Test Drive--Palm Tungsten E

Handheld

By Jeffrey Hastings -- School Library Journal, 5/1/2005

PalmOne, Inc. 400 N. McCarthy Blvd., Milpitas, CA 95035 408-503-7000 www.palmOne.com $199.

Go-anywhere portability, instant on-off convenience, and a low price-tag are making handhelds the hot platforms in education. I'll bet there are already at least one or two administrators toting handhelds in your district, using them to access schedules and student data while on-the-go. Handhelds are also popular tools in one-on-one assessments, especially in tracking early literacy progress in compliance with the No Child Left Behind Act.

The Palm Tungsten E may be the ideal model for running many of the scores of applications specifically designed for administrators, teachers, and students. At 4.5 by 3.1 inches and just half an inch thick, this device is sleeker than a poor man's wallet—and the street price is so low even a pauper can afford one. It runs the latest Palm operating system and features a crisp 320 X 320 touch-sensitive color display and 32 MB of built-in memory with an expansion slot that lets you add up to 512 MB additional storage.

You can enter text on the Tungsten E in several ways. The Graffiti 2 software recognizes the characters you write with the stylus and inserts them directly into the application you're using. You can also use the stylus to tap away at an onscreen keyboard, or jot down handwritten notes using Note Pad. If you're like me though (fumble-fingered), you'll find it awkward to create lengthy documents using Graffiti or the onscreen keyboard, so you'll want to invest in palmOne's wireless keyboard ($69.99) for your larger docs. Get an expansion card while you're at it; they're a must for storing music, movies, image-laden databases, and other hefty files.

Transferring stuff to and from your desktop PC or Mac is easy using the Palm Desktop software and Tungsten E's HotSync feature, which allows quick file transfer through USB or by "beaming" files via the built-in infrared port.

Thanks to software from developers like Wireless Generation, who've tapped the unique strengths of handhelds to help educators meet the data-driven demands of No Child Left Behind, Palms are quickly becoming standard equipment in schools, and the sleek Tungsten E is among the best of them.