Palm Tungsten E2 Handheld

by Palm

Product Details

Data Sheet [154kb PDF]

• Product Dimensions: 4.5 x 3.1 x 0.6 inches ; 4.6 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0007VMROE
• Item model number: E2
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (423 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,269 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
  • #6 in Electronics > Computers & Add-Ons > PDAs, Handhelds & Accessories > PDAs & Handhelds
• Date first available at Amazon.com: April 13, 2005

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

From the Manufacturer Wherever your life is going, this is the perfect handheld to take along for the ride. The sleek, stylishly designed Tungsten E2 handheld from palmOne brings your entire world to life. Your calendar, contacts, documents, presentations, photos and videos look sharper and more colorful. But just as important, its new flash memory keeps all that information safe -- even if you don't have time to recharge.

See a detailed digram of the E2's features.

Of course, it wouldn't be a palmOne handheld if we didn't push the boundaries of what a handheld can do. That's why we included Bluetooth wireless technology for wireless connectivity. Now working and communicating will be that much easier. Taking work to go? View and even edit spreadsheets and word processing documents right on your handheld. Plus you can sync your calendar and contacts from Outlook. And don't forget to grab your MP3 tunes. You're going places.

Brighter, richer color display: See your information clearly indoors and out. Brighter display, better color saturation brings photos and videos to life.

Non-volatile, flash memory: There's more than enough room to hold your calendar, contacts, applications, photos, and even your spreadsheets or presentations. And because it's flash memory, the information on your
handheld is protected -- even if you're on the go and don't have time to recharge.

Built-In Bluetooth: Stay connected. With built-in Bluetooth wireless technology, you can synchronize with your
desktop without wires getting in the way. Use your Tungsten E2 handheld with a compatible
phone to send email and text messages, or to check news headlines on the Web.

Documents To Go: Productivity in your pocket. The Tungsten E2 comes with Documents To Go, which lets you
carry Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files-so you can be more productive wherever you are. And with a simple conversion step, you can even view Acrobat PDFs.

Product Description

TungstenE2 Handheld

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

842 of 854 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It is great for many things, and not so great for a few, April 22, 2005

By 

S. Allen - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Palm Tungsten E2 Handheld (Office Product)

Ignore most of the complaints about this model and Palm in general. Remember what you want a Palm for: storing information in an easy-to-access manner. For most people, it isn't supposed to be a mini laptop. It doesn't matter if the specs haven't changed much over the years. How much has a DayRunner improved in the past couple of decades? Some innovations make sense, sure. I've had several PDAs over the past few years because of specific things I wanted (rechargable battery, color screen, wireless access, etc.). Now I have a E2 (for the Bluetooth, screen, design, and ease of use). But at the end of the day, my usage has stayed pretty constant. I want good PIM applications (personal information management) on a small device with a good screen and battery life and the ability to check my email. That's all I want, and the E2 gives me that. Sure, Palm could wow us with innovations, but I really can't figure out what they could introduce that would be a "must-have" feature. Competing Windows Mobile devices don't offer anything particularly better either (unless you want a jack of all trades device that isn't particularly good at anything. In other words, if you want a PDA, this one is great. Here's why:

1. For most of the things that anyone does with a Palm, it works great. In other words, the PIM features work great, and the direct synchronization with Outlook is fantastic (and a new feature only on the past few Palm devices).
2. The hardware and "fit" of the device is great. This is the latest in the "Palm V" model and it shows. No gimmicks, just a good device fit and design wise.
3. The Bluetooth feature is great, if you need/want it. Setting up PC Bluetooth sync is easy if you follow the manual and the wizard on the device. Using it with a phone is a much greater challenge due to the few phones supported directly by Palm. Check first to see if yours is. If not, there might be a work-around, but prepare yourself for a few hours on the internet trying to find one.
4. The fact that the memory doesn't get erased when the power runs out will be really helpful if you're prone to forgetting to charge your devices.

The bad:
1. Versamail is incredibly difficult to work with. By far it has taken me the longest time to find out that I can't use it to sync with Outlook as planned (this is because you can't directly Hotsync IMAP accounts with SSL security, nor can you sync an IMAP account to Outlook, points buried in Palm's website).
2. As mentioned, getting Bluetooth to work with an unsupported phone is a real pain and not the most reliable connection ever invented.
3. Yeah, yeah, it shows fingerprints, should have a power indicator light, and a cradle would have been nice. A little too much cost-cutting, I think.

Overall, I'm very happy with the E2. It does what I want and probably more than what most people desire (most people probably don't need Bluetooth on a PDA). If you don't care about Bluetooth or the non-volatile memory on the E2, get the Tungsten E and save yourself $50.

103 of 107 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An odd, disappointing update to Palm's workhorse model..., April 24, 2005

By 

Steven Dennis (Reston, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Palm Tungsten E2 Handheld (Office Product)

There is a reason, sadly, why sales of PDA's have shrunk each of the past few years -- a crushing lack of imagination and innovation -- while rival gadgets competing for valuable pocket space, like Apple's iPod, have taken up the slack and have seen booming sales as a result.

The Tungsten E was a breakthrough in its time, a beautiful piece of engineering with a high-quality color screen and a rock-bottom price of 199 clams. Its main drawbacks -- it's paltry 32MB Ram and it's lack of built-in wireless capabilities -- could be fixed with add-on cards.

But two years is a long-time in electronics land. Since then, Apple released the iPod mini, which will store the contacts most people use Palms for, plus hold 4GB worth of tunes, for the same price. It's also far smaller than a Palm.
Meanwhile, folks who want the more sophisticated functions that a Palm can deliver -- like medical imaging etc. for docs, photos, sophisticated calculator, email and web surfing on the go -- found the Tungsten E outclassed by Blackberry's, upgraded cell phones, Palm's own Treo and the like.

So it was odd, and frankly disappointing, to get a look at the new, pricier Tungsten E2. I'd love to see the market research that suggested they could raise prices with a minimal feature upgrade while the competish has been eating their lunch. After a two-year wait, they didn't even increase the 32 MB memory. They merely made it non-volatile flash (something they should have done long, long ago). At a time when Apple is selling a 1GB shuffle for $149 and flash memory is dirt cheap, it's mind-boggling why Palm would choose to link the E2's fabulous hi-res screen to low-rent memory.
As for what you still don't get: There is no phone, no camera, no thumbpad, no WiFi. This is close to a pure PDA, though it can display pictures and double as a poor-man's MP3 player.
The added bluetooth -- odd why they went that route instead of the far more common WiFi -- does nothing unless you have a compatible bluetooth phone or computer.
As with the E, the E2 still is a great design. Clean, simple, portable, shirt-pocketable. No keyboard, but I've never been a thumbpad fan.
MS Office functions are also included -- Word, Outlook, Powerpoint. Why you would use them, however, is a bit bizarre to me. Who wants to spend the time coding in a Powerpoint presentation with a stylus? Yet, if this is important to you, it's here. And having your email with you can be a plus...
Here's a basic product guide:
Mono Palm Zire -- Bargain basement model with 7.2 MB of Ram, upgraded from hobbled 2 MB original model. About 100 smackers. Often offered free as bundle deals with new computers. Good starter model for the price, but designed to leave you wanting more. Includes rechargeable battery. Memory can not be upgraded. Horribly skimpy black-on-grey screen.
Tungsten T2+, etc.: Deluxe models that feature, in some cases, larger screens/Bluetooth/Wi-Fi/thumbpads with dropdown graffiti screens. All unnecessary features in my book, especially given their much higher prices.
Zire 72: Similar to E2, but with a low-rent camera attached.
Treos: These models should be seriously considered if you are a thumbpad fan, or if you want your PDA to also be your phone. But let's face it, how many people can afford spending several hundred smackers on a PDA?
BTW, when comparing, I've found you can generally ignore the speed of the processor. For most Palm functions, the reaction time is near instantaneous, or at most a second or two lag.
As for PocketPCs, some of them are now very attractively priced and are worth checking out. I've yet to use one extensively, so I'll stick to what I know -- Palms are simple, easy to use and almost guaranteed to improve your productivity. It's like having a backup for your brain. And who doesn't need that?

60 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars perfect for an absent minded professor, April 29, 2006

By 

Mark H. Webster (Tacoma) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Palm Tungsten E2 Handheld (Office Product)

This is my first organizer ever. I'm totally impressed. After reading some of the reviews here I was scared to put my money on any of these things. Seems like someone had complained about every model out there. This one had at least above average reviews, and I liked the fact that fewer people complain about the soft boot issue.
Now it's two months later and I can't imagine living without it. I'm a college teacher, with lots of faculty meetings to track, plus a freelance business, and the usual dentist and car appointments. I used to keep a paper "to do" list in my shirt pocket, but it doesn't ring if I forget to scan it several times a day. In short, my life is so busy that I was beginning to drop appointments.

I'm happy to report that this tungsten e2 syncs perfectly with Microsoft Outlook 2002. There are a few minor anomalies, but nothing that is a deal breaker. I was disturbed at first to discover that the thing is never really off. I would have liked to be able to totally turn it off when I had no appointments coming up, to save juice. However I've found that this is a none issue. It runs for at least 4 days, sometimes a week and a half before needing a charge.

The operating system seems quite solid. It locks up maybe once every 2 to 3 weeks, but that requires just a tap of a pen on the reset button on the back, and it comes back all happy in a couple seconds. When I was installing third party software every couple days it would lock up more frequently, but I've got everything I need now, and things have settled down.

I don't use it for email, or for surfing the net. I have a laptop for that, and I didn't want to pay an extra hundred for the wifi card.

The coolest thing about this e2 is the calendar and alarm, the tasks list, and the contacts. With the hot buttons on the front to access these vital functions, this thing never leaves my person. I even take it climbing in my backpack. Never know when I might want to make a note about something, or meet a new friend and exchange phone numbers.
After I bought it and realized how useful it was, I was tempted to exchange it for the treo, which has all this, plus a phone...until I found out that you have to pay at least $50 a month to the phone service to make the internet stuff work. Scratch that! I love this thing. It's perfect for my needs. I did buy the 2 year replacement policy from circuit city. $30 seemed like a small price to pay for peace of mind.

The software you can get for Palms is amazing. Here is my list of essential software:
Uninstall Manager - Northglide
BDicty 5.9 Pro - dictionary, thesaurus and conjugator
Pocket Tunes from Normsoft (it is compatible with the "plays for sure" windows media player files. I can play free downloadable audio books from the library.)
Tide Tool 2.2 - toolworks dot com (if you live near saltwater, a must have)
MessageEase V.5 - faster than graffiti for entering text, and it's free!
AvantGo - captures websites off the net when synced, view them on the commute later. - free!