Customer Reviews

Toshiba e335 Pocket PC

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

I couldn't help but notice all the complaints about battery life in the reviews here. 24-30 hours while the unit was turned OFF? I don't think so. I've had this unit off the charger for days, and kept a decent charge. Granted, if you leave it on, it drains the battery in several hours, but any backlit PDA does that.

Good screen, good features, VERY thin and light, and better input methods and syncing than any Palm. Having the choice of transcriber, block input (i.e., Graffiti), character recognition, and keyboard for different situations is great.

Pocket Word and Excel are included, as is Reader (load in a few books - it's great for boring staff meetings or waiting in line at the store). Programs like Notes, Tasks, and Calendar all have better functionality than their Palm counterparts.

And these days, you just can't beat the price. Well, that's not true. Yes you can, with Dell's new PDAs. But those things look like bricks, compared to the Toshiba. For me, Toshiba's slim design was very important.

Issues include a low expandability (only 1 SD slot) and a relatively slow 300 MHz proc - slow as in it's not 400 Mhz, mind you; it's still plenty fast for everyday use. Plus, it's less stable than the Palm OS. As a comparison, I had to restart my old Palm maybe once or twice in the year that I used it. This Pocket PC, I have to restart about once a week. It's somewhat annoying, but I find it an acceptable trade-off for the better features.

This is my 3rd PDA in one week, and I'm very happy with my decision to return my 2 previous purchases, both Palm's. I started with the Palm M500 thinking since this is my first PDA and I'm not a real "technoid", it should suffice. Wrong! I wasn't happy with the monochrome and I figured for a little more money I could double my memory and get color so I returned it for the 515m. While I was very happy with that product and had easily mastered the graffiti and the "user friendly" applications, I was not totally satisfied until I checked out the Pocket PC's. After much research and looking around, I chose the Toshiba e335, and I'm very satisfied with my purchase. It has the ability to play mp3's which the palms did not and the color screen is much easier to read than the palm m515. I also prefer the Microsoft format and the ability to chose which writing style I prefer; block recognition, transcriber, letter recognizer or keyboard. It also has a voice recorder which I haven't used yet. All in all this is a great unit and the more I play around with it the more I like it. I haven't had any difficulty synchonizing it and I have activated the Avantgo feature and update daily the channels I have selected to view. With this device and the os, I will not feel the desire, nor the need, to upgrade in the near future. This should satisfy for a very long time.

This review is submitted for people who demand more than basic PIM functions out of their PDAs. If you are looking for a simple PDA with only a calendar, an address book and a memo pad, you should really go and get Zire or m105. They are really good.

However, I wanted to upgrade my PDA (m100) and was looking for a device with at least 16 MB memory, good resolution color screen and preferably mp3/wma playing capability. I initially considered Palm m500 series but had to give them up because of their bad reputation (which I personally experienced) for screen freezing that was not amenable to a soft reset. The worst part is that you have to send them to Palm to get them fixed that takes about 2 weeks in which time you are left Palmless. I could not accept my PDA freezing anytime because I really depend on it every instant. So as a demanding PDA user who wanted more memory and functions than my Palm m100 could offer, I had no choice to convert to a Pocket PC.

Pocket PCs inherently provide mp3 playback capability and word/excel document access in addition to basic PIM functions that are great.

E335 stood out among others with its 64 MB memory, 300 MHz processor, good color screen, lightness and sleekness. What I have also noticed is that it does not freeze and when it did a couple of times, it always responded to soft resets. The stereo quality is really very good and I enjoy listening to music (a dream with Palm OS for the moment).

ArcBase photo program is really cool and for those who demand photo viewing, it makes the Pocket Pc much more enjoyable.

The two drawbacks of e335 were that the Graffiti recognition was about 40% worse when compared to Palm (screen protectors help the recognition and I strongly recommend them for graffiti) and that when you transfer your memos from Palm, they are not automatically categorized. I had about 400 individual memo items and spent a great deal to organize them. By the way, unless you have Pocket mirror, there is no easy "free" way to transfer your info from Palm to Pocket PC.

One last thing, with Pocket PCs you cannot individually hide items as private (unlike Palm OS devices). You need to pay to get additional software for security. The device offers an optional initial security code for access to device, though.

The battery performance is predictably poor (needs once in very 2 days charging with optimum usage; mp3, bright screen etc) when compared to 2 months performance by a gray scale m100 on 2 AAAs but I come home everyday so that is not an issue for me. If you are going to get any high-res color screen PDA, you will inevitably sacrifice the battery no matter what.

I have to admit I still favor Palm OS over Windows CE because of its simplicity but the recent Palm models were not reliable enough for me to commit to. Now I can work on my Word documents with any of the 4 brightness-adjustable high-res color screen options and listen to a crisp sounding stereo mp3 tracks or just view my photo album in my spare time.

The manual does not involve the type of troubleshooting that is necessary. It is very important that you do not remove the synchronized files (Word, mp3, etc) from the PocketPC My Documents desktop folder without first deleting them from the Pocket PC. If you do remove them, the sync. Manager will give resolving conflict messages which are not solvable. This is the only important message that I can convey.

Overall, I believe that e335 is one of the best Pocket PCs around and it has completely satisfied my expectations except for the Graffiti recognition. I got the device at Amazon.com at an incredible price, which was much cheaper than M515! Incredible...

I bought this product over a week ago. I have found that this is a pretty good product overall considering that it [wasn't a bad price] after rebates.
Pro - lightweight and small, fast enough to handle all my tasks, good software bundle, MP3 player is good, large on-board memory

Cons - the volume is too loud (I would like a softer volume setting, you get either really loud, loud and mute), a little weak on battery life, the active sync is not very easy to use compared to the hot sync for Palms

This product was my first PocketPC purchase. I had owned a handspring before which did not suit my purposes. I really like the large amount of memory built in and the SD expansion. Overall I think that the PocketPC is a better product than the Palm but there is a steeper learning curve for the PocketPC especially with the active sync. I wish the battery life was better but is usable.

I am pretty satisfied with the product and I would purchase it again for the same price. I do wish though that I had a compact flash expansion slot. The SD is great but you really have to watch what you buy (read the SD card reviews before you buy a particular product) and plus it is more expensive.

Oh and by the way DO NOT purchase the screen protectors from Toshiba, they [aren't very good].

This is a good PDA that can get the job done. I am computer savy but this is my first PDA. The upside...I am able to utilize my PDA for keeping my calendar straight and my contacts for people that comprise my appointments. The down side of this Toshiba product is the instruction book. It lacks an appendix. When I come up on a function that I don't know how to do, I can't turn to the appendix to show me where to find out about the action. You need to skim the instruction book and then if you don't find what you are looking for...hopefully you stumble upon it by accident, which has happened in a few incidents. I am getting bolder about playing with the PDA and not worrying about erasing or messing up, and therefore I am finding more ways to utilize the PDA. But it does do what I need it to do, there are just more functions that are not clear yet. Still a good recommendation.

Toshiba is known for their excellent notebook/laptop, but not for their PDA. My first PDA was the Apple Newton and Toshiba e335 is my current and last one (currently looking at the IPAQ 6315/6365).

My overall experience with the e335 is not too good. Hardware quality is very poor (cracked adaptor socket, creaking case). I am not at all a "heavy" user, but I still find this e335 to be inadequate and below average in everything. Battery life is average; plus it cannot be replaced when the battery is at the end of its lifetime. The processor is so slow and buggy, it requires "soft" reset several times a day.

The worst of all is the poor support from Toshiba itself as the maker of this PDA. The last rumor I heard was, Toshiba stops making and selling PDA (its a reality by now in 2005). So my suggestion is: don't even consider buying a used one or new ones advertised as clearance model, because you'll be stuck with less than average PDA that you can only use as a shiny toy to impress a 4 year old....

I recently replaced my 1st generation Palm Pilot (6+ years old and a delight) with the Toshiba E335 Pocket PC. There have been quite a few pluses and minuses as I will explain. I love the power and available memory (and I also got a 256MB SD card which is great to load PICTURES). I've loaded books on it and I don't bring the paperback or hardcopy on my commute anymore. Games are nice too. Word and Excel I haven't had much use for yet, but I'm certain I'll have no problem loading huge spreadsheets and documents.
Now for some of the minuses...

The screen has frozen on me a couple of times and I had to do a "hard" reset and then go through the initialization process and restore everything from my PC. I was told this is a Windows bug. Uggghhh.

After 2 months, I lost the screen/machine for good (blank screen with a black bar down the middle) and had to send it back to Toshiba. I got it back in a few days at no cost. I was told, however, that the "screen" is not covered by any warranty. Luckily, it wasn't the screen that broke, so no charge.

I have a new Dell P4 2.4 Mz using XP and the syncronization software was not compatible. I had to download it from Microsoft. Frustrating when it comes with instructions to load the software on an XP machine. Also, the "quick reference" card's instructions were different than the instructions in the book for loading. I used neither.

I'm still having trouble setting it up to syncronize on 2 machines. It's not cut and dry like Pilot software is.

My work machine is running NT (not commpatible with USB) and I can't find anyone selling a serial cable for this Pocket PC, therefore I can't sync up at work until we upgrade.

Anyway, some pluses and lot's of minuses, but it is much nicer than a Palm style PDA when it is working. I warily recommend it and wish you better luck than me.

I have used the Toshiba e335 for three weeks now and only have a few complaints. The first is the e335 does not have a Compact Flash expansion slot and secondly, the e335 does not have a battery that can easilly be replaced by the user. As a college student, I will be using this PDA a lot in the next semester at school and having a way to easilly swap out batteries would have been nice. For a basic PocketPC this unit will do everything you need it to do. The 300 Mhz cpu inside seems to run reliably. For the same money that this unit is going for you can get one of the new Dell pocketPCs. I wish I would have known about them before making this purchase. They have a 400 Mhz cpu, a Compact Flash expansion slot in addition to the SD Memory slot and also have a battery that can easilly be replaced by the user. The e335 is a GOOD pda and I am not bad mouthing it. I just wish that Toshiba would have included the additional Compact Flash slot and a battery that the user could replace.

I have had this PDA for a couple of weeks and I would say that for the money its great. Sure there are better PDA's but this one does what I need at a low price.

I had a little trouble getting it to "Activesync" the first time but thats becuase I didnt bother to read the quick start guide. Since then it has worked 100% of the time. (Running Windows XP)

I actually have a second one on order for my wife.

It does take some getting used to and has a learning curve. I was a heavy PalmOS guy and it was a change but now.. "I get it".

Someday I would love to get the IPAQ but until I can shell out $500-$600... for the price this is perfect.

this is probably one of the best Pocket PC's I have bought. And this is coming from someone who goes through PDA's like I go through underwear.... lightweight, fast and well made. I would recommend this unit to anyone... Its so slim I can put it in my jeans back pocket and carry it with me. So much easier to transport than the bulkier iPaqs or Dells. GET ONE OF THESE, you wont be sorry.