After months of debating between the Palm TX and the Dell Axim X51v, I took the plunge and went with the Palm TX. The major deciding factor: price.

I was initially skeptical in purchasing the Palm TX, due in part to Access Japan purchasing Palm a few months ago. With the release of the Treo 700w, Palm may be shifting all newer products to the Windows Mobile operating system. After crashing a display model running the Windows Mobile operating system, I decided the frustration wouldn’t be worth it and I would be better off sticking with something more reliable — the Palm TX. The Palm TX marks the second Palm I’ve purchased since I purchased my Palm IIIxe in late 2000. A worthwhile upgrade, in my opinion

So, why the Palm TX? I needed something reliable — not something I’d have to soft reset everyday. The Palm TX features 128 MB of NVRAM, which means the Palm doesn’t lose any of your data even if the batteries are completely drained. The Dell Axim X51 series also upgraded to NVRAM, along with the advent of the Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system (which has not proven to be stable — at least during my testing). Another deciding factor was the included WiFi and Bluetooth functionality. It’s about time Palm offered built-in WiFi, instead of forcing consumers into purchasing the fragile SDIO WiFi cards (occupying the only available SD slot). Now, I can surf the Internet and also listen to MP3′s by means of a 1 GB SD storage card ($63 CDN at NCIX.com!). Another deciding factor was the sleek, black Tungsten-style body of the Palm TX and the large screen. I can finally SSH to work without pulling out my notebook, should I ever need to The cons — no cradle included.

On a side note, don’t you just love technology — you purchase something, only to purchase additional accessories for it down the road. A $330 Palm TX is pricey as it is, and then you are prompted to buy a better carrying case for it and also expand the available storage, adding another $100 to the price tag Economics in action — supply and demand I’m careful not to spend too much on technology these days, as most technological items these days are disposable assets (well, not all.. thanks in part to Ebay)

In other news, I finished reading The Broker last night. It was a good read, but I didn’t like it as much as the other John Grisham title I read — The Firm. I’ve started another John Grisham title (my wife chose it for me) — The Last Juror.

I just finished reading John Grisham’s The Firm. It’s an older novel, but it flowed well and kept me in suspense chapter after chapter (although some events were predictable). There’s a movie based on the novel, but lucky for me, I haven’t seen it yet. I generally like to read the book a movie is based on before actually watching the movie — such was the case when I read E.T. and Huckleberry Finn way back when (I told ya I don’t read novels much ).

Before finishing The Firm, I read Digital Fortress by Dan Brown. Now, that was a good read. Digital Fortress is about an unbreakable cryptographic algorithm getting out of hand — a fast-paced read. Dan Brown writes very well, and I’ll definitely be purchasing a couple of his other books soon (why doesn’t The Da Vinci Code come in soft cover). The only interesting thing I noticed was that his chapters are two to three pages long, making for hundreds of chapters!

Anyways, I’m off to read some more before I snooze off. I’m currently reading another John Grisham title: The Broker.

Update (9/4/2006):

One of my cousins read my blog post above (neglecting to read the date it was posted), only to bluntly state, ‘Hey Avi, The Da Vinci Code IS available in softcover! What are you talking about?!?’ Well, I guess I should have updated this blog post sooner — Sukh acquired the softcover version of the book shortly after it was made available in Canada. Thus far, I’ve only read a quarter of the way through the book and have yet to watch the film (willl probably be on DVD soon).