Wi-Fi question; Palm TX

I'm a big fan of the Palm Pilot, to the point where I run both my professional and personal life from it - calendar, tasks, and address list, mostly. My older Palm Tungsten E2 just died (LCD screen failure) and the repair cost is so high that I'm just getting a new one. I have a Palm TX on the way. The TX has wi-fi capabilty. Believe it or not, I've never used a wireless connection - I do not own a laptop, nor do I use a wireless network either at home or at work. So I am a little fuzzy on the details.

Let's say I've got my new TX, and I find myself in a place with a free Wi-Fi hotspot. How exactly would I get on the web? Do I need to be signed up for some sort of monthly service (ISP or some equivalent) or is that the beauty of the free hotspot...

Don´t know how it works with a plam but with a notebook and Win XP the notebook should find himself all the WIFI in its area and you can choose to connect to one of them. (Popup in the Win-Taskbar)

If it finds one unprotected (open and for free) just click on "connect" and nothing more.

Page 292 of this User Manual:

http://www.palm.com/us/support/handbooks/tx/en/tx_ug.pdf


should be easy as well....

Thanks very much for the reply, and for the link to the user manual! 691 pages, what have I gotten myself into...?

I own a palm TX. All you do if you are in a free wi-fi spot is hit a button on the bottom of the screen. It will scan for connections, then you just hit connect. Thats all, no need to sign up for anything.

scubasteve1942 said:

I own a palm TX. All you do if you are in a free wi-fi spot is hit a button on the bottom of the screen. It will scan for connections, then you just hit connect. Thats all, no need to sign up for anything.

Click to expand...

:twothumbs

Awesome! That's what I was hoping for, but it just seemed too simple...

Bear in mind that the TX is wireless B compliant only.

adamlau said:

Bear in mind that the TX is wireless B compliant only.

Click to expand...

Um... I am generally pretty tech-savvy, but I gotta admit that the significance of your comment is going right over my head. Could you elaborate?

To elaborate....

There are several versions of WiFi. They are named after the international standard that decribes the version. The standard is 802.11a, 802.11b or 802.11g. There is another standard, but I don't know if it's 802.11n or just "n". This is often abreviated to a, b, g or n.

Your palm will talk to any hotspot that uses 802.11b. Most hotspots are set up to do a&b or b&g.

There is also the matter of "protected" hotspots where you need to enter a secret word (a key) to get access.

On my T|X I select the icon at the bottom of the screen that looks like 4 vertical bars. That brings up a screen where I select "scan/setup". It presents a list of hotspots within range. I tap one and then tap "connect".

If there is a picture of a lock next to the hotspot then you will need the key to use it.

I have three neighbors with open hotspots. that I can use from my living room. My hotspots are locked.

Daniel

I wouldn't bother with the TX. The one I have crashes about 80% of the time when I try to use wifi.

I find that there are some applications that can crash the TX, but the wifi is not one of them.

Daniel

gadget_lover said:

I find that there are some applications that can crash the TX, but the wifi is not one of them.

Daniel

Click to expand...

Well.. wifi by itself won't crash.. but whenever I try to do something remotely useful like use a web browser (default, netfront and opera) it has a 80% chance to crash

gadget_lover, thanks for the explanation. I suppose I should use Google and tune myself up on a vs b vs g etc. Is it a speed thing, a distance thing, or what?

ackbar... ACK! Geez the crash things sounds serious. Perhaps there are OS patches you can download?

Just got a tracking #. New toy arrives Friday 1/25.

I really do like the TX alot. I use it daily. I think I use it for
RSS feeds ( I read cpf on the go using sunriseXP and plucker).
I watch movies on the go loaded onto a 2 gig SD card. (TCMP)
I listen to music via wire and via bluetooth.

I do email.
I do web browsing, my only complaint there is it is slow for some pages.

I do my address book and I do us a DTMF tone generator so I can call using a land line from the palm.

the range of WiFI is not as good as laptop usually, read you have to stand closer to the access point to get a good connection, but it does work well on the go.

The battery life is good.

I got a portable keyboard to do extended emails when necessary and for 3 months while watching a new baby, I was able to do most email using this combo.

Alarmclock.

mobipocket for reading books.

It was a main piece of equiptment when the baby was born so I did not totally loose touch.

I did not use an IM client all that much but I had one.