You can find replacement power switches for the Palm T|X at http://www.usedpdaparts.com/PalmTX.html for $5. My understanding is that these are rated for significantly more operational cycles than the OEM part.

http://mark.rehorst.com/Palm_TX/index.html

good luck

please shot me an email to favilar[at]gmail[dot]com

My only problem in the digitizer, which not only has lost calibration but has dead spots. I intend to replace as soon as possible.

Word to the wise, keep a grip on your sd cards when removing them; the spring inside has a lot of oomph and can launch an SD card across living rooms.

I don’t understand why Palm has not updated the T/X. The palm screen is excellent, and I just cannot stand the phones, with their tiny keyboards and lack of a hand-writing tool in the stylus. Hopefully Palm will announce something in the coming weeks, as I am trying to hold off on purchasing the ipod touch.

A couple months ago, I tried Power Digi and was fairly happy with it. In the last couple weeks, even it is not doing that much good for me.

In the last few days the card reader is acting up. Even without changing anything, it will stop reading a card, and it takes a near-magical series of removals, reinsertions, and resets to get it to read again. I am getting rather fed up!

Graffiti writing issues might be helped by:
a) using fingernail to write instead of stylus = less wear on the screen
b) with clean thumbs, draw your thumbs from the top and sides of the screen down to the middle of the grafitti writing areas to redistribute the screen’s gell.

That page has microphones and links to software that uses them.

I have not bought anything from them yet, but I’m seriously thinking about it.

The only real problem is that i accidentally did a fairly deep scratch in the screen with my keys (I threw them, they hit the screen). And that was in 2004, and has not really affected the usage.

I haven’t used the slider that much though. I very rarely pull it out. The 320×352 (status bar) screen i get is quite allright.

These days I have cut down what I use it for. It’s no longer my MP3 player, Video player, primary gaming machine or webbrowser. I still use it for Calendar, Ebooks and gaming when I can’t be bothered to find my DS.

First, I recently purchased a TX for my wife to use, and now know what to expect. She’s never used a PDA before, I’ve been using since Palm Professional days. I’m tech support for her and I’m familiar with Palm.

Second, and this is why I’m writing, I’ve been using a Sony Clie NZ-90 since it came out way back. It now needs a new hinge and the screen has lines of bad pixels and the Grafitti area has lost sensitivity. For $138 (plus tax & shipping) Sony will fix it all. But I’m looking at alternatives.

For *me* what’s missing from the TX is a voice recorder. AFAIK, there are no current Palm PDAs with a voice recorder. I’d have to buy a T3 to get one, and I don’t know about the sound quality. The Clie’s works great. While the format it records uses an odd codec (I need to use Quicktime to play it back on a Windows devide), it still meets my needs.

The only alternative I’ve seen is to invest in 2-year old Palm technology (TX) and get a separate digital voice recorder – total cost over $300.

Anybody have a better idea?

C’mon Palm… make me want to upgrade! As it is, it sounds like many T/x users will stick with their units unless there’s a real advantage with the next Palm.

I’ve recently experienced what appears to be a hardware failure of my Palm T/X. I will admit that it has been dropped a couple of times during its lifetime and it’s last fall seemed to have some impact. The problems show up as a lockup where the unit will not turn on. The only way to regain some life is to let the battery die, and do a hard reset. During the calibration of the digitzer when the stylus touches the screen a sound is emmitted that makes me think of static discharge. If I’m lucky the unit will only remain responsive for a for minutes; maybe hours at most. Does this sould like a digitizer problem? I am interested in this glass screen mentioned above. I’ve since got a second TX, but I’d like to not have to dispose of this other one if I don’t have to. Any thoughts?

Scott

Both worked faultlessly and without complaint for about 9 months. I particularly liked the NVFS memory as I no longer had to worry about battery levels and losing all my data. The lack of a slider seemed a move up from the T3: less moving parts, less to go wrong. Built in WiFi meant that I could upload data from the likes of Avantgo and Epocrates at the start of each working day before I left home.

Unfortunately, with both of them I started finding the TX doing repeated soft resets. At first this was only once a day, then it started becoming more frequent. It became unusable when it was resetting after every other switch off, and a hard reset and restore didn’t solve the problem. In the end both of them got caught in an endless reset loop which was impossible to break out of.

I was brave (or foolish) enough after my first experience to buy another, but a repetition of the experience a year later dented my confidence. And getting user support from the local Palm importer proved fruitless.

I concluded that there must be some inherent problems with this iteration of the NVFS that Palm used in the TX. I have read of software conflicts causing such difficulties, but on my second attempt I kept my Palm running on the barest minimum of third party software, with the same results as before.

I have to admire the T3 though: it is tough and despite the occasional reset, just keeps on going. The dented aluminum case only adds to its “battle hardened” appeal!

If anyone has any ideas of resurrecting a dead TX, I’d be most interested: but one of the problems with the NVFS memory is your stuff is in there permanently. I can’t even sell them on eBay for spares because my confidential information is still lurking in there!

It is usually a simple matter of a small prong inside the jack getting bent and needing to be pulled out a bit. If you can visualize what you are doing, a small hooked tool works great.

To help someone visualize the problem, just find a 1/8″ headphone jack that is totally open and visible. A replacement part from Radio Shack, for example, will do this nicely (part #274-248 is close).

The fairly cheap jacks they use bend easily- plug a headphone in and wobbling it will often bend the prong. Some dust or lint in the workings will mess things up as well.

Re: PowerDigi-
I’ve used this in the past, and been… reasonably satisfied but not completely so. I had not thought about going so extreme as to do a digitizer replacement, but that appeals to my inner modder.

It royally ticks me off that this is such a common problem, and the Palm factory solutions seem to be to just swap your returned Palm for a refurbed unit. Sure, replacing every year-old unit with an updated digitizer might not be cost effective for them, but I wish they would at least give us the option of paying for an upgrade like that.

Of course, it is not quite so much a problem that I am really willing to sacrifice my Tx for a couple weeks for them to tinker with it, either!

I kept my old Sony Clie NX70 as a back up.

Thanks for the info on resolving some of the problems I may face in the future. It should come in handy.

Screen calibration is a purely physcial/mechanical breakdown of the touchscreen sensing mechanism. I had the problem, then had to replace my TX due to a saltwater incident. The same problem comes up on the second TX after about a year. It took about 2.5 years to show up on my wife’s TX.

I moved to Graffitti 1 to postpone fixing the digitizer (G1 is less susceptible to problems from the failing digitizer), then installed PowerDigi to postpone it again, then to the 3-panel instead of 2-panel input. You can test digitizer failing by using the notepad program and drawing a horizontal line across the screen at constant pressure. As you draw lines higher or lower on the screen, you’ll find your line edges away from the areas that get the most use. Eventually, it will drop out and can only be drawn reliably at higher pressure. You’ll also find that these bumps in the horizontal line can be lessened with extra pressure. But that, of course, speeds the breakdown of the touchscreen.

Finally, I broke down and bought & installed the glass digitizer from http://www.gethightechparts.com. This *is* the solution to the digitizer calibration problems.

My glass-screen TX is now being used by my wife (for the past 8 months) and it’s super responsive and reliable. The second TX is in a drawer and will get a glass screen immediately, if I pull it out to start using it.

Charlie

Recently, the internal switch in the TX’s headphone jack got locked “on” and it only made noise when plugged into headphones. I started considerting my options for replacement. For me, there were only three appealing options, but none of them were perfect:

1. Get another TX. It’s pathetic that after 2+ years, there’s still no upgrade, and the TX itself was a mixed bag of upgrades/downgrades from my previous T|T3.

2. Get a Treo 755p. The added cost of smartphone service, smaller screen, and loss of WiFi (which I have at home and work) would have been really annoying. However, vibrating alarms and faster mobile internet might have been nice.

3. Get a Nokia n810. With the AXCESS emulator, this looks like a possible option, but I wonder about PIM/alarms and if they would work under emulation. The form-factor/screen/keyboard look fantastic. I wish Palm had brought out a device with these features….

Luckily, rooting around in the headphone jack with an un-bent paper clip fixed the problem, but I’m afraid to use it with headphones. I have enough trouble missing alarms with it not vibrating….

http://www.palmpowerups.com/readarticle.php?article_id=5

and it solved her problems. It has a 30 day trial. See if it solves your problem. While it is terrible that we HAD to resort to buying software to make her T|X usable, it DID make her T|X usable again.