Design Decisions
Jun. 23rd, 2008 11:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsSo, this week I bought myself a new Palm T|X off EBay. It took me a while to figure out why the thing was so cheap; as it turns out, it's an early manufacture, so it has the nicer screen but the battery is only 70% of its manfactured capacity. Bummer, that. Still, compared to my Palm V, it's a hell of a step up. It even has an SSH client in it, which makes it wackily useful. The tones for the meditation timer are quite wonderful, much nicer than the old ones.
There are three major design decisions with this one that bother me though. The first is that the vibration unit was removed. It no longer buzzes to get my intention-- sound only. That was a nice secondary feature to the old one.
The second is that the case is much larger than on the old one. This is mostly to provide space for two SD storage cards inside the case. Apparently, Palm discourages users from keeping the card in the machine as it's one of the two biggest battery drains in the system (the other being the WiFi stack). When you don't have cards there, the unit rattles inside the case. Also, the case isn't integral with the stylus like in the Palm V model, so you have to fumble the unit out to get the stylus. Annoying.
The third, and worst design decision: driving the sound through the main CPU rather than a secondary card. This means that the CPU can easily miss an event like "stop the music!" This doesn't seem to mean much for MP3 and WAV files, as they can be pumped to a buffer, but MIDI sounds (like those used by the alarms) will often play all the way through. Really obnoxious.
But having a 480x320 screen with a photo album, a high-quality MP3 and movie player, and all that is very nice indeed. The Palm T|X is generally a solid package with a decent web browser, and much more open compared to the iPhone. With an 8-gig card and a new battery, it definitely exceeds the new "touch" iPods for usefulness and functionality, and can be purchased for a similar cost.
There are three major design decisions with this one that bother me though. The first is that the vibration unit was removed. It no longer buzzes to get my intention-- sound only. That was a nice secondary feature to the old one.
The second is that the case is much larger than on the old one. This is mostly to provide space for two SD storage cards inside the case. Apparently, Palm discourages users from keeping the card in the machine as it's one of the two biggest battery drains in the system (the other being the WiFi stack). When you don't have cards there, the unit rattles inside the case. Also, the case isn't integral with the stylus like in the Palm V model, so you have to fumble the unit out to get the stylus. Annoying.
The third, and worst design decision: driving the sound through the main CPU rather than a secondary card. This means that the CPU can easily miss an event like "stop the music!" This doesn't seem to mean much for MP3 and WAV files, as they can be pumped to a buffer, but MIDI sounds (like those used by the alarms) will often play all the way through. Really obnoxious.
But having a 480x320 screen with a photo album, a high-quality MP3 and movie player, and all that is very nice indeed. The Palm T|X is generally a solid package with a decent web browser, and much more open compared to the iPhone. With an 8-gig card and a new battery, it definitely exceeds the new "touch" iPods for usefulness and functionality, and can be purchased for a similar cost.
