Dec 27 was my turn to by myself a new present. I had been ogling the new Palm OS5 PDAs for a while now. More and more I wanted to retire my Handspring Visor Prism.

Well, I did it. I went out and bought a new PDA! My choice: the Palm Tungsten T3. It wasn’t as easy as it sounds though.

First step: head to Future Shop. First step: make a big mistake. I walked in there, went straight to the PDA’s, told a salesman I was going to buy one. Since I wanted to shop for other stuff, I got him to set it aside. When I was ready I went back to him and proceeded to his checkout till. He went through the whole spiel about their extended warranty even after I told him I wasn’t interested. Just before he rang it up, I told him I wanted to check one thing. There have been a few reports on the Internet of Ts screens being darker than they should be. The whole point of the T3 is the gorgeous screen. The guy looked at me and told me he couldn’t let me open the box. :jawdrop:

I was almost speechless. I told him to hold on a minute. I was about to buy this $600 PDA and the salesman wouldn’t let me see it? I challenged him on it. I had opened one in the Victoria location. He blubbered something about warranties and stuff. So I looked straight into his eyes and told him he lost the sale. I turned around and walked away. I was so pissed off. I had a CD I wanted to buy, so while I was talking to the checkout girl I asked to talk to a manager.

The next chapter in this saga begins. I was already steamed, and I had to wait at least 10 minutes to talk to someone. When he finally arrived I explained to him what had happened. He was a little dumbfounded, but of course sided with his employee. He said that the employee was wrong on the warranty but, and that he must have misunderstood what I was asking. 😕 What? I wanted to open the box to turn on the unit to see the screen. The salesman said no. Anyway, I left a very unsatisfied customer.

On the way back to my mom’s house we stopped at the Staples near her house. They had just sold out.

Back at my moms house I was a little dejected, and disappointed. I had been looking forward to this for a while, and this was not the experience I wanted.

I decided to turn this around. I called up London Drugs in Nanaimo and confirmed they had some in stock. The guy I talked to said they had some. I jumped into my truck, drove across town, ran into the store, grabbed the first salesman I could, and asked him to grab a T3. He disappeared into the back to get it. He was taking a long time and I started to get a bad feeling. Sure enough he emerged and said they didn’t have one. Another sales guy (the one I talked to on the phone) went into the back and looked. Sure enough, he thought he had one, but it was an empty box for the display one. Grrr.

I left all pissed off. As I passed A&B Sound, I decided to whip in to see what they had. Turned out they had them on sale for less than anyone one else was selling them for. They also had sold out of them.

I was dejected. I got into my truck to head back to my moms and while traveling along the highway I spotted another Staples. I didn’t think they would have any, and I wasn’t even sure if they were open. I stopped anyway and went in. It took a couple minutes to track someone down. The young guy I talked to did something no other sale guy did when I asked if they had any in stock: he checked the computer! :O They had them in stock! Yay! I picked one up on the spot. I also bought an additional USB sync cable that had a cigarette lighter attachment for charging. It made me very happy, but not happy enough to forget the headache involved getting it.

Stay tuned for my upcoming review of the device.

Here are a couple comparison pics of my new PDA compared to my old one.