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If you're a pack-rat type who likes to keep a lot of data you can't afford to lose on your personal digital assistant, PalmOne has a handheld for you. The Tungsten T5 features 256MB of flash memory, which doesn't lose data when the device loses its charge.

Announced today and expected to be widely available in early November, the T5 succeeds the T3 as PalmOne's top-of-the-line unconnected handheld, and will cost $399. The T3, which previously cost $399, drops to $349 as of today. (The company still sells the Wi-Fi- and keyboard-equipped Tungsten C for $399.)

The T5's 256MB of memory is the most built into a handheld to date (by comparison, the T3 has just 64MB), and PalmOne has included software to help users make the most of it. A new File Transfer application (installed as part of the Palm Desktop software) depicts the contents of the T5's internal drive in a window, so that users can drag and drop files between the handheld and the PC much the way they can with other drives in Windows Explorer.

But you don't have to have Palm Desktop installed to use the T5 as a flash drive. A Drive Mode feature lets you connect the T5 to any fairly recent Windows PC via a USB cable, and that computer will see the T5 as a removable drive, much the way Windows detects most thumb drives.

Big screen

Like the T3, the T5 has a 320-by-480-resolution color screen that can display documents, images, and videos in either landscape or portrait mode. Both handhelds also have an input area for using the Graffiti handwriting recognition software; when in use, it truncates the display into the more standard 320-by-320 format of most current Palms.

But unlike the T3, the T5 isn't collapsible, so you always see the full screen (to see the full screen on the T3, you have to extend its collapsible case). Consequently, the T5 is significantly taller than the T3 in the latter's collapsed state--but the difference isn't as much as you might think, because the T5's display takes up a greater proportion of the PDA case.

Other tweaks: The T5 has Intel's 416-MHz Bulverde CPU for handhelds (the T3 has the previous-generation 400-MHz XScale processor) and comes with a built-in Bluetooth adapter and DataViz's excellent Documents to Go, which lets Palm users view and edit Microsoft Office documents.

Palm says a Wi-Fi SDIO card for the T5 is on its way (there's already one for the T3).