PalmOne Tungsten T5

The Palm Towers crew play it safe and sensible with this solid performer

For a brand-spanking-new PDA, the Tungsten T5 looks somewhat retro - or at least it does to those who remember the old Palm V. This model, like last year's successful Tungsten E, takes pretty much all of its design cues from that old favourite.

To be honest, there aren't many ground-breaking features on the T5. Instead, Palm has simply refined the Tungsten concept. For example, the sliding mechanism for the screen that irritated so many T3 owners has now been ditched.

In place of this slider, there's a straightforward 320 x 480 display that, while not on a par with the latest VGA efforts that have graced the newest Pocket PC devices, is pleasingly crisp and very easy on the eye.

The handheld also boasts a large 256MB wodge of memory that retains all your data even if you completely drain the battery of juice, and it can also now act as a USB flash-memory drive. This means it's much easier to add data to it from PCs or Macs when you're out and about, because you don't need to have the driver software installed on each machine you use.

However, there's still no Wi-Fi included, which is really annoying considering that it's now pretty much standard on any of the Pocket PC-based PDAs in this price range. It really is time that Palm started to include Wi-Fi out of the box on all of its higher-end models.

Nevertheless, if you're looking for a slim and light handheld with lots of memory and decent performance, the T5 is still a good bet. It may not be a particularly innovative PDA, but it is a seriously practical one.