Palm W

If you were considering buying a used or new Palm Tungsten W for use as a phone/pda, there are a few things you should know before you pony up the dough.

First this model was discontinued by Palm/Tungsten a while back (about 2003 or so) for a few good reasons. This is not to say that it isn't a very good PDA. It is likely that it was discontinued as a PDA/PHONE because of the very poor design compared to modern PDA/Phones.

Key features that it does not have are the following: SPEAKERPHONE, BUILT IN MICROPHONE & SPEAKER, and other great new things like BLUETOOTH and WIFI connectivity. If you were planning on using it as a phone it is a bit irritating to fiddle with the wire and earpeice every time you want to answer or make a call.

As a PDA it is great. It keeps your contacts, calendar, and PALM powered programs in good order. It works great and the built in keyboard are very functional. In my experience using several different Tungsten W/ i710 units however, they don't seem to do a good job of keeping date and time accurately unless you are connected to a telephone network service provider.

In conclusion, this model is a very inexpensive way to combine both PDA and Telephone as long as you don't mind dealing with a few slightly irritating design flaws. In its day it was leading edge and today it is still very functional and impressive to non-technical John Q. Public.

If you have money to spend, I would suggest going with a newer PALM PDA/PHONE model, however if you want to do things on the cheap, it will do very well as long as you have AT&T/CINGULAR in your area.