Palm.

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

I took it apart (it looks rather Frankenstein with the bezel off but all the other parts in place) and reseated the screen cable and now it mostly works. The digitizer is rather nonlinear in the virtual graffiti area with the result that you can only tap on the bottom icon bar when the slider is closed; this may be to do with the fact that all four side screws are missing, or it may be that the digitizer cable also needs to be reseated. Was this a problem before?

It's aliiiiive!

[gilana]

You're a miracle worker! The digitizer has been wonky for a while; I keep recalibrating it, but it generally seems to be aiming higher than it should be, and I have had trouble getting to the bottom icon bar.

Re: It's aliiiiive!

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

OK. A bit of fiddling with the digitizer cable didn't help, so I put the machine back together and it's back to how it was before it broke. I also played with it a bunch and concluded that running it in lefty-sideways mode made the icon bar thing not an issue and was just generally better all around. It'll need to be restored from backup, but I'm guessing you were already figuring on that. Feel free to drop by any time to pick it up; I'm mostly around this weekend, modulo meeting up with an out of town friend on Friday afternoon sometime.