Drive flash mp3 player

New Tungsten T5 Runs with Flash Drive

PalmOne stretches out its product line today with the new Tungsten T5 handheld, which packs in a fast processor, a big clear screen, and a whopping 215MB of available memory for $399 direct.

The T5 is a slim and shiny business device that looks like a stretched-out T3 (3.1" x 4.8" x 0.6" HWD, 5.1 oz), minus the slider design. (The slider element was eliminated to save money.) The full 320-by-480 screen runs in both landscape and portrait modes.

The T5's oddest and most intriguing new feature is its support of the USB mass-storage drivers in every Microsoft Windows 2000 or XP PC and every OS 9 or OS X Mac. Just plug the T5 into any USB port with a short cable, and it pops up in My Computer, looking and acting just like a USB flash drive. SD cards in the T5 appear as additional flash drives. This is a lot easier than the hot-sync method of transferring files, and, along with the huge memory capacity, it finally makes the T5 a useful MP3 player.

That 215MB of memory is nonvolatile flash, so your data won't vanish if the battery runs down. That's a huge plus over most other handhelds, which blank out your personal information if you don't feed them enough juice.

The T5 will run on a 416-MHz Intel XScale processor, the fastest currently available in a Palm OS device, with the Palm OS 5.4--not the new Palm Cobalt OS recently announced by PalmSource. (palmOne said Cobalt wasn't ready early enough for them to develop the T5 with the new OS.)

There are a bunch of other little tweaks we like, too. Our favorite is the new stylus  a solid, rounded piece of metal, the kind of thing you'd normally pay extra for. The included version of DocumentsToGo has been bumped up to 7, and both Mac and Windows desktop software are included. A new palmOne Media application can play specially reformatted Windows video files.

The unit has Bluetooth but not Wi-Fi. For a business-oriented device, that could be a big problem, especially when major competitors like Dell (PocketPC) are dumping Wi-Fi into handhelds that sell for as little as $250. Plenty of business users want to get their e-mail and do occasional Web browsing on their handhelds, and the T5's superior e-mail attachment support (through DocumentsToGo) would invite that  if you could only connect. An add-on Wi-Fi SD card that Palm says will "soon" work with the T5 costs $129, a stiff price to pay.

The T5's USB disk mode is a great boon for traveling types who want access to their files in hotel business centers and cybercafés, and the unit's flash memory protects your data. But is there room in the market nowadays for a Wi-Fi-less $400 handheld? We'll get a full production-ready unit within the next few weeks and tell you what we think.

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