Tungsten Toy

Just got my new toy in the mail — a Palm Tung­sten T2. For some reas­on it does­n’t show up on the site any more. Maybe I got the last one they had ;-). Pretty slick pack­aging, col­our screen, and bluetooth. I figured I did­n’t really need the wire­less con­nectiv­ity that you get with the T3 (well, not for the extra money it would have cost). Ideally I would like a Treo but balked at the cost of that as well. Maybe in a year or two when the prices have dropped. Mind you, I do quite like phones that act like phones, where you don’t look like quite as much of a dork when you’re talk­ing to it. So I’ll have to weigh that up against the con­veni­ence of all-in-one, and the incon­veni­ence when your all-in-one dies suddenly.

I was a rel­at­ively early Palm­Pi­lot adop­ter; not one of the first but not too far behind. I think it was the Pro­fes­sion­al. When that one died, I got this viol­ent orange Hand­spring Visor Deluxe which was rather cool. That died some time after­wards and I moved on to the skinny Visor Edge. And now that has died com­pre­hens­ively as well. Not even the sys­tem reset could get it to flick­er, let alone work.

I can­’t live without a pock­et-sized device that con­tains my todos, cal­en­dar, etc. And I need to be able to edit the files on it while nowhere near a com­puter or the inter­net (which rules out the iPod, unfor­tu­nately). So after read­ing Norm’s entries on the sub­ject I decided the Tung­sten looked like the best bet. Keep the old apps, get some more pizza­zz, and col­our and bluetooth as well!

So off to the Pal­mOne web site to check ver­sions and prices, they had a good deal on the older T2 mod­el, and prom­ised 2–3 busi­ness day deliv­ery time to Cana­dian orders. I ordered it. And fol­lowed the track­ing num­ber. By the end of the third day I called the ship­ping com­pany. “We don’t have it, don’t know where it is, call Palm.” I did. “Well, the 2–3 days actu­ally means to the bor­der. Then you have to wait for cus­toms, and then it’ll be shipped to you. Usu­ally about 5 days.” I poin­ted out the web site said 2–3. He said he’d pass on the com­plaint. I have a feel­ing he’s said this a lot. My Tung­sten turned up on day 4, so I was only some­what peeved, but it would have saved that amount of annoy­ance and phone calls if the web site had actu­ally told the truth about what to expect. I don’t see why that’s so difficult.