I don't see this article. What was the date it was published?

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.

It was published the week I posted it here.

The Treo600 is still a very poor seller in Europe, and only a handfull of operators are offering it.

RIM however is seeing strong sales of it's handheld devices.

Not to drag this off-topic, but I've never understood the desire for WiFi in such a device when you have GPRS/EDGE/1xRTT/whatever already. Whats the gain over the added device expense, configuration work, etc?

--Laird

Yeah, a lot of people are *****ing at Palm for not including WiFi. I personally don't see a huge need for it, and I'm a heavy Palm user. My Tungsten T3 and my SE T616 get me by just fine.

I'm pretty excited about the 650, I think I'm finally going to consolidate my mobile devices and buy one when the GSM version is released. It fixed the four biggest problems I thought the 600 had: resolution, processor speed, keyboard, and bluetooth. I really couldn't see using any other integrated device, except possibly the Blackberry, but I think it's a bit too large, and I like the app support on the Palm better.

Quite simply; not everyone has access to Edge or 1xRTT. GPRS is too slow for the heavier kind of work, and with WiFi popping up all over the place the potential for new services on these devices is awesome.

For example; I can make a VOIP call on my WiFi enabled PocketPC using one of many VOIP clients (like Skype or XTen). I can listen to streaming radio over WiFi when in an RCC.

WiFi offers speed that none of the cellular technilogies even get close to.

For email I use my Blackberry, as I get over 450 emails a day doing that over regular GPRS with a PDA simply wouldn't work well, unless I were to invest in a push client for the devices (like from Good Technologies). WiFi would make downloading that many emails get closer to being practical. Not to mention around the house; I use my WiFi PDA to operate my home automation equipment.

You should also consider that my carrier, like those in most of the world, is charging about 10 bucks a megabyte for EDGE. My T-Mobile hotspot account runs, what...30 bucks a month with coverage in many places I happen to be? Oh, and WiFi is free at my house, and at my office, and near just about any apartment building in Spain since Telefonica started giving away those Zyxel wireless routers with security turned off (I can see three open networks from my living room, only two from my last apartment).

I guess you could put a Bluetooth AP in your house and office and use the Treo there...oh, wait, you can't because the Treo's Bluetooth implementation is so half-assed as to be useless. And that's on the good (aka GSM) one. The Sprint one is, well, quarter-assed I guess.

BenQ P50, please. RTFN.

Treo central has posted an article from briefings/conversations addressing things like wi-fi, the (lack of a) 1.3mp camera, sprint disabling DUN, is the 650 going to break as often as the 600, etc.

http://www.treocentral.com/content/Stories/479-1.htm

An excerpt:

Q: No WiFi? Are you Crazy?

A: palmOne may seem crazy for not having a WiFi solution available, but at least they now seem more open to the idea then previously. During the press conference, the first question to Ed Colligan was why they did not built WiFi in. He replied: "We put things in that we think that are absolutley critical to the device".

When pushed for information about adding WiFi later, he added "We do have a wifi card that will work in the SD slot, but we do not have the drivers yet." Colligan continued to say that palmOne will be working on creating the necessary drivers.

This is opposite of what Greg Shirai told us in the pre-briefing conference call earlier this weekend. Shirai said that palmOne will not support a WiFi card for the Treo 650, as it was more complicated than drivers alone. Along with staff from mytreo.net and InfoSync World, we asked Colligan about this discrepancy.
...

I saw the booth, it was packed!

http://blog.treonauts.com/2004/10/tr...s_spend_1.html

any idea when it will start selling and we can get one?

Sprint says within a month, the GSM version will probably be on ATT within a few months.

But knowing Palm and the dismal record of getting the Treo600 to market don't expect widespread availability before spring next year.

The rep at the CTIA said, Sprint should be November, and that Sprint has a single seller only deal till end of the year. So, ATT/Cingular wouldn't be till next year at best.

Verizon usually takes much more time, since they do more testing before release. they have more to lose than the other competitors as far as network quality goes.

I'm hoping to get a unit via "backchannels", but do'nt think any of our businesses will have them till next year.

As mentioned, Sprint will have them first, most likely exclusively through the en d of the year. AT&T is predicted to be the first GSM launch, early next year.

Since Palm ditched Solectron for manufacturing, I'm hoping they will be able to deliver better. Solectron is kind of the bottom-of-the barrel when it comes to contract manufacturing.

The Palm Tungsten C has built-in WiFi and it is the only Palm I would consider. As Scott said you get way more bandwidth and free wifi is popping up in many places. More and more you will see WiFi in corporate environments as access points now have good security. There are hundreds of very good reasons for WiFi in a PDA. I like the Skype or especially XTen as that is a way-cool communications tool. Also the new Pulver communicator.

Do you know who's radio modules they are now using in the new devices? Is it still Wavecomm?