Palm Cradle Kit

Posted on December 20, 2007 in Palm and Hardware. - No comments

Recently while sorting out boxes of old computer junk I came across my old Palm III and it’s cradle. It was like bumping into an old friend and I wondered if getting a Cradle for my TX would improve my “user experience”. On an impulse I placed an order on-line.

My initial experience with the Palm Cradle Kit has left me feeling rather disappointed and the more I’ve tried to use it, the more disappointed I’ve become. The Palm Cradle Kit delivered little satisfaction.

Poor connection

The first thing you notice is that it’s actually quite tricky to put the Palm TX onto the Cradle. The user guide makes it look easy – just drop it straight down and into place. Unfortunately the TX’s connector doesn’t make it that easy and its frustrating just trying to get it to line up. Once it’s connected it doesn’t feel very solid in fact I’d even go as far as saying it feels distinctly wobbly. There’s nothing reassuring about the way the TX sits on the cradle.

It’s even worse when it comes to trying to use the TX while it’s installed. In my opinion, one of the objectives of a cradle should be to facilitate desk mounted operation. Judged against this the cradle fails. Removing the stylus becomes an exercise in brain surgery as you try to gently slide it out of the palm without pulling it off the cradle. The metal stabilizer doesn’t do much to stabilize (it would help it if rested on the desk) so that every time you touch the screen the whole thing rocks back and forth which doesn’t help your Graffiti recognition at all. By he time you’ve pressed a couple of buttons and tentatively jabbed at the screen the palm is close to leaving the cradle and making a disparate leap for the floor.

Of course, there’s another inconvenience which isn’t the fault of the cradle, but adds to the level of frustration never the less. I like many others have a hard-case for my Palm. I’ve dropped it far too many times to even think about making do with the included screen cover. However, if you’re going to use the Cradle you do need to remove the Palm from the case. It was annoying enough that there wasn’t a hole in the hard case to enable you to plug in the power connector, but at least you didn’t need to remove the TX from the case in order to do so.

“Stylish Illumination”

One of the features listed on the box is “stylish illumination”. In the Cradle are a couple of while LED’s that illuminate the opaque plastic top. Nothing wrong with that until you realise that it’s completely pointless and that there is no way to turn it off!

The lights are always on, no matter what state your docked TX is in (charging, hot-syncing etc.). Worse than that, the lights are on even if there isn’t a TX installed on the Cradle.

What makes it even worse is that the light is distractingly bright. It’s not a soft glow, and if like me you have your TX set to the lowest brightness setting for most of the time then the “stylish illumination” is brighter than the screen. Actually it’s actually brighter than the TX screen turned to full brightness.

I should also point out that the light is even on when the computer the cradle is attached to is turned off. The only way to turn it off is to pull out the power lead from the back of the cradle (or remote the power from the wall socket). Surely the whole point of having a cradle in the first place is to save some of the pissing around with cables the whole time? No such luck with this wonderful design – not unless you’re happy to always have the light on as a constant reminder that you’re choking the life out of the planet we live on.

Audio? What Audio?

On the back of the cradle is an headphones style audio port. Well that might be useful at least? Wrong. The cradle’s user guide just says that you can optionally “connect your stereo or headphone to the audio port on the cradle.” Seems simple enough, so I connected my MP3 player’s headphones to the back of the cradle, and turned on the Palm. Hey, this is good I thought , there’s none of the bad background hiss that you get when you connect your headphones directly to the Palm itself. I started tapping on icons and experienced a little static click on the headphones. I opened up pTunes and started playing one of the MP3s. Blimey, that was quiet, so I turned up the volume. The music sounded quite tinny and rather distant. It was when I got a particular glare from my wife that I realized why. Removing the headphones from my ears and it was obvious. The audio wasn’t playing back through the headphones at all – just the internal speaker of the Palm.

I checked the headphones, checked that they were properly connected. Checked them in the Palm TX’s own audio port again to make sure but I couldn’t see what was wrong. I looked in the “manual” again and the one line about the audio connector didn’t give any clues. So, it was time to hit the internet. After a little while searching and posting on message boards such as the Palm TX forum on Brighthand. It was here that a very helpful chap by the name of “nine” (and fellow cradle sufferer) gave me the solution:

“In order to get Cradle the audio port working you have to connect the Palm TX and then press the reset button on the back of the TX.”

It worked, but this is obviously a different interpretation of “compatible” than I’m used to. Having to pick up the cradle with the palm attached, then manipulate it to get to the reset switch just to enable the audio port? That can’t be right and seems to make the whole idea of having a an audio port on the cradle pointless when you consider that there’s a headphone socket on top of the Palm that actually works without a reset.

And a final note about audio quality. If you do get the audio port to work, then as expected the background hiss is just as bad.

In Conclusion

The Palm Cradle Kit is rubbish. If you’ve not purchased one yet then think of yourself as one of the lucky ones. If like me you have, then you have my commiserations. The whole design and execution of this cradle is fundamentally flawed which is a real shame as I love my TX. It’s hard to get your head round how something that should make using the TX more convenient can end up being so difficult and frustrating to use.

What are the good points? Well you get another power lead which comes in handy (one in the office and one at home) but that’s about it. I’m glad I didn’t pay the full Palm price.

• Digg
• Delicious
• Stumbleupon
• Reddit
• Facebook

---