Palm Tungsten C Handheld

This is my fourth Palm OS computer. Until the C, I was a Grafitti zealot. Now that I've lived with a qwerty keyboard equipped palmtop for two years, I wouldn't consider giving it up. The 400MHz processor is still among the fastest available for a Palm OS machine and only Zodiac offers more RAM. Note that others pretend their large user writable flash is RAM. This is not true. Many programs, such as Mapopolis, will not effectively use flash in place of RAM, no matter where it lives. This is due to the dramatically slower write time of flash. A C's RAM is real psuedo static (actually self refreshing dynamic) RAM. ALL the new Trio phone software runs on it (except for things that actually use the phone electronics), and it all runs FASTER than on any Trio. Since my 64Mbytes of RAM has only 3 to 8 Mbytes free at any given time, I clearly NEED my RAM.

On the down side, it broke when I dropped it on a carpeted floor. I was able to fix it myself, but this occurred because Palm used a standoff press fit into the main PCB inside the unit; pretty cheesy for a $350 product. Overall, I'm still waiting for something better (and I'm NOT giving up that keyboard).