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.
December 21st, 2007 at 6:27 pm
I’ve hated Graffti2 my self ever since I realized there was something very wrong with what I had suspected a new OS all together. I did however (and I can’t remember where I found this trick)found that since the screen is the largest I’ve found anywhere, it does collect alot of crud on the whole outline of the screen so if you get a 8X11″ piece of paper or I like to use something a little thicker but take the points of each corner and use it to run inside the edgeing of the screen and I go all the way inside because there is lots of conections that will affect the way it responds to everything it seems. I was calibrating it in the preferance app. and it wasn’t doing any good plus I was having problems getting the cursor going around the screen chasing it with my stylus and tapping harder and harder or lighter whatever it took but until I found this trick is was hell! Now I have it working well and although yes it is not as fast as the ARM processor like the TungstenT I had before this which I still have but one by one it lost it’s screws and it runs right if I have those screws. If anyone knows where I can get screws to the TungstenT which at the time was the top of the line and color was outstanding for the first time compared to all the others then. But, I have been using this TungstenT5 everyday since I bought it and have really enjoyed it finding that it is a very powerful tool with the exception of the Graffiti2 input. I figured right off the bat that well this is not Palm, it has to be made by someone else and that some rights were not turned over because why would you take Graffiti1 (which was perfect and fast)that works even better without having to see your strokes lite-up and go to this other type of input that is a stuggle and way, way too much time consuming but with the fact it helps me in the field as a great tool for the internet which here I’m at broadband speeds because of my cell provider I guess and finds all the things I need and orders the things I need in lots of cases right from my truck and have on my own found lots of tricks to make it faster. One thing I would like to ask as I have tried endlessly to get the thing to give me segments of video like it shows in the intro. like it’s a wiz and easy. I just cannot get any moving pics to work on it at all and I’m lost with no answers other than “install media 9 player” which I’ve done over and over. I would like to be able to use that portion of the unit. Pictures are great and have many albums but no moving pictures! Any ideas? Thanks, Randy
December 21st, 2007 at 6:58 pm
My power button on my T5 stopped working about a year ago but I use the other buttons such as the home button, calender,contacts, and files buttons but have to wait for it to turn off but by auto-off in 3 minutes. It really does not drain the battery. I use both the car charger and the hotsync cord and also have a regular A/C charger for travel, they all work well and I think the car charger works the quickest being a straight DC type charge. I think all the new Tungsten power buttons are pretty bad because they all have problems.They don’t last long and yes I too have used tech. support once ever and they were so rude and patronizing and not to mention experience would have helped. The person I talked to ended up not even owning one! You would think they would give them one to at least know the enviorment your speaking of!! I’ll never attempt to go through that again!!
July 17th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
I have had my Palm T5 for a few years. Been great, the only (minor) problem is that it switches back on after I turn it off, but only after a reminder alarm has switched it on. I just leave it and it turns off after a minute. I have never got email working with it, that’s just too hard to understand. The battery still lasts all day, even when playing music. It’s a bloody great device.