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Enthusiast Hacks WiFi Into Treo 650
Sammy at PalmAddict writes "Shadowmite, a Palm enthusiast has managed to hack his Palm One Treo 650 smartphone, enabling it to work with the Palm One WiFi card, despite Palm admitting the Treo was never designed to use WiFi technology. Shadowmite managed to get his hands on the Pa1m One WiFi card and modify it so that his Treo 650 could use it. The experiment was a success, and is causing quite a stir -- putting pressure on Palm One to provide support and fully support the new drivers."
Pressed to your ear, this would be the most innocent looking wireless sniffer yet (if someone can get it to run as one).
Indy Media Watch-Proctologist of the Internet
Vocera makes them, but if you have to ask, you really can't afford it.
Palm is VERY quickly losing my respect with the way they treat their customers.
I started out with a Handspring Visor, my girlfriend has a Palm 3 series PDA. Almost all my friends and family uses Palm PDAs. That said, my Palm T3 will most likely be the last Palm PDA that I'll buy.
Started out with me purchasing my Nokia 6820 video phone in Asia - naively thinking that, "Hey, it's bluetooth, it'll be supported". It took almost half year after that phone's release before Palm would release drivers for it in their phone update - but, the drive only works as a modem driver. SMS and remote dialer apps for the phone isn't support. It *is* supported fully for the Palm T5 though.
Side by side comparison the T5 really isn't that much different from the T3 - minor tweaks in OS, faster processor and more memory. But what if I were to upgrade to the T5?
Forget it. I'd be ditching the "Collapsing PDA" feature that makes the T3 small and compact to carry, the silent, vibrating alarm for when you don't want to be obnoxious, the voice recorder functionality. I gain the ability to use the PDA as a flash drive, which I already own a few, and can add into the PDA via 3rd party software. They tossed out the Palm Universal Port which up till now most accessories use, as a standardized interface to the PDA - and for a top of the line product, the damn thing doesn't even come with a cradle.
What the hell are they thinking?
With the improvement of Pocket PC handhelds - and more vendors resulting in more selections - I'd have a hard time justifying purchasing another Palm PDA.
-=- Terence
Why buy subsidized crap phones?
In Finland carriers can't subsidize phones, as by law it's illegal to tie the phone and the subscription. If you offer a phone, the price and terms of sale must be same with or without subscription to any service, so you can't tie the two.
So phone manufacturers sell their phones. More features = more sales. They don't have to bend over for the carriers - they are not their customers. So if carrier would prefer that the phone doesn't have WiFi... well, tough, they don't have a say in it.
And we have pretty damn cheap airtime, as the only way carriers can compete for customers is by offering a good cheap product - they can't just toss a cooler phone free, tied to some stupid package that appears cheap, but ties you to one operator for x months (or years).
Sure, phones cost money. Shocker. Feature rich phones cost a lot of money. Double shocker. At the same time your phonebill isn't used to subsidize someone elses shiny new phone used to lure him to the crappy service that you are stuck with.