Well, this blog entry was supposed to be about how to get your Palm Tungsten E connected to your network, and therefore the internet, using a FreeBSD box and the USB cable supplied with the Palm. It's not actually that difficult, you just need an entry in your usbd.conf to call pppd and set up a ppp link between the Palm and the server.

However, all that is irrelevant now as I've splashed out and bought myself a brand new Palm TX. The beauty of this is that it has built in wireless, and so can connect to my router by itself without needing the cabled ppp connection through my server.

OK, so I may as well use the space instead to give you a few quick first impressions of the TX. Bear in mind that I'm a huge fan of Palms, and have been since my first one - an original Zire about 6 or 7 years ago.

In traditional fashion, I'll do the good points first:

• Connectivity: compared to previous Palms, this is a very connected device. The WiFi is excellent, it took no more than 5 minutes to get connected to my home router. Using LGet and LFtp I'm connected easily to my home server, and Versamail does an adequate job of picking up email. It also has Bluetooth, but I haven't tried this yet.
  
• Battery life, although criticised in other reviews, is significantly better than my Tungsten E. Maybe that's because it's battery had deteriorated over the years, but I'm getting much better time from the TX, even with occasional WiFi use.
  
• The screen doesn't seem quite as bright as the Tungsten E, but it's full screen. The pop up 'faked' silk screen is excellent - you get full screen when you want it and silk screen which shows your graffiti strokes when you don't. This makes data entry much less prone to mistakes. The only downside is that many of the older apps (such as Vagablog which I use for blogging) refuse to run full screen.
  
• As I mentioned above, the silk screen is 'faked' and this allows all graffiti strokes to be echoed to the screen. This has made data entry with graffite, although still slower than by keyboard, much easier than previously.
  
• The casing is plastic, and although this initially looks less impressive the the Tungsten E's metal, it looks less prone to scratching and scuffing, and will hopefully last longer in good looking condition.
  

Now for the not so good:

• The OS (5.4.9) seems quite unstable, with a few crashes already, and an ability to turn off when you press the wrong combination of buttons, or refuse to close a dialogue.
  
• The build quality is a little dodgy in parts. Maybe it's just because I'm used to the metal casing on the Tungsten, but the plastic case doesn't feel quite so 'satisfying'. I'm not at all convinced that the various buttons will last the course. None of them feel as robust as on the Tungsten E.
  
• I still use Plucker for offline web browsing more than I use the built in Blazer 'live' web browser. Although the battery feels good to me, it does run down quickly with WiFi use.
  
• As I mentioned above, not all the older apps support full screen mode. This is disappointing as I was looking forward to coding in SiED in full screen.
  
• My IR keyboard still works, but won't work in landscape mode as it rotates the 'wrong' way - ie. With the IR port pointed away from the keyboard's IR transmitter.
  

I think that's it for the moment. On the whole I'm please with it, but I'm not as blown away as I was when I moved from a Zire to a Tungsten E. Be careful if you're looking to buy one though. I bought my from Ebuyer for £158 and they're selling it now for £206 (same model) so the price does seem to fluctuate. Shop around.

Next up some thoughts about the Nintendo Wii which we finally manage to get hold of (was delivered from Amazon yesterday).

Talk soon and keep in touch.