Palm Treo 700p

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Fantastic Treo 700p Part 11167657872

Pros:

Great combination of Palm OS pda and phone, full of other features

Cons:

Need to sign up for data/web plan to buy it; no built-in Graffiti; Echo problems?

I've wanted to buy a Treo for about two years now.

I had been using an old Palm IIIe and a cell phone. I always wanted both in one device (Carrying those two items and a big wallet is very cumbersome; I've been using a fanny pack to carry everything).

I have always liked the Palm OS so I did not give the 700wx any consideration. One big reason is the DateBk5/6 software from Pimlico (about $25). It is such a great and powerful way to manage your appointments. I think everybody should give Datebk5/6 a try. In addition, because the Palm OS is so simple, there are a lot of other good and cheap (sometimes free) third party enhancements available for download.

I have been reluctant to buy a Treo for the last two years because my local carriers required that I sign up for data/web plan. I really only wanted to use the phone. Anyways, the price had dropped down compared to the earlier Treo's, and I was using email more and more, so I decided to bite the bullet and sign up.

My monthly cost will more than double. I'll just have to get used to it.

The phone and PDA are fantastic. I don't need my fanny pack anymore. I can put the Treo in one pocket of my jacket and my wallet in the other side.

My Palm IIIe was almost 7 years old. Now I have a higher res colour screen. The camera and camcorder are a nice touch. The resolution is a bit grainy but not bad if I forget to bring my digital camera. More memory (60 mb compared to 2mb on my old IIIe), faster processor, everything is better. It has bluetooth and a music player (both of which I do not use) and a slot for a memory card. It also comes with DataViz Documents to Go to let you work on Word, Excel etc. documents. Since I am paying for it anyways, it is nice to be able to do mobile email and to do some mobile surfing on the web.

I was disappointed that there was no built-in grafitti. In order to compete with the Blackberry, Palm put in a keyboard and got rid of the silkscreen input (On the earlier versions, palm offered both versions). I like using Graffiti. The keyboard is a bit small for my fingers. Anyways, because it uses a Palm OS, there is a free software called Graffiti Anywhere which allows you to use the touchscreen as a Graffiti input area. It took some getting used to but it works reasonably well. There is a better software called MobileWrite, but it is commercial shareware (about $25).

From the start, I had a very serious echo problem with the phone. The person on the other end of the call would hear an echo of themselves whenever he/she spoke. The network carrier investigated and reset the system for my device, but they blamed the device and told me to exchange it for another handset. I did but I continued to experience the same problem. I read on the internet that the other caller's voice would feedback into my microphone. So I downloaded a trial version of a program called VolumeCare (about $15 -20 to buy) to adjust the caller volume and the microphone's sensitivity. However, I was not too happy with turning down the volume; it made it harder for me to hear the other caller and the other caller to hear me. Meanwhile, the network continued to work on the problem. Anyways, after about a week, the echo problem went away (and I am no longer using VolumeCare). I am not sure what the network did, but I believe that the network fixed the problem. I hope it does not come back Anyways, if you experience this echo problem with your Treo, call and complain to the network until they fix the problem, or try a new handset or VolumeCare as a last resort.

When I had the echo problem, the speakerphone was next to useless. Now that there is no echo problem, the speakerphone appears to work reasonably well.

End of Part 1