Tungsten E2 officially launched
By Barb Dybwad 
posted April 13th 2005 12:29AM
posted April 13th 2005 12:29AM
So we were expecting this announcement this morning: the Tungsten E2 has finally officially kicked off on the
palmOne site. No surprises in the specs as we knew them
(though we were secretly hoping 32MB was a viciously evil rumour, it is in fact a viciously disappointing actual spec).
It's coming in right at the price we expected,
$249.
[Thanks, Brandon]
I saw it first, here, on Engadget.com
Yikes this thing could have come out a year ago and failed to make any waves. I used to love Palm too.....
dude, they havent improved very much. i was expecting a little more. hopefully they fixed the buzzing screen!
No! I just bought the original about a month ago! Crud.
they even took out the T3 and other models. In my opinion, the T3 is the coolest of them all. Sad.
Well, we can't really exepect much innovation ever since Palm ate Handspring and Sony bowed out. Once again, palmOne is the only game in town (for Palm OS devices, anyway).
An IPOD PDA would be nice.
This thing is not about making waves...it's about making sales and PalmOne sold 1.5+ million TE's...mostly to novice users who wouldn't frequent a tech site like engadget in the first place. Remember, the TE2 might not be for the average user here, but there are alot of other people out there who will love this device...
#8:
That is why this is the perfect gift for my mom (and college sister). I will just have to explain that bluetooth is a wireless standard and isn't something she should take personal.
At least they added the multi-connector, and wifi support, as well as bluetooth and memory that doesn't wipe when the battery dies (I thought this was something that should have been done in previous models.) I still don't like the speaker placement though, and I can only hope that, like a previous poster, the screen noise is corrected finally.
after the price drops will there be a cheaper bluetooth enabled palm pda, even in the uk, at its current price, its the cheapest pda with bluetooth, new. Not everyone needs a wifi enabled pda, i'm geek, wifi would be cool, but what are you gonna do with a 200mhz cpu and wifi? I want one, i got a TJ-35(gd ol clie) and this makes upgrade sense, i get proper flash memory (plus 3mb more,lol), bluetooth, docs 2 go 7, and sd card support(screw memory sticks, untill i get a psp). I think its a bargin sure they could have added more here and there but would the price be as low?
When you are rapidly losing market share, it would be a good idea to do something aggressive to get some market share back. And the budget range is always a good place to drop a bombshell. I hope, for PalmOne's sake, the TE2 is only a stopgap measure.
Yes, I agree - the T3 was awesome. Revolutionary for a Palm, bold, and fast. Loved the design too. The T5 was a major disappointment - it's hard to love a high end Palm that looks just like a cheap one, especially one sans wi-fi.
Once again they are screwing up on the internal memory. 32MB is child's play. And dont let them sell you on this "anyone who needs more is a power-user" crap. I barely have anything on my Treo 650 and it is full. Nothing is a bigger pain in the butt than trying to juggle programs and files on 32MB. A 1GB SD card helps, but it permanently ties up your SD slot and requires you to have a particular card in the slot to run certain programs. Trust me, but something with more memory. Palm needs to be taught a lesson!
I think the Tungsten E is among Palm's best models ever, but the decision to include Bluetooth instead of Wi-Fi in the E2 is just plain ridiculous. Who uses Bluetooth and for what?! Palm can point to market research all they want, but the truth remains that this thing would get a ton of positive ink if it had Wi-Fi. OTOH, the non-volatile RAM is a huge plus.
The reason it has bluetooth and not wi-fi is because wi-fi eats batteries like you would not believe. Wi-fi kills the battery on the ipaq 5450 in about an hour. Bluetooth has no impact on battery life whatsoever.
I also like 'toothing a phone number to my phone.
As for the E2, it is about $100 overpriced.
Remember the highest selling model ever was/is the Zire, a model that was about 5 years behind the times. Palmone is a business, not a gadget website. Though to be fair, Engadget is a better gadget site than Palmone is a business! :-)
This seems like a decent PDA for what it is, but they should've retained the $200 price point of its predecessor.
unless its priced at $50 a piece, Im not interested anything from palmone
What's really disappointing is that it doesn't seem to have the "works like a flash drive" functionality of the T5. That might have been worth an upgrade, particularly if you are going to use it as an MP3 player.
Unfortunately palm popularity and usefulness died years ago. The company just hasn't caught on to it yet.
Personaly I am in love with my HP iPaq h6365. With Camera, Quad band GSM Phone, GPRS, 802.11b, bluetooth, SD Card, M$ ActiveSync and all the apps that are compatable with PocketPC. Why would I go for a Palm?
Majority of the low end users store telephone numbers now in cell phone itself using that as an organizer. High end users prefer an organizer totally integrated with a cell phone (like a Black Berry). Even though Palm has a lot of features, it does not address the basic problem of "I have to carry two equipments" and hence falls short of expectations.
I was excited by the release notice until I saw the 32 MB limit. Flash memory is great, but at least 64 MB to be incrementally useful. Bluetooth is a nice feature, but a model with ADDITIONAL Wi-Fi capability (NOT in lieu of BT) without having to tie up the SD slot would justify a small price bump. The MP3 capability is not that compelling in an iPod world. BTW, I'm still steamed about Palm only supporting Macs around the edges. Hope someone in PalmOne product development sees these notes and gets a couple of upgrade devices out soon. Real soon.
This is just the end of palm. They really have no where to go now. If they do upgrade the memory it could look like a Sony Psp. What's the point? In two years.. you will be asking Palm who? Trust me.. move on.
...sorry to disappoint: just got my T|E2 and guess what: screen noise is still there. Also Warspeed does not work.
some keywords for the search engines: palm tungsten e2 high-pitched noise screen whine
anyway, i have an e2 and the noise was driving me insane, but warpspeed fixed the problem:
http://palmpowerups.com/index.php
enjoy.