Note the part that says, "...palmOne does not provide repairs for products exhibiting the buzz." Anyone with the T3 on their desk in an office setting with normal hearing can hear the shrill all day long.
Just do adequate research before purchasing. This issue and others (including the lack of Palm support) have been documented by many users on numerous Palm message boards.
Good Luck.
Satisfied User (Rating: 5.00)
Review : I've had my T3 for 7 months now and have nothing but praise for this remarkable gadget.
The 75 applications I've fit into the spacious 64m memory and a 256m SD card include: my check register and shopping list database (Splash Wallet), a world clock with 20 alarms (Megaclock), a complete address book/meeting scheduler/to-do list/calendar (Agendus); an outliner (Bonsai), spreadsheet, word processor, PowerPoint editor (Documents to Go) and relational database (HanDBase); a drawing/painting program appropriate to my 10 years training as an artist (HandPainter); a dictionary and thesaurus (To Go), ebook readers; road maps of Colorado and the New York metropolitan area (Mapopolis); listings of 30,000 movies from the Internet Movie Database -- including main cast,director, and synopsis (on TomeRaider); an MP3 player with my favorite 50 songs; a photo album of 30 pictures; a chess game, submarine game, and Space Invaders clone; an icon editor, a file utility, a backup utility, and a flashlight (PalmLight).
For all that, I still have 40% of the memory free.
For all that, I've never had my T3 crash, whine, play games with my eyesight, or go bump in the night. It does however wake me up in the morning to Reville, but I asked it to do that since it's also my alarm clock.
It has replaced most of the contents of my wallet, two notebooks, and a portable cassette player -- all of which I had lugged around with me for 30 years until I bought the T3.
I like to compare my T3 to a 386 desktop computer I used to own -- the T3 does about about as much, about as well; except now it's attached to my belt.
The only thing I don't like about the T3 is that it's not as sturdy as the original Tungsten-T. The T3 feels noticably fragile.
But after 7 months, I can say: I use it daily. I use it for everything. It's never failed me.
Love It Already (Rating: 5.00)
Review : I traded in my trusty Handspring Visor Pro of 4 years for my new T3. I wasn't interested in the color screen, I was used to weeks of battery life, and it's a premium (priced) product. However, a friend wanted it badly and was looking to me to be his technical support -- then I found out I could trade in credit card points. So, my T3 only cost me shipping.
And, within two weeks I've forgotten my poor old Handspring. The traditional apps are only mildly upgraded, but nicer. Voice memo, MP3 player, video player, picture viewing are great tricks. And that screen! I smile every time I slide it open!
Battery life? Definately less than the 2 weeks I got on the Handspring. But, I can make it through a weekend with moderate use, so that's OK. Turn down the screen brightness in low light, makes a big difference. Batteries not replaceable? Not much of a "con" there -- nothing has replaceable batteries anymore except kids toys and cell phones (which break before the batteries die, anyway). Besides, there are screws holding the thing together, so there's some way to change the batteries.
Memory -- the SD slot is great -- better than the Springboard slot (although I still have a lot of peripherals to replace). 128 M for $40! Unbelievable. And, programs are easily copied to the card without an OS hack.
Grafitti2 was an adjustment (for me, I've been proficient with G1 for 6 years). However, the way the pen movements track on the virtual Grafitti Pad make it easy to see what your mistakes are -- the transition is going well.
Processor -- fast! Finds are unbelievable. Audio quality of the headphone jack is great. Viewing video is pretty smooth, and a great trick to show off the T3.
I love the small size. Slide it together, fits easily in a shirt pocket.
My only nit pick -- as a southpaw I hate where the voice record button is. And I wish the power was on the front.
Make sure you download the patch for "Docs to Go". I suspect many of the fatal errors some reviewers have experienced are bugs in the distributed version -- makes "find" crash as it goes through Word documents. After the patch, no problems. Also, some crashes also might be from running apps not really ready for Palm OS 5, which needs to support the T3's longer display and landscape mode. Make sure the app is really ready for OS5 (I've dumped most of the older apps I used on the Visor for now).
By the way, did I mentioned how great that screen looks on the T3!
Love it. But battery life disappoints. (Rating: 4.00)
Review : Love this Palm device. Earlier I had 2 Mb monochome Palm Pilot, so this is a good change to have 52 Mb color one. New grafiti is better. Voice memo feature is good, but need to keep the source of sound away otherwise recording gets bad. Web, VersaMail, MP3, Bluetooth are not very useful to me. It came with RealOne MP3, but that needs an add on card. I didn't find the feature to turn the display very useful. Rarely use it. The battery life disappoints.
Overall, a great device to have.
Palm T3 a great PDA, but... (Rating: 4.00)
Review : I have been using a T3 for a couple of months now and love the design and usability of it. It has great screen (use a screen protector!) and incredible speed and memory (about 54 MB usable)
Downsides - quality control is pretty bad. Look on different Palm-related forums - there are problems with screen brightness, and (my favorite) hard resets when taking it out of the cradle - mine has done it three times, so far. Then you get to deal with Palm's customer (no) service department. I won't even start to tell that story. If you want to take a chance on quality and service, this is the PDA to buy - small, powerful and that bigger screen - awesome. I just wish they had spent a little more time refining it before thrusting it out on the market...
