Do people like Treos or not?

Very happy with my 650 and before that the 600 (which my wife now cherishes).

Syncs perfectly with the NOW suite on my Mac.

Not interested in the newer 700w with the Windows OS.
--

Regards,

Mark (}-:
+61 (0)4 1927 7198
Skype / AIM / iChat: gibsonm1

The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and
stupidity. --Harlan Ellison

I love the *idea* of the Treo so much that it hurts to see the quality of its, er, camera. Far, far worse than my old Visor and the Eyemodule, with which I took many interesting shots.

Can anyone testify that the alleged photos come out any better than they look on the display? (Don't know why they would, but . . )

Or, is there any software to bump it up? I ask because my Nokia 3650 sold as taking 10 seconds of video. Okay-and if you buy a third-party app, it records videos til the cows come home . . . or the battery runs out. Whichever comes first.

I'd be grateful to hear.

I have a love-hate relationship with my Treo 650. I love the ability to access email and instant messages on my cell phone. However it is an ongoing nightmare synching with Now Up to Date and Now Contact -- a problem made worse because my carrier, Verizon, officially does not support Macs.

Synching in general is a headache on the Treo, which I find frequently rejects new Palm application packages. But Now Contact -- vital to running my business -- is the biggest problem. I have almost 3000 contacts, but the Treo will only accept 999 at a time, requiring a time-consuming 3-step synch via Palm Hotsynch.

While the Mark/Space support people have been very nice, I have so far given up on Missing Sync, because it's currently incompatible with the latest NOW conduits. I'd estimate I've recently devoted about 15 hours to solving or improving this problem, to no avail. The main fault seems to lie with NOW Software and their endless delays in updating the conduits.

I don't know about others but being self-employed I have little time or patience for products that turn out to be so labor-intensive. I'm looking for easier-to-use alternatives but so far haven't seen any.

i'm the odd man out. i use a treo 270. i'd actually be using a 180g
(graffiti handwriting) model if i could find one in good shape. here's
why: small size and clamshell design. i don't care about about email or
web. i do care about calendar, contacts, cell phone and proper
integration of all three. the 270 has it plus a bright screen plus palm
ease of use. the calendar has a great week view. i think handspring
bought the datebook+ application that used to be a 3rd party from some
german programmer - it's great.

now, the bad news. these things are flimsy as hell and i only get about
6 months on average between breakdowns. but, parts are easy to get
(covers, batteries, etc.) and with some practice, i can now fix 'em in
about ten minutes. also, the battery is only good for about a day. but
since i have charging cradles (yes, these are old enough to come with
cradles) conveniently located at both home & work. the thing is
charging most of the time. and in fairness, my wife's motorolla get
better reception.

- josh

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On 11.2.2006, space aliens observed chris.gibson saying:
> Why do people hate their Palm Treos?

I don't.

I bought a Treo 650 a few months ago. I used to own a P800 from
SonyEricsson. The P800 is a great phone, and Symbian is a great OS
(probably better than the version of Palm OS used in the Treo phones),
but the P800 was really not very well made, and I try to avoid Sony's
products as much as possible.

The Treo is a nice phone. It seems well-made, has a nice screen,
supports many applications and has better Mac connectivity than the
Symbian phones (the P800 syncs via Bluetooth and iSync, but it only
syncs addresses, your calendar and to-do-items, nothing else, so if your
phone starts misbehaving and you have to reset it, all your other data
such as your SMS is lost). It's obvious that the version of Palm OS used
in the Treo 650 is starting to have some serious problems (most
applications don't support multithreading, the screen resolution is
bigger than the touchscreen resolution which makes drawing pretty much
impossible, the phone crashes from time to time), but all in all, I
wouldn't say that it has clear advantages or disadvantages over Symbian
phones.

If you like Palm OS, there's really no reason not to go with the Treo,
in my opinion.

lucas

- --
"Hey, you've got to hide your love away."
  -- Lennon/McCartney

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At 7:19 AM -0800 on 06/02/10, chuck goolsbee wrote:


>I have a 600, and love it.
>
>Is it as good as my old Kyocera PalmOS based phone? In most ways no,
>but at least I can now run a up-to-date Palm OS unlike the old
>QCP-6035.

FWIW the Kyocera 7135 is - even now - still better than any of the
Treo devices: flip, grafiti, better buttons, 2nd status LCD...

- Marc

>>Is it as good as my old Kyocera PalmOS based phone? In most ways no,
>>but at least I can now run a up-to-date Palm OS unlike the old
>>QCP-6035.
>
>FWIW the Kyocera 7135 is - even now - still better than any of the
>Treo devices: flip, grafiti, better buttons, 2nd status LCD...

No doubt. Unfortunately you can't buy one anymore. When I bought my
Treo, I actually went looking for a 7135. There was a display model
in the store, and I specifically requested one, but Verizon said they
had just ceased support for it and refused to sell me one. =(


--chuck


--
________________________________________________________________________
traceroute is a disconcertingly blunt hammer; that we continue to use it
to essentially nail moving jello to a wall says more about us than about
anything on the Internet. --k claffy, At 8:43 -0700 10/17/02 on NANOG

At 10:04 PM -0800 2/12/06, Marc Farnum Rendino wrote:
>FWIW the Kyocera 7135 is - even now - still better than any of the
>Treo devices: flip, grafiti, better buttons, 2nd status LCD...

That's a scary comment.
I had a 7135 for a couple years, and while it was okay, the buttons
were _awful_.

You never knew if a button press was going be recognized - dialing
quickly was a recipe for "fast busy" signals, since no one has 4 or 5
digit phone numbers. Turning off the touch-tone sounds on the keypad
helped a bunch, but still, the lowest row 7/8/9 and especially 0 were
"hit and miss".

Several people that I work with had 7135s, and we all had the same
problems with the buttons.

--
Marshall Clow Idio Software <mailto:marshallidio.com>

On Feb 13, 2006, at 11:03 AM, chuck goolsbee wrote:

> No doubt. Unfortunately you can't buy one anymore. When I bought my
> Treo, I actually went looking for a 7135. There was a display model
> in the store, and I specifically requested one, but Verizon said they
> had just ceased support for it and refused to sell me one. =(

Well, I have an unused 7135 that I'd be happy to sell :)

Even though the 650 is bigger, the faster processor and much better
reception and battery life make it a better phone for me. I would
like to go back to a flip palm based device, and would shell out some
money in a hurry for one that included WiFi.

The CEO of Palm promised they would release drivers for the WiFi card
for the 650, but there has never been a working driver despite
several attempts to hack one together. That's my only main concern
with the Treo. Despite what the phone companies want, users want WiFi.

Steve

I mourned the death of my Kyocera 7135 for many months, even though Verizon replaced it with a Treo 650 for free. I appreciate Verizon's software bundle (Dataviz's Documents To Go), the software written only for Treo (ProfileCare, which shuts off the phone ringer during business meetings, etc.), the better screen.

But oh, for dialup-speed connections billed only as regular cell usage -- the choice with Verizon's Treo is $50/month extra for internet usage, or insanely high per-minute charges -- a few minutes' browsing cost me $25! The addition of a mediocre camera hardly replaces the loss of anytime web browsing.

Add to that the Kyocera's satisfying clamshell design, its convenient hinge-mounted caller ID screen... ...its weird mid-dialing hangs, slow processor, inscrutable phone application... OK, I've grown to depend on the Treo 650, and I'm not heartened by the switch to Windows on the Treo 700. But I'm also waiting for the moment when this device drops out of its pouch and lands on its screen.

At 3:13 PM -0800 2/14/06, aarden wrote:
>Add to that the Kyocera's satisfying clamshell design, its
>convenient hinge-mounted caller ID screen... ...its weird
>mid-dialing hangs, slow processor, inscrutable phone application...
>OK, I've grown to depend on the Treo 650, and I'm not heartened by
>the switch to Windows on the Treo 700. But I'm also waiting for the
>moment when this device drops out of its pouch and lands on its
>screen.

Don't forget the convenient design of the belt holder, which would
launch the 7135 at the slightest bump.

On the other hand, if you dropped the phone on the floor, it was more
likely to break the floor than the phone.
--
-- Marshall

Marshall Clow Idio Software <mailto:marshallidio.com>

It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.
It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed,
the hands acquire shaking, the shaking becomes a warning.
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.

Purchased a Palm Treo 650 at Xmas when Verizon purchased my local cell-phone company and began providing digital service (finally). I added a 2gig SD card - $250, leather belt-clip $30, two desk-stands - one at the computer and one on the nightstand $50 ea, GPS $250 and a bluetooth headset $80. PDA functions ALL work well. I sync daily in about 10 sec with my Mac "Mail" and "Address Book" and "Calendar" with no problems thru "HotSync Manager" - you must use old version of Apple's "Sync" to set-up, though. I play MP3s. I surf the web - $50 extra per month unlimited. Send text messages. Turn-by-turn voice and picture wireless GPS navigation - comes with a window bracket. It is even a phone! The StarTrek communicator has arrived. Now all we need is to minaturize it so it can be implanted behind our ear and include SSN and banking/CC functions.

On Feb 10, 2006, at 2:27 PM, Mark Gibson wrote:

> Not interested in the newer 700w with the Windows OS.

Access, the company that bought PalmSource (and the Palm OS) is said
to be planning to move to Linux:

http://www.rcrnews.com/news.cms?newsId=25627

Marley Graham
Aqua-Flo Supply

Folks,

I've been a long time Palm user and I am disappointed with my Treo 650.

Primarily, its BlueTooth implementation is poor. My old Palm Tungsten T (3+ years old) has better BlueTooth. The Treo was a step backwards. For example, my 3+ year old SonyEricsson phone works fine with my Toyota Prius BlueTooth handsfree system but the Treo does not. I foolishly did not check whether the Treo supported the BlueTooth system of the world's number 2 automaker, Toyota. (It doesn't support Toyota's luxury brand, Lexus, either.) Which do you think I'll replace first: the $28,000 Prius or the $600 phone?

In addition, like many others, I am annoyed that the Treo does not support the Palm WiFi card. I specifically bought the unlocked GSM model to give me vendor choice and, I hoped, to get better service from Palm. I got the vendor choice but the service from Palm is no better. The fact that they allow the carriers to cripple their products is shameful.

As a product, the Treo is not worthy of my loyalty. Neither is Palm, the company. I will be doing a full competitive analysis of all phones available when this Palm gives up the ghost.

Andrew

At 10:40 AM -0800 2/17/06, awd wrote:

Treo is not worthy of my loyalty. Neither is Palm, the company.

One does get the impression that the erst-Handspring stuff is the red-headed stepchild at Palm, in much the way that Palm is the current red-headed stepchild of the tech business, these days, beaten, like the proverbial dead metaphor, severely about the head and shoulders for not being a Newton, or a BlackBerry, or, worse, an iPod.

:-)

Seriously, I have a Treo 600 mostly because my Handspring Razor (no, not RAZR, I'm too old to be that Kewl...) blew up about 6 months before my Moto "Timeport" flip-phone did, and the 600 managed to replace both, quite nicely, thank you very much.

Shortly afterward (it was ever thus) they shoehorned bluetooth into it and called it a 650 (and later made WinCE foie gras and called *that* a 700...).

It is also my understanding is that the Verizon implementation of the Treo 650 is the most egregious offender in terms of Prius incompatibility. It should also be noted that the Toyota (yes, Lexus too) implementation of bluetooth is egregious in its own right, not allowing multiple addressbook-entry updates at the same time, and so on.

And, yes, to my eternal earth-exploiting congenital-Republican shame (and secret geek titillation), my wife has a fully-loaded Seaside Pearl Prius, and, yes, we have Verizon phones, and no, we don't have a bluetooth phone between us yet to use with it, and, yes, my life is a seething mass of contradictions -- seething like a basket full of... oh, forget it.

Cheers, RAH

-- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rahibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

On Feb 20, 2006, at 11:21 , R.A. Hettinga wrote:

> At 10:40 AM -0800 2/17/06, awd wrote: Treo is not worthy of my
> loyalty. Neither is Palm, the company.
>
> One does get the impression that the erst-Handspring stuff is the
> red-headed stepchild at Palm, in much the way that Palm is the current
> red-headed stepchild of the tech business, these days, beaten, like
> the
> proverbial dead metaphor, severely about the head and shoulders for
> not
> being a Newton, or a BlackBerry, or, worse, an iPod.


My personal perspective, as a long-time Palm user back to the Palm
III in 1998 (->5x->m515->T1->now EOL T3, with a backup spare, not
interested in a Treo, my BT phone plays nicely with both the mac and
palm), and thoughts as a relative newbie mac user, is one of
frustration that certain software companies stupidly orphaned their
platform so that it isn't really supported with excellent PDA
hardware anymore, and the Palm OS devices doesn't sync seamlessly
with the macs as they should, except by heroic efforts by small third
party software companies who write workarounds for the "niche" of
users that want to sync macs with palm OS devices (e.g. mark/space's
The Missing Sync).

Palm stopped really supporting macs a few years ago when it abandoned
support and updating for its Palm Desktop for the mac. And that was
crapware to boot, much less functional than its Windows equivalent.
Not that the Palm OS doesn't ultimately play nicely with the mac sync
databases if some complicated third-party conduits are written. But
the user groups still report plenty of problems, and a lot are on the
Apple ical and address book sync engine side. These problems could
all have been avoided and gone better IMHO if Palm/Palmsource (the OS
licensing entity) and Apple had worked it out between them, so that
when I plugged the darn Palm into my USB port it would just sync,
without the need for spending a lot of time with third-party
workarounds.


J

At 3:13 PM -0800 on 06/02/14, Marshall Clow wrote:


>Several people that I work with had 7135s, and we all had the same
>problems with the buttons.

Wow; I guess I really lucked out - I have some trouble with the "0"
key now, though I'm chalking it up to the thing being old.

>On the other hand, if you dropped the phone on the floor, it was more
>likely to break the floor than the phone.

:)

I am glad mine hasn't given up the ghost yet - and that VZW hasn't
booted me - because I just don't see anything else that does what I
want.

However, I must admit that "what I want" is changing - coverage is
quite good now, so I can see shifting most of what I do to SMS, email
and some kind of web access; I don't really need to carry my data if
I can get good access to it.

That said, I don't see a lot of mobile phone browsers I like; too
restrictive. Even with its own restrictions, EudoraWeb is pretty
functional; I can't see going WAP or some other subset - or a proxy
setup either.

- Marc

For the record, I have a Treo 650, Sprint as a carrier. My main
computer is a weatherbeaten G4 TiBook (800 Mhz) running OSX 10.4.4 I
have numerous clients with Treo 650s. Of course, they all have
newer, cooler computers than I have. "Mechanic's car" syndrome.

I have no trouble synching my Palm and my Mac. One of my clients is
successfully synching her Treo 650 with a Mac and a Windoze box.

Admittedly, I use the Palm desktop software, as do my clients, though
one of them also synchs to both FirstClass and ACT (don't ask). It
suits my needs, and it simplifies things.

I also check three different mail accounts (earthlink, gmail and
sbcglobal) without a hitch.

I don't use any third party software to accomplish any of this.
Again, my mantra is simplification.

As I said before, I can walk out of my house with my Treo and a car
key. Life is good, simple and easy.

Of course, this is all going to change, now that Palm hardware and
software seem to change hands and operating systems every time I take
a peek. Oh, bother.


Scott Wyant
Information Systems Analysis and Design LLC
310.839.0958
scott_wyantsbcglobal.net
swyantgmail.com

I was moderately excited when the "Apple to buy Palm" rumor was floating around. (Same for the "Apple to buy TiVo" rumor.) I use Missing Sync to sync with my Treo to my PowerBook. My only problem is that now Address Book on my Mac has one entry for each line of address info. Oh for a script to correct that!

I'd love a more Mac-like OS for Palm. Maybe the Visor group could opt back in...

Steve

On Feb 17, 2006, at 7:40 PM, awd wrote:

> As a product, the Treo is not worthy of my loyalty. Neither is
> Palm, the company. I will be doing a full competitive analysis of
> all phones available when this Palm gives up the ghost.

I purchased a (unlocked GSM) Treo 650, and initially loved the
convenience of the single device. Then reality hit:

+ The battery life is poor.

+ The device is relatively flimsy.

+ My Treo 650 has become possessed, and restarts itself (even when
not in use) several times a day, making it, as a phone, totally
unreliable. Palm support in Europe (Spain) is unthinkably bad. The
"error code" given by the device, along with the serial number batch,
have been reported on the net to correspond to a hardware problem,
requiring replacement. But Palm support won't even *talk* to me,
without first purchasing a $20 "incident" -- simply assess whether
the problem is covered under warranty.

And, to top things off, (and I realize this is obviously my fault), I
can't find the original purchase receipt, and according to Palm,
that's required for any warranty work/replacement. So I'm buggered.

--
Matt Henderson | mattmakalumedia.com | http://matt.makalumedia.com