http://www.liwirefree.org

I've been using the latest and greatest from PalmOne (formerly Handspring) for a couple months now, and my feelings are decidedly...well...mixed. Here's a brief rundown, beyond all the hoopla found elsewhere on the net. This is Part 1 of a multipart series.

Before getting this Palm OS 5-based smartphone, I was using the only Ericsson (yes, Ericsson, not SONY Ericsson) phone I've ever truly despised, the T60. Ericsson screwed me royally when my Bluetooth adapter (the T60 has no built-in BT like the T61) took a dive on me. While the adapter itself was still under warranty, Ericsson insisted that they had no stock with which to replace the failed unit, so my $300+ BT headset quickly became an artifact on my desk. In addition, my T60 was on AT&T's network, which didn't/doesn't support WAP on that hardware (nice, huh? I finally get a phone with a big enough screen to enjoy some web browsing, and AT&T didn't support browsing on their network).

The other part of my wireless entourage was my trusty Motorola Timeport 935 Linux-based 2-way pager. This has to have been the best of breed of these type of text-only devices. Rock solid and dependable, even after being dropped on concrete and asphalt I don't know how many times. The mail features were incomparable in any other small device I've found (I even had manual spam filters set up in it!). But, I digress...

Okay, so how did I end up with this !@#$ing Treo 600? Well, a very good client of mine wanted about a half dozen two-way devices which would handle email attachments (the Timeport does not). They're standardized on MS Office (don't ask; not my choice - I'm an OS/2 user, and we now have a stable build of Open Office available), and wanted to be able to open Excel (yech!) and Word documents on the portable devices. After much searching, it appeared that the once king-of-the-hill RIM Blackberry devices were really on the back end of the performance/feature curve, and that the Treo 600's were the way to go. (Another adventure was actually getting our hands on the hardware, but I'll save that for another blog. Suffice it to say that we ended up with Sprint because they were the only carrier who could actually deliver what they promised: hardware in a day. Their data plan also beats the competition hands down: $9.95 per month flat.)

Once the phones arrived, as the IT consultant, I was in the unenviable position of having to field a slew of questions, such as, "Lewis, how do I get my office email?," "How do I attach files?," "How do I open attachments," and "How do I sync this with my Outlook contacts?" (the last one was especially fun for me, as I use Lotus Organizer...) So, within a week, I realized that the only way for me to truly support my client (and believe me, this is a bread-and-butter client) would be to get one of these things for myself.

A quick call to Sprint, and I was on my way to transferring my AT&T number to the new unit. I was sad to discontinue the use of my Timeport, however, and I miss it even more today, two months after the switch. I don't miss my p-ss-poor Ericsson T60, however...

(Stay tuned for Part 2: The Screen Myth)