Ever since going out on my own and starting my own business, I've been on the Palm Treo, with the Palm OS. Once upon a time, a Palm was a dandy gadget. It was top of the pack in productivity and features. Have had a handful over the years (pun intended).
However, this is 2008, and in my opinion, the Palm is dead. I went from a Blackberry 72xx to the Palm when I made the move, and I feel I made a time warp backwards. While my Blackberry had poor phone reception, and it felt like a piece of ceramic tile in the hand, it was a GREAT PDA. It reliably synchronized with Lotus Notes, over the air (which is what I used at the time). In fact I rarely cradled it.
My Treo has trouble reliably synching with Notes and requires a cable at EVERY sync. What's more, is that I now use Google Apps for my Internet domain and email, and Palm has no facility for that. I have no reliable way to sync up my Notes contacts, Palm contacts or Google contacts. There is GooSync for calendar synchronization, but that's a service I don't care to pay for. If I have to pay for a service, I'll pay for Blackberry. The Treo feels like a brick compared to most Blackberrries.
Other complaints:
- It drops my bluetooth connection frequently and some times will not communicate to the bluetooth even though it shows its connected. That really pisses me off!
- It often will lock up, especially when trying to hang up a call. If its a conference call, the only way to kill the call is to remove the battery.
- The type-ahead features of the Blackberry are par none. I'm so used to not having to make my first letter a capital letter in a sentence, or hitting space bar twice to enter a period and start new sentence. About the only thing the Treo will do is turn 'i'll' into 'I'll'.
- I'm tired of having to read my mail through the Blazer browser. Its better than nothing, but with Blackberry, Google has a native app for Google mail and calendar which is second only to the Blackberry service itself.
I've heard that Palm is developing a new operating system based on Linux to replace the aging, single threaded, and antique Palm OS. However, my patience has run out and I'm tired of missing the productivity that I had with my Blackberry.
RIM has just released the 8330 for CDMA networks, and Verizon has announced that it will begin carrying the Curve next month. I'm looking forward to having my mail and calendar in one place and synchronized to my Google mail (or reliably to my Lotus Notes mail if I ever bring it in house). Contact synchronization is still a bit flaky, but I can live with that. If I have to I'll write a routine to do the sync. Blackberry development is much simpler than Palm development (just as Java is easier than C development). I plan to be the first in line for it, and I can't wait.Labels: Blackberry, curve, Google Apps