i’ve used the Tungsten E since Tuesday, and here are my remarks thus far, for those looking for a Palm device, perhaps to work in conjunction with Linux, or who are upgrading from an older device.

* Apparently there are no Tungsten E drivers that work with Coldsync unless you are running a 2.6 Kernel. I found two references to this on Google, but now can’t find them. So you can take this as authoritative or not, as you like. However, despite that, I think that I’ll stick with this device, and just tough it out using Windows to sync/install until I upgrade the OS on my laptop.

* A significant number of applications no longer work under OS5. Now, in my case, this is not particularly surprising, because many of the apps I use were downloaded 5 years ago, and I’ve not upgraded because 1) they worked and 2) the upgrades were non-free.

* Which leads to another point. The idea of paying for software, I’m finding, is very odd to me. I expect to be able to go to Freshmeat or Sourceforge and download something that works for me. And, since I am generally not merely a freeloader, and contribute back to a decent number of the projects from which I benefit, I think that this is perfectly legit. But, in the Palm world, most of the useful stuff is not free. The prices are very very reasonable, but I’m so used to free software that paying for software seems … I dunno … somehow *wrong*.

* The calendar that comes with Palm OS5 is not as good as the one that came with the original Visor. Yes, it has some neat points, like the ‘Agenda’ view, which is very useful. But it lacks other things, like ToDo items in the day view, a number of the calendar views that I used fairly frequently, and the entire concept of “floating events”, which is exceedingly useful.

* Someone offered to sell me a Tungsten C for a very good price. Seems I’m going to decline. The C has built-in 802.11, which seems very neat at first glance, but I’m just not sure I’d use it often enough to justify the extra cost. Additionally, it has a keyboard rather than graffiti, and I don’t think I’d like that a whole lot.

* Speaking of graffiti, the new Palms now have “Graffiti 2”, which is a new and distinctly *not* improved version of Graffiti. A number of letters are harder to write, and almost all non alphanumeric things are much harder to write. One example would be the bullet point, which I use frequently. Used to be slash-dot. Now it is stroke-dot-stroke-stroke-stroke. Oy. The guy that stiffed Palm on the patent for this needs to be strung up by his toes.

OK, that’s about it. And I need to write about something else before I start working, so I should finish this one.