4. The Joy Of Using The Palm TX

Fortunately after the pain of setup the Palm TX is generally easy to use. The applications are by and large well designed and almost intuitive. The Graffiti character input system works so smoothly that I hardly ever used the nicely designed on-screen keyboard. The handheld's 3.125" x 2.0625" 320 x 480 display is sharp, bright, responsive and very easy to read and I love the ability to switch between portrait and landscape mode.

The few mechanical keys on the TX are well placed and easily accessed. I like this model's incarnation of the joystick control. It works smoothly and the centered activate button is perfectly placed and has just the right amount of resistance, downward travel and mechanical sound for comfortable and confident use.

Here's the handheld's Home or startup page. The numbers in the top right corner let you choose other screens with more program and setup options.

During the installation of sync software and Palm Desktop software the wizard installs DataViz's Documents to Go Professional Edition. This application allows you to synchronize Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents between your computer and the TX. You edit these documents on your desktop using the standard Microsoft Office applications.

A version of Documents to Go on the handheld lets you edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. You can only view PowerPoint presentations if the desktop version of Documents to Go is installed a Mac. Documents to Go on the T/X worked flawlessly. The viewers/editors for Word and Excel files look and work a lot like the Microsoft products themselves. I was amazed when I was able to view some PowerPoint slides about our new web sites on the TX. And, isn't that landscape screen great?

Palm's Blazer web browser is very good. It works smoothly and displays web pages in a highly readable format. That's how a segment of the MobilityGuru web site looks on the Palm TX in landscape mode. Next is an image of the little three story information section of the home page.

And, here's a part of a review of Canon's new 5D digital camera on MobilityGuru. Notice how clear the smaller text is. OK, Barry, enough with MobilityGuru already.