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Umm, what?!

Your Treo has accelerometers and a proximity sensor?

Not as powerful a one, but there's a reason it shuts down when dropped (and not broken, it just knows when to save itself from corruption)

It has a Dock Connector?

Yes. It's called a USB cable.

It has a full web browser (not some shrunken down "baby browser")?

Correct.

It has a touchscreen interface?

Yes, and has for years.

It has a virtual keyboard so you don't have to press 7 four times to get an S?

It has a full keyboard you can type on in your pocket. Have you even seen one? That's the dumbest comment of all these.

It syncs with iTunes?

Who wants that? It syncs like a hard-drive. 4gb SD card slides into computer. mp3's are copied, and then played.

How many people are going to post ignorant "My phone does all this" claims without thinking it through?

How many people are going to realize many phones have been doing the majority of this stuff for years....and the iPhone won't be about for a number of months?

No, your phone does NOT do all this.

It does the vast majority of it....and well...and has since Oct. '03.

I'm not saying the iPhone isn't a good accessory that will get your boyfriend all hot and bothered, but to say that the featureset is unique is beyond ignorant.

As are the people who rated the previous comment as "informative".

For Ogg Vorbis, I use a Palm LifeDrive running Pocket Tunes. It has a Ogg Vorbis plug-in. The LiveDrive has a 4G drive and also the SD RAM card slot. It's a little expensive, but worked paid for mine :). Since the LifeDrive has Wifi, and BlueTooth, it can stream music. Just use the web browser and shoutcast.com.

I look at it like this, it might be more expensive ... however it plays music, streams music, plays AVI, browses the web, all the PDA stuff, and can run custom applications.

I have a SSH client on it so I can check my work's servers from any hotspot. :)

Apple doesn't capitalise on the current media and consumer 'love' for iPods, then the plethora of other devices with similar or superior function will destroy Apples market

They already have for me. My setup is:

* Palm Treo 650 - smartphone / PDA.
* PocketTunes - MP3, OGG and WMA Windows Media DRM-enabled software player for Palm OS.
* Cheap 512MB SD memory card (going to upgrade to a 2GB one when the price falls).
* Rhapsody Unlimited "To Go" subscription - $15 a month for access to a 1.5 million song library on a portable device (although you can also pay $0 a month and buy music just like iTunes, or $8 if you only want to use a desktop PC with the installable client or Firefox streaming plugin).

Two things that Apple are not doing to allow this to happen with them:

* Apple refuses to licence their DRM technology. Notice above we have hardware & two pieces of software from different companies playing brilliantly because they use standard Microsoft Windows Media DRM. I can even play Rhapsody DRM tracks in Yahoo Music Engine. And WMA files on a frickin' Palm handheld. Seriously. Microsoft has their shit together with building DRM that is transparently usable.
* Apple refuses to offer "unlimited" subscriptions to their music store.

My theories:

* Apple is deliberately holding back. They won't licence their DRM as iPod users would then flood other music services (such as the unlimited music subscriptions).
* Apple also won't offer "unlimited" subscriptions as there is no customer lockin across "unlimited" services. You have all the music you want - so long as you have a subscription with *one* of the competing services, you can switch at will - the only thing you've lost are your playlists. Apple likes that you've spent money on tracks that you can't play anywhere but in iTunes.

Conclusion:

* Apple's continued success depends on them being able to maintain the "walled garden" around their iPod and iTunes users. It didn't work for AOL and it's not worked for Microsoft.

Because of this, I'm done with iTunes. AND I'm a Mac user - my main computer is a Powerbook (which is so great it's hugable). EVEN though I had to set up the Rhapsody client on my old Windows XP machine to transfer files to my phone. Yeah, clunky.

But the win is that Rhapsody Unlimited is an addiction - I listen to one or two new albums a day, which would cost about $600 a month on iTunes. For $15 a month, Rhapsody is a bargain and I can still afford to buy one or two physical CDs a month (for DRM-free MP3 ripping). But now I can listen to the entire album as much as I want first to make sure that I won't regret purchasing it. It's so much better than "The iTunes Way". Yahoo Unlimited is cheaper, but it has an ugly player.

well, I think that is an invalid blanket statement. Most PDA's I've used run pocket-tunes just fine and there is nothing awful about the interface or the music quality or the batterylife. However, I do agree that the ipod interface is much better and if I didn't need pda functionality I would go for the ipod due to its smaller size, better interface, and larger storage volume. But I believe the number one reason that people don't spend just a bit more to get a multi-functional pda is that it's additional unstandardized complexity and get ready for this one slashdot readers - pda's are actually really friggin' dorky.
      I know some people that carry an ipod and a pda around with them - to me this is not worth the hassle - I'm rarely away from a hot-sync long enough that I would need to justify lugging more than the 4gb of mp3s that fit on my pda around with me.
  The ipod interface is great but Ultimately I do believe that storage will be the bottom-line. A blue-tooth phone/pda with friendlier/more powerful music software pocket-tunes is okay, but something better is needed, with 50+gb storage will ultimately be the ipod killer. Massive integration is surely the natural progression of portable electronics - the technology is still just on the fringe of allowing us to do this is a slick way.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not an Apple-hater -- far from it. I use a Mac at work (designer) all day long, and you'd have to to pry my PowerBook® from my cold dead hands and all, but anyone that thinks it's earth-shattering is more than slightly behind the times. I've been watching video (divx, xvid, you name it), listening to mp3's *and* oggs for almost 2 years now on my Treo 600. It's also my cell phone, calendar, addressbook, yada-yada... I can even use it to ssh, vnc, ftp, or connect to Samba shares on my server at home and run several game console emulators on it (NES, GB, SG, etc.). The video iPod does have more disk space (although I've never had problems filling up my Treo's 2 Gig expansion card -- which card I can swap out for more space, if I ever *do* need it). Another key advantage is that my Treo 600 is also a digital camera and can even be a video camera. I use it to take short home movies of my kids when we're at the park or fair, or whatever and then export to mpegs. Not that the video iPod isn't cool and all, I'd just like to see more honesty in reporting the originality of the feature set.

After reading your post and staring blankly at the screen for a few moments in disbelief, I can only come to the conclusion that:

A) You're a troll
B) You're drunk
or
C) You work with a bunch of saboteurs that intentionally crash their Treos to get paid downtime.

I've had my Treo 600 for about 2 years, now, and have experienced none of the problems you've described. The GP's description of no more than 1 crash per month is very accurate. Anytime it has crashed, it quickly boots right back up. I've never had to send it in to be serviced.

For those that think that a Palm is just an "organizer" and a PokcetPC is a "pocket computer", don't buy into stereotypes. I use my Treo as a computer. I have an ssh client installed that I use frequently to work on some servers I admin for. The thing came with a capable web browser, but I have many options to install something else, if I want. I also have a Samba client that works great, an FTP client, a VNC Client, and an Instant Messenger. Somebody already mentioned the superb movie player TCPMP, but that's not all, I also have a Video recorder that makes use of the Treo's built-in digital camera. I use a perl script I found to convert the video to mpeg1. I use a Photoshop-like image editor that has support for complex things like layers and blending modes. My Treo is also my mp3/ogg player and I use it to listen to podcasts in the car. I read ebooks and even /. using Plucker. I take audio notes using SoundRec. I even have a Python interpreter, and can code native apps in C right on my Palm. I won't even bother to mention all the games that are available. You can google for them yourself. I've seen apps out there for viewing/editing Word Docs and Excel files, but having never had a need for that, haven't installed them.

I'm not certain about the software I use, pocket-tunes's ability to stream formats other than mp3. It will play ogg's but I've had no success in getting a stream to work. I'm unaware of an AAC+ plugin for pocket-tunes, but tcpmp, a young but rapidly growing open source media player for palm, with play the files. I'm certain streaming is in the works.

I'm using Pocket Tunes. The 15-day trial is free, it costs maybe U$30, which includes upgrades within the same major version# (currently 3.x, though I think they threw the doors open for "free" 2.x upgrades to 3.x last year). I think it's the only Shoutcast player for PalmOS.

I'm using the SprintPCS $15:mo unlimited Internet plan, atop my $45:mo 1500min plan. The connection gets up to 120Kbps, but it's so bursty that it averages at about 80Kbps. However, due to the intense burstiness, and the PalmOS 64KB segment limitation (WTF?), even P-T has trouble with rebuffering. It really does well with =150Kbps, averaging at 300Kbps over 10-15s, and sustainable bursts up to 1.5Mbps. Not too shabby, and crucially "guaranteed" above the 128Kbps enabling threshold of Vonage VoIP and "good" MP3 streams.

While NormSoft figures out how to get the kind of memory management that video players seem to manage on PalmOS, I'm experimenting with VBR->56Kbps encoding, and maybe a "file upload" interface on requesting playlists, which the CGI can calibrate for actual bandwidth on a given connection before sending down the adjusted VBR. This frontier is the vanguard of the mobile multimedia future. Let's get it on!

I saw a few comments requesting SSH clients and Text Readers so I thought I point some out.

First some free stuff:

plucker - Ebook reader. Really only supports it's own format but is very robust. iSilo is a non-free ebook reader that supports other formats including txt, but with the plucker tools you can convert almost any document into plucker format.
pssh - There are other SSH clients for palmos, but this one doesn't crash my treo.
palmvnc - Very neat, but less than practical on my low-res, low-speed treo.
soundrec - Simple sound recording application, export to wav (usefull with Bhajis Loops) designed for the treo 600 but may work with other palm devices

Now some non-free stuff:

Pocket Tunes - Turn your palm device into an ipod only better with ogg and wma support. Worth the price.
Bhajis Loops - Turn your palm device into a music studio. Also worth the price

Not too mention the countless games, calculators, calendars, and other knick-knacks.

There are limitations in hardware obviously. There's only so much stuff you can fit in such a tiny device. But I must say that my treo 600 does way more than I ever expected when I bought it.

Now it can't compete on storage space, I admit, but my palmone treo 600 has been my exclusive portable music player for about 6 months now. Combined with the pocket-tunes software and a sd memory card, the treo 600 becomes a rather fancy mp3, wma, wav, and ogg player. In addition to that, it's also a cell phone, plays games, browses webs, etc. You can buy a 1gb sd card for about $80, and the pocket-tunes software is $30. The phone itself is only $350 with a contract from the evil phone company of your choice. If you get their unlimited data plans, then you can stream your favorite shoutcast streams straight to your phone.

Ever since I bought this phone, my archos jukebox 6000 has been sitting on the shelf collecting dust.

If you don't want the phone you could always get the tungsten t5. Also be sure to check out the yet unreleased treo 650.

I currently have a Treo 600. It's really been a great phone/pda. The camera's pictures aren't the best, but they're about what you'd expect from a phone-camera. I use it (together with my 512 mb SD card) as my mobile mp3 player using Pocket Tunes, and even use it to watch movies using MMPlayer and avi's specially encoded with mencoder thusly:

The only drawback has been the low-res screen (160px^2). I'd love to get a version with a 320x240 or something like that.

"At this time, we have no plans to support any Palm OS 4.1 or earlier devices (e.g. Tungsten W, Treo 300, Sony T665 etc.). Many of these devices cannot decode compressed audio without additional hardware support, and while some of them can, we do not plan to support them at this time."

• Send/receive mail using POP3S/SMTP-TLS, via SnapperMail.
• SSH via Mocha Pocket Telnet.
• Play MP3s stored on my SD card, via pTunes.
• Use it as a wireless modem for my laptop, via PdaNet.
• Play various time-wasters from PopCap.

Your wish for Ogg Vorbis is granted.

Cheers
VikingBrad

And the difference between this and this with this. Or simply this.

Do people really want to pay $20 purely to get a skin for their pocketPC, that has less functionality(only mp3's) than something they can download for free.

And the difference between this and this with this. Or simply this.

Do people really want to pay $20 purely to get a skin for their pocketPC, that has less functionality(only mp3's) than something they can download for free.

Yes, you can play ogg vorbis files on both Palm and PocketPC devices. PocketMVP will play .ogg files and MMPlayer has that feature slated soon, many other players exist aswell such as Pocket Tunes and AeroPlayer.

As for IM software, I'm not sure about PocketPC as I sold my ipaq for a Palm Tungsten T3, but on the Palm side of things there is Chatopus.

Along a similar idea, my Tungsten C can stream mp3 stations from Shoutcast with Pocket Tunes
Not hifi wifi but it's wild to see in action the first time...

The reason why WMA would be more useful is because more people use WMA.

Hmmm ... funny, then, that the two popular mp3 players for Palm OS 5 (AeroPlayer and Pocket-tunes) both support Ogg files, but do not support WMA! Either there's licensing issues here, or nobody actually uses WMA (does anyone?? I've never known anyone who did, and a lot of my friends have large mp3 collections ...)

My Tungsten C plays MP3s just fine. Spend the 10 bucks and register pocket tunes link It is very full featured, supports skins, plays in background, etc. Sure it's only mono, but I can fake slow managers that I'm on a call, rather than just listening to tunes. Plus, I can use the same device to record voice memos. My $.02.

The Palm Tungsten T works great as an MP3 and Ogg player with either of the shareware programs Aeroplayer or Pocket Tunes installed. Aeroplayer is free for ogg use, but not free for MP3. Pocket Tunes is not free for either. In any case both are pretty cheap. The TT uses standard MMC and SD cards. Not to mention that the Tungsten T is an excellent Palm OS 5 PDA.