Tags: Palm
Palm T5 - Irksome Graffiti
January 2nd, 2005, by Rich.
I’ve had a PalmOne Tungsten T5 for about three weeks, and I must say that in addition to being a staggering improvement over my old Palm V it is also starting to get rather irksome.
Initially I had no problems at all using Grafitti2, it’s a definite improvement over the old Grafitti letter shapes; much closer to natural handwriting than the original.
The problem I’m seeting now occurs with letters that require two pen strokes, such as t and x, those letters just don’t work. Additionally, the unit no longer powers down after my requested 1 minute timeout, it just stays on and drains it’s battery. When disconnected from the mains, I can turn it off, then approximately 15 seconds later it turns itself back on.
Being a bit of a hacker I’m not averse to looking under the bonnet when things go awry, but with the palm platform that’s just not possible, so I’m stuck with a problem that I have little hope of solving myself. So, I’m guessing that it’s not the Grafitti per se that’s the problem - it’s probably another application that I’ve installed which doesn’t play well with the very new T5 - but without the tools to investigate my hands are tied.
Hence this little missive - if you’ve come across a similar issue, and found a solution to the problem please let me know. When I find a solution I’ll post a trackback to here so others who find the same problem may benefit.
July 29th, 2005 at 6:04 pm
I have had nothing but problems with my T5. At first it would crash everytime I booted with fatal errors. Then after 2 support calls to Palm, got it at least to get through the boot sequence. Then it would not sync. After about 3 hours with more tech support, finally got it to sync. Then I added the Palm Wi-Fi card that came with it, and now it will not charge. After several more calls to Tech support, they are issuing an RMA. I’m not buying from Palm again, ever. This is the buggiest product I have ever owned, and their tech support stinks!! Beware!!!
July 29th, 2005 at 9:45 pm
I got a Treo. My advice is get a Treo and say goodbye to writing on the screen forever; it was groovy but it just ain’t reliable. I’m writing this on my Treo. Yes, you can actually use those funny little buttons. The programming for special characters is quite intelligent and it swaps to numeric automatically when you enter data into a numerical field in most applications. Otherwise you use the navigator to hop around the screen. Normally, I leave the stylus clipped. So the screen is tiny. As someone commented above, you can’t have everything.
October 12th, 2005 at 11:42 pm
I too have had problems with the desensitization of the handwriting area on my Tungsten E, and I have also had no real
response from Palm’s techie’s.
Is it indeed true that if I delete Documents to Go that the handwriting area will improve? Any other suggestions would be appreciated.
January 6th, 2006 at 10:25 am
I’ve never been totally happy with my Tungsten T5, but have tried to get the best use out of it. I have also had problems with it turning on by itself after a few seconds and when I read that you had experienced the same thing, I thought I’d investigate.
If you go to the link… http://kb.palmone.com/palmeu_uk.html …and enter the number 848 in the “Solution ID” box, you get the following explanation…
***** What to do if my Palm™ Tungsten™ T3/T5 or Tungsten E handheld switches on in January without pressing any buttons
On some occasions the Palm™ Tungsten™ T3/T5 and Tungsten E handhelds will switch on without pressing either the power key, or the hardware viewer buttons. This behaviour occurs approximately 5-10 seconds after the unit is switched off and may be caused by a repeating event in a ‘Contacts’ record, such as a birthday reminder. The offending events are those for which the audio/visual reminder spans the new year.
An example of such a ‘Contacts’ reminder would be a birthday on the 6th January, configured to give alarm notification 7 days prior to the events occurrence, i.e., on the 30th December. As the reminder is activated prior to the 1st January the device may exhibit the said behaviour.
To work around this issue, we suggest you configure the reminder to sound after the 1st January to ensure the event does not span the new year. *****
I have changed my calendar alerts so they don’t span the new year and my T5 does not turn on by itself anymore. Hope that helps!
March 15th, 2006 at 3:27 am
My T5 has always been unstable, crashing and locking up. They changed the way it syncs, so that it does not work with Linux anymore (some people claim to have made it work, but it only syncs once, and scrambles the data if you have allot of stuff).
But the worst was when the SD card mechanism broke and made the slot useless. The website above shows how I fixed it.
Chuck
June 16th, 2006 at 10:21 pm
I come from the world of Psion users having previously owned a S3 and a S5mx. I bought a T5 with an open mind when my last Psion bit the dust and I too had mixed feelings.
I was pleased with the size and shape of it - what particularly appealled was the lack of movable parts, which is my only complaint about the Psions: The “clam-shell” was fab, but it was most likely the cause of the eventual hardware failures.
I got to grips with Graffiti soon enough, but I get annoyed at how I can’t actually write anything unless I’m sat somewhere in the shade. In the street this PDA is effectively a read-only device (providing it’s not too sunny). This is a shame when I remember writing a quick email while walking to catch a bus or whatever.
I like the Find option which searches EVERYTHING - but I would like a little more control over this. E.g. in the Calendar there’s no way of searching for appointments within a given date-range.
Anyway, that’s my rant!
July 8th, 2006 at 11:53 am
Hi,
My T5 is great I had a couple of problems after installing a lot of dowload software but a hard reset cured all of that. I am happy with most aspects of my T5 with the only exception being wireless hotsync. I can get Bluetooth hotsync work but cant get wireless to work. I can connect to hotspots at my local McDonalds and surf the web but for some unknown reason I cant hotsync with my PC using wireless. (it connects ok but wont do anything else)
November 1st, 2006 at 3:52 am
i have a t5 and for sum reason only turns on when its connected to power source what do you guys think it needs….some people have said i did sumtin to it but i put it in my book bag took it out to use during stufy hall damn thing wouldn’t turn on so i went home charged it it and its been connect to power source ever since thx for the help
February 8th, 2007 at 7:32 pm
My wife and I are both long-term Palm users. I recently bought her a Tungsten E2 because (as frequently happens) her previous Palm hardware failed. (Screen intermittently stopped responding - though never given any hard use or abuse).
We want to know how to get rid of the horrible ‘graffiti2′ and re-load the original ‘graffiti’.
I’m very disappointed with Palm - mainly because it’s almost impossible to contact them through their website - also for dumping the old ‘graffiti’ which did everything I need.
Any advice or help will be gratefully received.
Conor.
July 17th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
Nate - the same thing is happening to my T-5 now! It will only turn on
if I have it connected to power. Help?????