PalmOne Tungsten E2

PalmOne didn't mess with success when it came to the E2, the sequel to the most popular business handheld ever, the Tungsten E. PDA users who are merely looking for a way to keep track of their contacts, calendar, and Microsoft Office documents, and play MP3s on the road, will find this handheld is an excellent successor.

The original Tungsten E gave business users exactly what they wanted at the time—a great-looking handheld at a reasonable price and without too many unnecessary features. The E2 fulfills the same basic needs, but unfortunately, it doesn't go much further.

So why upgrade? For one thing, your data won't vanish if you forget to plug the thing in. Like the palmOne Treo 650—and unlike most other handhelds—the E2 has 32MB of nonvolatile memory that doesn't get erased when the battery hits zero.

The E2 also has a faster 200-MHz processor (compared with the E's 126 MHz), a brighter screen, and smoother conduits for syncing with Microsoft Outlook. And configuring Bluetooth is simpler, in case you want to hook the handheld up to a mobile phone to surf the Net or check e-mail. Our E2 connected very easily to a Motorola V551 and downloaded e-mail quickly, but we were still a little disappointed by palmOne's hoary list of officially supported phones, which hasn't been updated since last November. We also synchronized and connected to the Internet via a Bluetooth-enabled PC, though that took knowledge of some obscure Microsoft Windows settings. (Why doesn't palmOne offer a tool to configure your PC properly?) If you need Wi-Fi, a $99 SDIO expansion card will become available next month from palmOne.

A new Today screen, like the one on the higher-end Tungsten T5, summarizes appointments, tasks, and e-mail messages, and the E2 also comes with the new version (7.0) of DocumentsToGo, still the best Office document reader available for any handheld. This being a Palm OS device, most buyers are likely to turn to a third-party PIM solution, such as Beyond Contacts.

The new processor didn't seem to make much of a difference compared with the original on our application tests. The E2 is fine at playing music from an SD expansion card through Kinoma Player, Pocket Tunes, or RealPlayer or surfing the Web using the Palm OS Blazer browser. It's still too slow for full-screen video, though (we had to get Kinoma to reduce our video to a tiny 200-by-160 resolution for it to play smoothly). Office documents, even large and complex ones, format and display within a few seconds, but the E2 struggles with complex PDFs in Adobe Reader for Pocket PC.

The E2's main competitors are palmOne's own Zire 72 ($299) and the Dell Axim X30 ($279). Both are a step up from the E2, with faster processors and either built-in Wi-Fi (in the Axim's case) or a camera (in the Zire's). But the sleek silver lines and smooth PIM functionality of the E2 make it the best choice for the average office PDA user.

SPEC DATA :

• Type: Palm
• Screen Size: 3.2 inches
• Operating System: Palm OS 5
• Flash Memory Type: Secure Digital
• Bluetooth: Yes