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February 21, 2006
Bye bye Treo 700W
I hate the Palm OS. I bought the first one that came out. At the time i was using a Psion PDA. I ditched it for three months and tried to force myself to use the Grafiti handwriting stuff on the Palm. It was hell. If all you do with your PDA is sync with your desktop and use it to check your calendar then ok. If you actually write things of any length forget it. Then along came the blackberry with it's wonderful keyboard and push e-mail and I was sold. I have owned every blackberry model since the first one. But Blackberry doesn't do multi-media very well, the document attachment service is clunky and I wish it had a camera. Oh, and there is that little problem that they may be out of business soon.
So when the Treo 700W (windows) came out I thought to give it a try. I have been playing with it for the last three weeks. The primary appeal was:
1. a camera
2. direct connection to Exchange 2003 without a Blackberry server (that I just paid $4k for)
3. easier desktop integration (maybe)
After three weeks, the Blackberry is still standing and the Treo 700W is headed to e-bay. Here are the problems
1. Windows is great on a big screen. It SUCKS on a small screen. Half the screen is taken up with scroll bars and boxes and whatever. Your effective viewing area is cut in half.
2. The exchange connector didn't work. Some problem with the security certificates. Three days on it with my IT guy didn't get the Treo 700W connected to my exchange server.
3. Pull e-mail sucks when you are used to push. I want the stuff to just arrive, I don't want to have to keep going to get it.
4. Windows is not a good interface for a camera.
5. Outlook Web Access sucks on the 700W. The IE browser effectively manages the frames, but they make the content area so small that you can't read your messages. On the Blackberry with it's 4th Pass browser, they gracefully degraded the frames into something that was actually viewable and worked better.
Bummer. I wish Microsoft could create a good handheld experience. For now I am sticking with my Blackberry and waiting for a handheld with a camera.
Posted by Martin at February 21, 2006 12:27 PM
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