How I am using my Tungsten T5
[From Alex] My Palm history: Clie SL10 (given to a friend who still uses it)-->Zire 71 (dropped badly)-->T5 (fried by over-clocking...oops)-->Palm Vx (gift to me)-->Treo650 (new carrier, so now my wife plays solitaire on it)-->T5.
What keeps me coming back to the Palm is the sheer functionality. I need a device that is ready to take in my ideas and information quickly, which the Palm has always done so well. Its compact and well-designed (and apparently timeless) OS embarrass PocketPC users with its ease. One button, [one tap,] type, done. No I was able to hold off buying a laptop for several years because of the abundance of software solutions available to the Palm. I broke down and bought a laptop in the last year of my Masters degree. Until then these were the apps that I was working with in the classroom.
These applications are all really great, and certainly exceed expectations, but they were still the "type" of applications people expected of a boring Palm based handheld. The applications I use to show off are:
The Palm OS could use a new face, but SkinUI (from www.palmpowerups.com) has been reducing the boredom for a couple of years for me. In the end, even the sexiest interface will become old-hat and a device will be measured by what it actually can do. For this reason, I see myself remaining a loyal Palm user for years to come. If the Canadian cell-phone industry was less like a band of pirates, I would be using the Centro or awaiting the Treo Pro. As it is, I don't feel like giving Rogers or Bell that much money, so a phone-less PDA meets my needs very well.
Documents to Go (http://www.dataviz.com/) - impressed everyone as I would exchange documents, spreadsheets and shows with their PC's. A T5 in landscape mode sitting on a wireless keyboard makes for a nice note-taking unit both in the classroom and in the library.
Margi Presenter-To-Go (support discontinued) absolutely blew everyone's minds when I ran presentations from my Vx or my Treo 650.
QuickIM (www.quickim.com) kept me in touch with my wife (and friends...even classmates when the class got boring) through MSN.
VersaMail - was a good stop-gap solution to take care of important emails before I got home to my PC.
PalmPDF (www.metaviewsoft.de) - offered the most stunning support of PDFs in any mobile device. I'd venture to say it is still nearly flawless.
PalmBible+ (http://palmbibleplus.sourceforge.net/) is simply the best Bible program in the PDA world, AND it is free! The open source community has created a stunning breadth of resources for this program. I now carry with me 6 different Bible translations, 6 very robust commentary sets, the Greek and Hebrew (several different versions), the Apostolic Fathers, Josephus, and various other works with me. It is a very nice Bible study suite...and it's free!
BDicty (http://www.beiks.com/palm/)- the dictionary program has a gazillion free modules that can be added to it from www.memoware.com. Bridging PalmBible+ to BDicty via a double click was easy using the
Plucker PPI (http://docs.plkr.org/index.php/Plucker_Plugin_Interface_(PPI)).
I continue to use all of these programs now as a pastor, and do much of my weekly study from my Palm wherever I happen to be. (PSLink [http://jove21.com/palm/palmware/pslink/?ex-lang=en] is a wonderful wiki type program that seamlessly integrates into the OS and makes research, cross-references, and linking very practical. MemoPad/PSMemo has never been so useful!)
Little John Emulator (http://www.little-john.net/) - the ultimate game emulator. While others would carry around a Gameboy around for entertainment, I was playing SNES games on my T5 next to them. (I used only games that I own, of course.) And when I got bored of that...
ZDoom (http://yoyofr92.free.fr/zdoomz/index.html or www.metaviewsoft.de) I would play Doom3D...the actual game from the PC... (these developers also offer ZHexen and ZQuake.)
TCPMP - watch full length movies, without converting them to a new format (MPG, AVI, DivX, etc.) This is no longer a free program, but is now commercially distributed by www.coreplayer.com.
PocketTunes (http://www.pocket-tunes.com/) - which I now synchronize with iTunes on my PC. (This makes it well worth the purchase.)
When people tell me about all the sexy new things they can do with the iPhone, I admit it does them well, but I tell them that my Palms have been doing all that and a whole lot more for much longer. I drool over the hardware specs that Apple is using, but in the end I could not even think of converting until I saw any platform offering me half of the pocket power I have been carrying with me since the late 90's.
