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Of course the issue here is that I shouldn’t be wasting my time trying to access my office or home Internet connection via Bluetooth, after all, that’s what WiFi is for. Unfortunately, palmOne has not bothered to include WiFi in the feature list of the T5. Now I consider a lack of integrated WiFi to be a major issue with a high-end PDA like the T5, and when I questioned palmOne about this I was told that it was impossible to produce a device for under £300 with integrated WiFi. Of course the Dell Axim X30 kind of blows that theory out of the water, as do any number of Pocket PC devices from the likes of hp and Fujitsu-Siemens. With more offices and homes becoming WiFi enabled and the amount of wireless hotspots growing by the day, integrated WiFi is paramount for a PDA. palmOne does offer an SDIO WiFi adapter that can plug into the T5, but that adds extra cost, extra bulk, and spoils the clean lines of the device.

Talking of the SDIO slot, it’s located at the top of the casing, along with the headphone socket and the power switch. The stylus slides into the right hand side of the chassis, and is pulled upwards in order to set it free. This is the best stylus I’ve ever used – it’s metal so has a good weight to it, while it’s topped and tailed with black plastic. Some of the team found the chrome finish a little slippery, but for me it was perfect.

When I tried to perform a hard reset I found that the stylus was too large to fit into the reset hole. However, if you unscrew the top of the stylus, you’ll find a very thin point specifically for this purpose. Of course since a Palm OS device doesn’t need resetting all the time like a Pocket PC, you shouldn’t be unscrewing the stylus too often.

But it’s the internal memory that is the T5’s real party piece, and with 256MB it’s easy to see why. Before you get too excited I better mention that once you’ve taken the OS and the core applications into account, you’re left with 215MB of free memory. Now that’s still a decent amount of storage, but unfortunately only 55MB can be used for application storage, while the remaining 160MB can only be used as data storage. To me it seems strange that only 55MB of the internal memory can be used for applications, since if you need data storage you could just use an SD card.

Also, the way in which you access that high-capacity storage is a little antiquated. If you want to transfer data to or from the T5 you first have to activate “Drive Mode”. As the name suggests, Drive Mode allows Windows to see the T5 as a removable storage device, and assigns it a drive letter, just like when you plug a USB memory key into your computer. However, when your T5 is in Drive Mode, you can’t synchronise it, and Windows will only see it as a removable drive rather than a PDA. Now although this is a definite improvement on previous Palm OS file transfer procedures, it’s still a fair way behind the way a Pocket PC and ActiveSync works. If you pop a Pocket PC into its USB cradle, not only will it instantly sync, but you will also have access to all the internal memory and memory cards, without having to switch between modes.

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