Palm have announced the latest in their popular line of PDAs – the T5. There have been months and months of speculation over what features the T5, may or may not have, but the most interesting thing about the new handheld is its memory configuration.
The T5 is built around 256mb of Flash memory – 215mb is available to the user: 55mb is system memory, leaving 160mb for storage. As it’s Flash memory, data is much safer from sudden hard resets or the occasional month away from a power socket. Palm are clearly capitalising on the success of USB key drives and their ability to carry large amounts of documents between the home and the office. No doubt security managers everywhere will be shaking their heads in woe again.
The PDA runs PalmOS5.4, and whilst it features the T3 320 x 480 screen, there is no slider on the new model. Cunningly, there is a little groove where the screen might have slid apart, though this might just baffle some people.
No WiFi (that caught a few people out), but Bluetooth is still in – expect a WiFi SDIO card in due course. Street price is about US$399 (€322).
Palm T5
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Fraser Lovatt
Fraser Lovatt has spent the last fifteen years working in publishing, TV and the Internet in various capacities, and believes that they will be seperate platforms for at least a while yet. His main interests at the moment are exploring where Linux is taking home entertainment and how technology is conferring technical skills on more and more people.
Fraser Lovatt was born in the same year that 2001: A Space Odyssey was delighting and confusing people in the cinemas, and developed a lifelong love of technology as soon as he realised that things could be taken apart, sometimes put back together again, but mostly left in bits or made into something the original designer hadn't quite planned upon.
At school he was definitely in the ZX Spectrum/Magpie/BMX camp, rather than the BBC Micro/Blue Peter/well-behaved group. This is all deeply ironic as he later went on to spend nine years working at the BBC.
After a few years of working as a bookseller in Scotland, ("Back when it was actually a skilled profession" he'll tell anyone still listening), he moved to England for reasons he can't quite explain adequately to himself. After a couple of publishing jobs punctuated by sporadic bursts of travelling and photography came the aforementioned nine years at the BBC where he specialised in internet technologies and video.
These days his primary interests are Java, Linux, videogames and pies - and if they're not candidates for convergence, then what is?
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