PalmOne Tungsten C

From Install to HotSync

The Tungsten T5 comes with Palm Desktop software for both Windows and Mac so that you can backup your Palm data onto your hard disk, and synchronize applications like email, address book, calendar, and task lists with their desktop counterparts. The Mac and Windows versions of the sync software have many similar features, but are very different in appearance and operation, and Windows users get more bonus applications, such as Outlook conduits, Documents To Go Desktop, and PalmOne Media.

On the PC, running the CD installer first copies the software to your hard disk. Upon successful installation, you'll be asked to choose a username, and then perform your first HotSync for backup and file synchronization. On the Mac, the process is similar.

After Palm Desktop installation is complete, the Windows CD will give you the opportunity to install some more software. Although this page claims that you need to install this software in order to exchange Office documents, the DataViz Documents To Go application is already installed under the Start menu. The most useful applications for Web surfing are Acrobat Reader, Java, Windows Media Player and RealPlayer. If your office requires a VPN client to get email, you'll want to install that too.

If you're upgrading from an earlier Palm, some issues might come up. For example, after the first HotSync, we had two problems: one of our favorite apps, NesEm, crashed the T5. The second problem was that the hard buttons were not doing what we expected. Checking Preferences>Buttons revealed the problem -- it had assigned the buttons according to the settings of our previous Palm (a Tungsten T). A click of the Default button solved that one!

Using Documents To Go

Documents To Go is a file viewer for Microsoft Office documents that is very handy for offline reference and sharing with others. But Office documents can be very large and complex -- sometimes too complex for typical PDA processors. On the PC, the Documents To Go desktop application lets you convert Office files to a format that can be opened more quickly on your T5. Simply select files to convert and they will be transferred to the Palm at the next HotSync. You can also open unconverted documents copied to the T5 in Drive Mode directly with Documents To Go, but this can take minutes. (See the Performance page for more information.) Mac users have no choice but to use unconverted documents, since there is no desktop-based application.

Using Drive Mode

To activate Drive Mode, open the Drive Mode application from the Launcher or Favorites (by default, it appears on the second screen of Favorites). As soon as you start Drive Mode, it will tell you that it's not running, and offers you a nice big button to Turn Drive Mode On. After you've turned it on, you'll need to plug the USB HotSync cable into your computer.

Your computer will detect the handheld and mount it. On Windows, it will pick an unused drive letter (D: on our system). On the Mac, it will mount as a drive called INTERNAL. Now you can copy files to and from the handheld and move files around on it. You'll only be able to manipulate the 160MB flash drive portion of your T5, which is a good thing, since free-for-all access to the rest of its memory could have disastrous consequences to the operating system and installed applications.

When you're done working with the drive, you must eject it. On Mac OS X, eject it as any other removable drive. On Windows, you'll need to click the Unplug or Eject Hardware icon in the system tray and select Stop USB Mass Storage Device. When it's successfully stopped, you'll get a message confirming that it's OK to unplug. Finally, tap the Turn Drive Mode Off button on your T5.

We had no problems using Drive Mode on a Windows PC. However, on the Mac, we had serious issues. After five or ten minutes of sitting in Drive Mode, the T5 stopped responding, and we got errors when trying to copy files. In this state, we couldn't eject the T5 from the Mac, nor would the Turn Drive Mode Off button respond on the Palm. The only way out was to reset the T5, which could cause corruption of the internal memory: the only safe way to exit Drive Mode is to eject the drive and turn drive mode off on the T5.