Palm - with the thousands of apps that go with it.

--I hear this a lot when people try and convince me about the Palm, but just how many of these 1000's of apps are actually any good? Probably no more than 100... I've owned palms ever since they were still made by USR and many of the apps still haven't changed since then...


Phone, with spearkerphone.

--IMHO, the phone part of the Treo was it's weakest part, without third party applications I found it absolutely useless.


MP3 player with 1GB of MP3's on board.

--WITH an add-on application and additional SD. Most PDA's have multimedia capabilities built in, I had to BUY the music player for my Treo600.


Camera.

--No flash/LED illumination, very few settings and poor quality, with more and more devices getting 1.3MP sensors, not upgrading the 650 was a bad move.

Pushed real-time email and Outlook calander synch (I'm using Good, but there are mutiple mail solutions),

--Ok, The GOOD solution is indeed "good".

AOL/Yahoo/MSN/ICQ char client, 80kbps wireless modem (no, not WiFi, but there's a lot more Sprint PCS coverage than WiFi hotspots - and it's free/included)

--No included IM client on the device.

Wireless access to area code lookup, whitepages, airline flight status, etc.

--Every WAP capable device on the planet can do this.

Sound recorder

--Indeed a handy feature, but you still can't record a phone call can you?

Video recorder

--LOL... Have you SEEN the quality on that? I don't consider 5FPS a video recorder

etc.

Yes, it's heavy vs. just a phone. How much does a phone, PDA, MP3 player, camera, etc. weigh if you have to carry all of them?

As for the 650 - not that much a leap over the 600 to make me switch. A few nice improvements, but not the same as the 300 to 600 jump.


You really can't compare a Treo600 to an MP3 player or a digital camera. I carry my Rio Karma with me and get 20Gb of OGG music for 18 hours, and I carry a decent (small) digital camera. I'd never trade in either of them for the Treo. If you need good quality music (and lots of it, for several hours) and decent photos then you will still need to bring your devices with you.

Don't get me wrong, the Treo is a nice device, it's just not as evolved as it should be IMHO. The PalmOS still lacks many features and it's core and UI haven't changed a bit since day one. Palm has completly missed the boat when it comes to multimedia (they have been promising it since OS4). OTOH, if you look at a device like the new HP63XX then Palm really isn't doing all that bad.

Personally I prefer the Windows Mobile OS as it's got a much better UI and has higher quality applications and better hardware support.