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New Treo Reviewed
Bill Koslosky writes "Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal just posted his review of the new Treo. His initial review of the Treo 300 inspired many, including myself, to purchase this PDA/phone device. 'I prefer it to any RIM BlackBerry model I have tested, and it blows away any of the PDA/phones based on Microsoft's Pocket PC operating system.' The Sprint CDMA version should be available in the beginning of October."
I hate to be the guy who cried bluetooth but
BLUETOOTH?
Palm (while having a nice software base) is not even close to what is available for PocketPC.
Can you provide data to back that up? I've heard the exact opposite. I'd love to see your source?
Ted TschoppFantasy remains a human right; we make in our measure and in our derivative mode... -- JRR Tolkien
Sure PocketPC has the lead in interesting peripheral support, but Palm wins on software available. Bonus; Palm devices don't suck the juice like PocketPC. For anyone who really uses a PDA, and doesn't want to have the device in the cradle every day, there's no competition; Palm wins. The power usage of PocketPC is the ultimate killer for me, for that platform.
The treo is pretty cool, but you can get a color sidekick now for 1/2 the price. And I can testify, this thing rocks. The only thing I don't like is the lack of ability to load new apps, but that is right around the corner. And it runs Java with a very active developer community. Good browser (uses a customized squid proxy to reformat for the PDA, I think), email, AIM, SMS, etc, etc. And when it is open, the keyboard is super easy to use. It can be a little awkward to use as a phone, but once you get used to it, it ain't that bad.
The only downside is t-mobile service, but if you live in an area they service well, it's not bad.
Where's my lobbyist? Right here.
I'd consider moving off my Handspring VisorPhone if there was a phone that also supported WiFi.
Once it supports WiFi, someone (hell, I might be inspired to BE that someone) will author a VOIP (SIP, H.323) so the phone would be a PHONE. In or out of the office/home, it *IS* the phone.
Anyone? Buller? (Ignores Windows for pocket pool 2004 with its hand up)
It "looks more like a phone" but they removed the cover... this is bad. Anyone that's ever put a phone into a pocket with, say, keys doesn't do it again once they get a huge gash down the center of the screen. Other phones, without a touch screen, can handle it using mineral glass. But the palm-based phones must use a plastic touchscreen, which is much more sensitive to scratching.
The old flip cover also fit your head nicely while talking, but the covers also broke off at the hinges... that was probably why it was removed. Instead they should've bolstered the hinge.
Hopefully there will be an inobtrusive cover available aftermarket, which both protects and adds minimal bulk.
I agree completely. I recently squished my Visor, and after doing all the research for a new PDA/phone combo, ended up buying another Visor on eBay (though you can still buy reconditioned ones from handspring).
Granted, I want nothing more than a Palm and a phone, in one device. I guess Samsung is coming out with one in Europe, but it looks to be expensive.
At one point (before they EOL'ed the whole line), you could get a Visor + VisorPhone for about $100. Now, 2 years later, you get them combined...for $400? (ok, it's $49/$199, depending on which company you sign your life over to for 2 years.)
Plus mine is GSM...remember that whole "you can get a new phone, slip the GSM card in, and your phone works, without a new plan" selling point? Turns out the bastards want $600 for the Treo if I keep using my own GSM card! (For the record, I want to keep it, since around the time my 1-year obligation wore off, my carrier called me up and offered me some cheap month-to-month plan with free long distance, a zillion minutes, etc.)
To top it off, they now want in on the data stream side of things, so they try to hardsell you a dialup account -- though you can get one on your own for next to nothing, if you don't already have one.
So, just to recap, it was a non-expandable (if slightly smaller) version of what I had, for $600 if I keep my own plan, or $49-199 if I sign up for a new two year plan. or, buy a used one on eBay for nearly nothing.
Break the upgrade cycle and maybe the bastards will start treating us like intelligent consumers.
...with these phone-pdas: If I want to refer to something in the PDA while I'm on the phone its a pain. Oh yea, I know I can connect a headset/mic to it but thats kind of very limiting.
Personally Id prefer the PDA and cellphone to evolve independently, unconstrained by each others limitations, then have Bluetooth do the trick of integrating them both. Best of both worlds.
I guess your trying to be funny, but editing MS Word documents is supported by "Documents To Go" software which is included with the Tungsten T.
One potential problem with the new combination PDA and phones: they are digital-only.
Someday, in the bright happy cheerful future, digital cell phone service will be everywhere. Meanwhile, there are still places where there is only analog phone service, and I actually go to those places.
My battered old StarTac phone has two bands of CDMA, plus a fallback to analog. I can use that phone pretty much anywhere in the USA that has cell phone service at all. The same cannot be said of the new combination ones.
There is a cable I have to connect my PDA to the digital connector on the bottom of my StarTac, and then I can use the StarTac to call up my ISP. This does not require buying any special "data" features, only using my phone minutes. Depending on where I am, my ISP might be a long-distance call, of course (buy my ISP has a toll-free number I can call and use for ten cents per minute).
I think that the combination of a really nice PDA (mine is a Tungsten T) and a really nice phone (battered old StarTac) is better, for my purposes, than the new all-in-one gadgets. It might be different if I lived in a big city and spent all my time there.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Disclaimer: IAAGF (I am a geeky female)
You bring up an interesting point about Technology nowadays. So many reviews of new gadgets are hideously male-dominated. The comparison that irks me is the "fits comfortably in a shirt pocket" standard that is somehow being held to all MP3 players, cell phones and PDAs. Frankly, I don't know many women that keep PDAs, Cell phones, or mp3 players in their pockets. Women don't mind carrying purses that hold their gadgets. And when you're stuffing your gadgets into a purse, the size doesn't much matter, but the weight does.
And the thumboards... I would think they would give large-handed people issues, but all keyboards, thumboards, and other sorts of button-based input devices give hell to women with longer fingernails. Even if a woman's nails aren't raptor-claw length, the slightest length will fudge things up.
Well I guess this is why I like Julie and Judie at The Gadgeteer so much. They strive to have a mix of male and female reviewers and they make sure not to laden their reviews with sexist bias.
"One touch of Darwin makes the whole world kin." George Bernard Shaw