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I got bored at level 348 with 30+ extra guys left

You phrased things much better than I could fine sir. The link to the wikipedia article that the original poster included read nothing like TFA. Though because of the glaring placement of the post toward the top of the page and how straight forward it is written, I think most mods probably modded it without checking against either of the articles. That is how human nature is :). It's nice that slashdot moderation tends to correct itself over time thanks to insightful replies lower in the tree.

In most if not all cases, you will find applications that are as good as if not better than the PalmOS version.

Ah, but can I get the source? It's not essential, but it's a definite important feature for me.

TomTom - Exists for PalmOS and WM. In my opinion the WM version seems to work MUCH better and is far easier to set up.

I haven't tried this, but I was not aware that the GPS was usable by apps on Treo 650.

TCPMP media player - Exists for both platforms, has somewhat extended codec support compared to PalmOS on a Windows Mobile device

Yeah, I prefer TCPMP over RealPlayer, as TCPMP will play OGGs (which is what I rip to by default).

Web browser - The PalmOS web browser Just Plain Sucks in every way possible. Even Pocket IE is better and it isn't that hot (there are other options for WM)

Yes, which is why I've switched to Opera. I'm not happy that I can't get source to Opera, but I can't get source to any of the others and Opera seems to work better.

Java - The Java environment for PalmOS is utter and total crap and when I tried it on my Treo 650 not a single app I tried would work.

I managed to get ahold of the IMB java kit for PalmOS so I could run Opera. Seems to work pretty well, but then I don't use it for anything besides Opera; I'm not a big fan of Java myself.

GMail's Java app works great on my Tilt.

I run my own mail/web server, which seems to work fine with Opera and the mail client that comes with PalmOS. My only gripe there is that the PalmOS mail client doesn't support aliases.

Google Maps - Don't think there's a PalmOS client that can come anywhere close to Google's Windows Mobile native app

Don't know; haven't use the windows mobile version, but the PalmOS version of Google Maps seems to work fine for me.

Instant Messaging - Half of the PalmOS IM app vendors seem to have gone out of business or stopped supporting the app. I've found FAR more choices for WM.

IM isn't a priority for me (I hardly use it). I'm pretty sure there are open source IM clients for PalmOS however.

You don't exactly provide details of what apps you're using.

Here's a list:

• Little John - Console emulator for playing classic games.
• pFuel - Keeps track of gas mileage.
• FreeCoins - Accounting software.
• Keyring - Keeps track of passwords.
• pssh - SSH client.
• Plucker - EBook reader.
• LispMe - Scheme interpreter.
• Eat Watch - Weight tracking.

The thing is, PalmOS works very well for me, and is entirely compatible with Linux (or any other platform I choose to move to). If I were going to move to a new mobile platform, the last place I would look is to Microsoft (or Apple for that matter). Not only would I need to have the apps I use above (which I have source to, so I could port given a decent development environment that runs on my desktop of choice), but I would prefer to move to something more open, not less. Something more hackable, not something that gets in my way when I try to do something the big corps don't like.

If you have a Palm OS device (i.e. a Treo), then pssh is still the way to go. Alas no, this solution hasn't changed since 2005...

Your Treo does wifi

There is wifi available for it

and has a touch screen?

Are you being obtuse? Palms have had a touch screen since they came out over ten years ago.

And how much does the "sold separately" expansion card for the MP3 player hold?

I don't know what you are talking about, but TCPMP seems to play my OGGs just fine from any of my SD cards, which I've been using since I had a Palm m500. It's also handy to take the SD card from my digital camera and upload the pictures to my webserver via my Treo.

Does it also run OS X?

No; that's one of the reasons I like it :)

That screen sure is big.

Yeah, it's about 75% the size of the iPhone's screen. Not too shabby, especially considering that it came out on the market years ago.

Watch movies on it do you?

I do, with the aforementioned TCPMP, which I have source to. "HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy" is my current favorite. I also play NES and GameBoy games, keep track of my car's mileage, keep track of my finances, keep track of my passwords, administer my servers remotely, read books, get directions, browse the web, etc, etc. Hell, I can even write and run software, right on my Treo! I haven't been paying attention, is Apple allowing people to even *load* third party software on the iPhone yet? How about that battery, can you swap it out with a spare like I can on any of my Palm devices and cell phones? Can you expand the memory? $600 is a lot, but I can buy a Treo 650 and 15 1GB SD cards for that much money. Plus I wouldn't be locked into a single provider. Or I could even wait three months and get a fully open-sourced phone with even more features, and port all the software that I use to it.

You're "does it run OSX" bit gives you away: you're an Apple fanboy, and the only reason you replied was because you didn't have points to mod me down. Face it, the only thing new that the iPhone brings to the cell phone world is Apple's marketing power.

Me too, that's why I purchased Chatter mail on my treo. Best $40 I've spent on software, ever.

I gave it a shot for a month. It works OK as a mail reader and for creating a new message, but it insists on creating replies in top-posting style and I can't find a way to change that misfeature. It doesn't even quote the original message properly (with ">" before each line), so creating a properly-formatted reply to someone else's mail is a major pain. I ended up going back to running Mutt on my mail server over an SSH connection (pssh kicks ass, and is free-as-in-speech).

Is there some option that I'm missing? (There is an option in Chatter that is supposed to properly format quotes, but it doesn't work.)

After deleting the copy I had installed in the phone's memory, I tried running it from an SD card. It behaved the same way there. Grr.

I should've saved the previous version before installing this one, but I rarely used it. Blazer was more functional and easier to use for most things. For updating my On Tap in Vegas page when out and about, I found that Links running in an SSH session would work.

The two SSH clients I know of are pssh http://www.sealiesoftware.com/pssh/ and tussh http://www.tussh.com/. I use pssh, and it has saved my bacon on a couple of occasions.

The only way I know to do application tunneling is to use one of the commercial VPN products for PalmOS, MergicVPN http://www.mergic.com/ and AnthaVPN http://www.anthavpn.com/ (which used to be MovianVPN).

IANA developer, but from what I've read, the problems are with the fact that PalmOS was never really meant to be networked or multi-tasking. The old-new version of PalmOS, Cobalt, (which I don't think will ever be used on a treo) was supposed to have this solved with a ground up rebuild rumored to be based partially on BeOS. The new-new version of PalmOS will be some sort of PalmOS-on-Linux hybrid from PalmSource/Access.

I have been using a Palm/Handspring since the PalmIII. I have had each version of the Treo on Sprint (300,600,650) and I think the hardware has gotten better with each revision. The hardware can still be vastly improved, but the OS needs an overhaul and Windows on a Treo is 'the shot heard round the Palm world'. If that does not kick the PalmOS developers in the pants, then I don't know what will. Competition is a good thing and Palm has been resting on its laurels a bit too long.

This is cool and all, but for those who want to use unix on a treo now, check out pssh, which allows you to ssh into a functioning unix box from palmOS. It works quite well and, while it's not the same as having linux on the local file system, it allows you to use unix remotely without sacrificing the apps available on palmOS (e.g. the phone, the organizer, and everything else you probably bought the treo for in the first place). Not to put down this project -- I'm all for putting linux on anything and everything -- but this has a long way to go before you have a usable system.

It has a thumb keyboard and there are a number of free/open SSH clients for PalmOS. (http://www.sealiesoftware.com/pssh/) The only downside is that for Wi-Fi you need a SDIO card.

I use the built-in bluetooth to connect to my laptop and use the phone as a modem. The nice thing about it is that it's full-featured enough to let me leave my laptop behind about 75% of the time, even on longer trips.

IMHO a smartphone is a bad choice. At my work IT complains about the smartphones they have tried. I've had a smart phone, got rid of it, and went with this combo.

Try this instead,

- Sony Ericsson T637 - (bluetooth enabled cell)
- Palm (some sort with bluetooth) - Example - Tungsten Tseries
- PSSH - http://www.sealiesoftware.com/pssh/ (free open source ssh client)

Reason behind this:
1) You get the clarity of a real cell phone. Some smart phones have really bad static on the 'cell phone' side of them.
2) Easy to access when your on the phone with tech support for your servers (IBM, Sun, etc). You don't need to 'hold on.. i'll try that and call you back'.
3) Palm has software for your addresses / phone / internet / email.

Anyways... that's just a thought.

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.

Who doesn't have a fully capable ssh client in their shirt pocket?

PuTTY works on Symbian S60 and S90 and QIC and PPC and lots of other things, as does Mochasoft.

ssh for blackberry is at http://www.needtext.net/shell/index.jsp

ssh for palmos is at http://www.sealiesoftware.com/pssh/

ssh for native Sharp Zaurus (i.e. without replacing the OS) is at http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus/showdetail.php?app=1 035

ssh for Pocket PC is at http://pocketputty.duxy.net/viewtopic.php?t=5

ssh for Symbol industrial handhelds is at http://www.pragmasys.com/HandHeld/industrial_pocke tvt_index.html

ssh for non-smartphones (i.e. regular phones that have a JVM) is at http://www.idokorro.com/imsshphone.html

I couldn't find ssh for the Newton, I admit. But that doesn't fit in a shirt pocket.

Did I miss anything? Anyone ported it to the ipod yet?

I've recently hooked myself up with a similar set-up, and have recently been writing about it in my journal. I'll detail it a bit here.

Here's what I'm running:

• Cell Phone: Sony Ericsson T610.
• Handheld: PalmOne Tungsten C
• Laptop: Apple PowerBook G4 (12")
• GSM/GPRS Provider: Fido
• Handheld SSH software: pssh

How everything is connected:

• The PowerBook is outfitted with WiFi (802.11g) and Bluetooth, using WiFi when at home/office, and GPRS through the T610 via Bluetooth when on the road.
• The Tungsten C is outfitted with WiFi (802.11b) and InfraRed, using WiFi when at the home/office, and GPRS through the T610 via IR when on the road (technically I can get it online via WiFi if I use the PowerBook as a bridge in ad-hoc mode, but it is exceedingly rare that I'd ever need to have both the laptop and the T|C online at the same time when outside WiFi range).

So far, this is a set-up I'm quite pleased with. The only way it could be better were if the Tungsten C supported Bluetooth as well as 802.11b.

I can't recommend Bluetooth highly enough for this sort of connectivity either. So long as I'm within 10m of the phone, I can connect to it from the laptop. And Mac OS X's Bluetooth support is excellent -- I'm able to synchronize my contact list and calendar, transfer files back and forth, send and receive SMS messages from my desktop, dial phone numbers, and connect to the internet -- all without wires, or any set-up hassle.

SSH has been important for me, as one of my primary uses for this sort of connectivity will be CVS source repository access through SSH.

I've only had the phone for a week, but I'm quite pleased with it in general. I could have done without the camera portion I suppose (the resolution and quality is terrible), but might come in handy for something someday.

Overall, the set-up appears to be working well, and I'm as pleased as punch with it. Everything is nicely portable, and I have instant access everywhere I go. Set-up has been a snap, and everything works as expected. Now if only I could get cable modem speeds out of this set-up, I'd never work at a desk ever again :).

Yaz.

I use SprintPCS, the Palmone treo600, and pssh. SprintPCS's network is CDMA so if you're not in the continental United States, and not in or near a metropolitian area, forget about it. For the rest of you I can tell you that it works splendidly, though latent. It'd be difficult to perform any complex task, though not impossible. On the treo the font-size will be tiny. One should consider the treo650 with it's high resolution screen as an alternative.

I should also mention PalmVNC. The bandwidth limitations of the sprintpcs network, and the resolution limitations of the treo600 render this application to little more than a novelty. Though again, in a pinch, it's a usefull app to keep around.

Perhaps you already have a phone that runs java midlets? If so you could try SSH & Telnet Floyd or MIDPSSH.

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.

XDA Keyboard
PocketPuTTY
The XDA from O2.
The XDA is a PocketPC with a GPRS capable mobile phone built in. Not sure if it's available outside the UK but I'm sure something similar is. I think there may be an iPaq with similar functionality.

Now I can use PalmVNC for cross-platform VNC sessions to my UNIX and Win32 boxen and PSSH to enable SSH2 connections! I wonder if this will work easily in public Wi-Fi hotspots, thinking with regards to quick 802.11b configuration and real-world interoperability?

I have a different perspective on Bluetooth phones than the other posters here.

I have a seven month-old Sony Ericsson T610 that T-Mobile *paid* me $100 to take once I signed up for a one-year plan. I moved from Sprint PCS because, as others have mentioned here, Sprint offers pretty much zip in terms of Bluetooth phones *or* affordable data plans. T-Mobile, on the other hand, offers *free, unlimited* GPRS data service with their voice plans, with certain limitations. That's right; as long as you are OK with only having access to ports 80, 110, and some others (443 opened up in the past few months), there is *no need* to pay $20 for the T-Mobile Internet service.

Since then I've happily used the combination of my T610, my Sony Clie UX50, and my iBook G4, all Bluetooth-enabled to get online from pretty much anywhere there's phone service. More than a gimmick, I've used GPRS as my only Internet connection for days at a time. With throughput between 24Kbps and 32Kbps--about as fast or just a little slower than a 33.6K dialup modem--it's of course much slower than Wi-Fi or even a modern 56K dialup connection, but it works and it's free. It's pretty darn neat to be able to SSH into my home Linux box from my Clie, thanks to pssh, a GPLed Palm OS 5-based client, without having to take the phone out of my pocket; it's so small I can keep it there all day, even when I keep my wallet and keys in a desk drawer. (Since port 22 isn't available, I simply tell sshd to also listen to port 110 since I don't run a POP3 server on my machine.) I got a free Jabra Bluetooth headset with the phone and that has worked well enough in the few times I've tried it (like another poster I keep it in my car).

I wish I could say as nice things about the other aspects of the phone. I've had two T610s, and they both drop voice calls like crazy. The first unit would actually *crash and reboot* multiple times per call; the second unit "only" crashes sometimes but still drops calls. Overall I find call quality meaningfully inferior to the vintage Sanyo 4500 I used through Sprint PCS's CDMA network. I don't know whether the fault lies in the phone or the intrinsically inferior GSM network technology; quite possibly some combination of both. Some stupendously obvious features just don't exist; for example, I was astounded recently, when trying to listen to a corporate conference call on a busy street without annoying others, to realize that there is no way to *mute* a call without putting it on hold!

The other benefits of Bluetooth on this phone haven't impressed me very much either. I use jpilot on my Linux box to sync over Wi-Fi with my Clie. I tried using iSync on my iBook instead, but found using Bluetooth as the transport mechanism to be stupendously, agonizingly, painfully slow. Also, three-way synching between the phone, computer, and PDA was a bust because the phone can only hold 500 or so contacts, despite having the memory for many more, and I have 2400 in my Clie. What I do instead is identify the 20 or so contacts I most need on my phone, put them in a "Phone" category on the Clie, then every so often infrared (faster than Bluetooth) beam them over to the phone, overwriting any existing entries. While this works, I then have to recreate any voice dial recordings I've attached to the phone's entries.

Verdict: I love the GPRS and Bluetooth service, but I'd prefer to enjoy such features on a more reliable network and/or phone.

...the killer app for it (so far) is pSSH, and even then it's a little hard to type on its microscopic keyboard, or read on a 40x25 terminal. I'm a firm believer in convergence devices, but it's going to be a long way till we even start to think about challenging laptops, much less desktops, for anything but basic internet access on the road.

pssh: SSH2 for Palm OS

You can get it here.

They have WiFi (including WEP-128, and a VPN client compatible with Poptop), a graphical SSL web browser, an email client, and can even do SSH2. It's an Xscale 400MHz based PDA, so it may even run Linux some day. :-)

I wrote earlier:
> The lack of same is the main reason why I chose to
> go for a Sony Clie UX50 as my fourth Palm OS PDA
> in seven years.

That picture linked elsewhere of the guy sshing away on his Zaurus reminded me that there are decent ssh apps for Palm OS nowadays, namely pssh, which is open source, and TuSSH, which is not.

Each has advantages and disadvantages, and both certainly are quite inferior in terms of functionality and the underlying OS versus real OpenSSH on a Zaurus, but the bottom line is that with my UX50 and Bluetooth-enabled T-Mobile phone I can now securely log into my home Linux box from anywhere in the US there's T-Mobile phone service or a Wi-Fi hotspot, for just the price of a voice plan. How cool is that?

--Mid