My Tungsten E2 had a little whine problem. That is, if it was on and I held it up to my ear, I could hear a little high-pitched whiny noise. Turns out that the screen is causing this. It wasn’t a big deal, because I have to hold it right up to my ear to hear it and I noticed it only by chance. In 10 years, I probably won’t be able to hear that high-pitched a noise anymore.

Anyway, while being mostly very pleased with the T|X, I was dismayed to find that it came with a huge whine problem. The whiny noise is probably 10 times louder, or more, than the noise coming from the E2. It was enough that I could clearly hear it when the PDA was on and over an arms length away from me.

After using the thing to take notes during a 50 minute class today, it was enough to drive me crazy (though it would probably be very good at keeping me awake and alert). I don’t know if anyone sitting around me could hear it… No one said anything to me about it. I think my ears are a little more sensitive to high frequency noise than many other people my age, though I am certainly not sure about that, I certainly won’t mind when I’m not able to hear these whiny noises anymore. Anyway, something had to be done about this problem.

Googling, I was pleased to see that I am not the first to come across this problem. However, the T|X is not exactly a new device, and some of the advice I found on fixing it yielded dead links to software that is no longer supported (I suppose). However, I did find a software-only solution. WarpSpeed, an overclocking utility available over here for $11, has the option to silence the screen noise (I believe this is done by lowering the screen update rate). I downloaded the trial version and sure enough it was able to reduce the noise coming from my device from a terribly annoying whine audible from 3 feet away to a very, very quiet buzz audible from only about 2 inches away. They got my $11.