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View Full Version : Am I Staying or Going? Treo Vs MSFT


bdegroodt
02-25-2003, 09:04 PM
I swear I wasn't looking around too hard, but low and behold a $100 off coupon came to me today from my friends at Handspring. It seems I can now get a Handspring Treo 300 from Sprint/Handspring for only $249!

The list of features are pretty compelling and I have to admit I am torn. I love my 3975 but I really feel a let down when it comes to keyboard and always on connectivity to email.

Cool Treo Features- Backlit keyboard. Keyboard. Automatic connection to the Sprint Vision network when in data mode. Speakerphone. All in one that apparently does both things pretty well. Sync with Linux and that new Mac I've had my eyes on.

What to do??? :?:

Janak Parekh
02-25-2003, 09:12 PM
Blasphemer!!! Actually wanting a Treo! :D

Seriously, the $100 off is courtesy of Sprint in particular, who are offering $100 off any of their Smartphones.

My big killer on the Treo is no audio or hi-res screen, and that's why I've held off. And apparently the Treo 300 is slightly thicker than the 270. Other than that it's a pretty nice unit.

--janak

bdegroodt
02-25-2003, 09:46 PM
Blasphemer!!! Actually wanting a Treo! :D

Seriously, the $100 off is courtesy of Sprint in particular, who are offering $100 off any of their Smartphones.

My big killer on the Treo is no audio or hi-res screen, and that's why I've held off. And apparently the Treo 300 is slightly thicker than the 270. Other than that it's a pretty nice unit.

--janak

I knew you'd be here Janak! :D It's a combined $200 off total ($100 from HS and $100 from Sprint).

I do knock the audio portion of the Treo. The high res hasn't been a big deal to me on the PPC because I rarely look at video or pictures.

Janak Parekh
02-25-2003, 09:48 PM
I knew you'd be here Janak! :D
Where else am I? :lol:

I do knock the audio portion of the Treo. The high res hasn't been a big deal to me on the PPC because I rarely look at video or pictures.
To me, the lack of MP3/Ogg capability is absolute killer - I use it every day. As for the resolution, it'll kill my ability to use things like Thunderhawk.

But hey, it's your requirements. :) Have you actually played with one of them?

--janak

bdegroodt
02-25-2003, 10:01 PM
Have you actually played with one of them?

--janak

And there's the rub. I'd have to turn off my T-Mobile service and make a switch. I haven't had the week I need to really get deep into the Treo. I have to say though, I find very little in the way of reviews that tears into it.

On the OGG side, you guys turned me onto that format and I swear I hear things in music that I never hear in MP3 now. I could be wrong, but I think it's true. In any case, I use my iPAQ daily at the gym as an OGG player and I do love that function. But that's kind of putting the pleasure before the needs. You know? BTW, I saw a cool new MP3 player that's going to support OGG on /. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/24/037229)

I've been thinking about configuring my Sendmail server to ping my cell phone when there is an emergency message (In addition to the regular stop it makes.). That would eliminate some of the "got to be connected all the time" feeling I have as I never leave home without my cell phone.

alkandery75
02-25-2003, 10:20 PM
I have Treo 270 for 6 Months now, and I really hate it... You know why? Cause:
1) No Audio.
2) No SD/MMC.
3) No Bluetooth.
4) No Hi Res. Screen.
5) Very Low Memory. (16 MB)
6) No MMS. (No S/W till now)
7) No Faxing. (No good S/W till now)
8) Very Old OS (3.5)
9) Limited in Web Browing.
10) Limited eMail Functionality even with power eMail S/W.
11) Very very limited number of accesories.

But, still there is some good points for it:
1) PDA + Phone.
2) GPRS.
3) Keyboard (Very Very nice and Important in any PDA).
4) Good Processor Speed.
5) Many Many Softwares in the net (Palm OS).


Finally, I think that that XDA is a much better choice if you are looking for PDA+Phone, or H5450 and upcoming H1910 with bluetooth , I think it may be the 1915.

Good luck,,,

bdegroodt
02-25-2003, 10:43 PM
...
Finally, I think that that XDA is a much better choice if you are looking for PDA+Phone, or H5450 and upcoming H1910 with bluetooth , I think it may be the 1915.

Good luck,,,

Totally appreciate your Pro/Con list. I owned the XDA and honestly, I think the Visor Springboard Phone was a better unit. The XDA was a horrible device in my life. It's one of the reasons I am apprehensive about parting with my T68/3975. The converged device hasn't done right by me so far.

alkandery75
02-26-2003, 12:14 AM
Waw... So, if The XDA was a horrible device in your life, then Treo will be the most ever horrible device in your next life...

Best regards,,,

Janak Parekh
02-26-2003, 12:19 AM
Brian, I think you want the Hitachi Communicator. The question is, how long can you wait? :D

--janak

shawnc
02-26-2003, 12:19 AM
Man! This is bad news for me. I was just about to list my 2 month old Treo 300 on ebay for $300. Well, so much for THAT plan.

I've had my Treo for about 2 months now and I absolutely LOVE it. A totally functional PDA, fairly high-speed wireless connectivity, a killer multi-function built-in calculator, always-on email and many other features to numerous to mention. And $10 for UNLIMITED access is an incredible deal. I would totally recommend this device to anyone who can live without SD. I only missed the lack of a card slot because it prevented me from using it as an MP3 player. Other than that I have no complaints whatsoever.

My problem is that my job is providing me with a company paid cell phone and Sprint is not the provider :evil: .

bdegroodt
02-26-2003, 12:50 AM
Brian, I think you want the Hitachi Communicator. The question is, how long can you wait? :D

--janak

-Replying remotely as I travel up the 87 :) via GPRS-

How on Earth could I leave the PPC behind? I checked some of the product shots of the Hitachi...What a hot device!

...shredding Handspring coupon and waiting...

Janak Parekh
02-26-2003, 03:17 AM
Sorry to ruin your plans. :lol:

I'm waiting for it too...

--janak

Scott R
02-26-2003, 03:50 AM
I just bought two Treo 300s (one for me, one for my wife) about a week and a half ago. If you didn't really tear up that coupon, feel free to ask me any questions about it. BTW, I got that same coupon in the mail today. Considering that Handspring "officially" announced a $100 off deal ($50 from Handspring, $50 from Sprint), I figured it was somehow the same deal yet, as you said, the coupon that came in the mail seems to indicate that the whole $100 is coming from Handspring. So whether this is some stackable coupon, I'm not sure. Regardless, you can currently get the Treo 300 for $300 after rebates from Amazon and a couple weeks ago Best Buy and some Circuit City's were selling it for $250 after rebates.

Here's my quick synopsis on it:
1) The screen is pretty good. I've read in some places that it's supposedly a transflective screen (which actually might make it the first PDA to feature such a screen). I'm not sure about that, but it's pretty good. Color quality is pretty good (much better than my Samsung i300 Palm-phone). Brightness is plenty good. There's a hot spot in the top right, but it isn't bothersome. Downsides, of course, are that it's low-res (160x160) and 12-bit.

2) The antenna/circuitry/whatever is pretty good at picking up a signal. I couldn't get a signal in my house with my Samsung i300, but this phone can, which makes it far more useful.

3) Unlimited "decent speed" data for a reasonable price. As far as I'm concerned, this is a core feature which few other devices can compete with.

4) Blazer is OK. There are several other browsers to try out as well, each with various pros and cons. None of them do a good enough job of displaying most 800 pixel wide web sites though, IMO. Browsing is best when you're accessing PDA-friendly sites.

5) No email app comes bundled. This is because Handspring would like you to spend $50-100 annually on theirs. Their app isn't bad from what I can tell, but other options exist which are just as good if not better and cheaper as well. SnapperMail is probably the best so long as you only need POP3 support. Many of the apps available give you essentially always-on email notification either via push or pull technology (depending on the app).

6) Considering the fact that this is a Dragonball pre-OS5 device, I don't think that the lack of a memory expansion slot is a big deal. 16MB is pretty decent for a non-multimedia Palm OS device.

7) Battery life is pretty poor and the battery is not swappable. To compensate, Handspring gives you a nice travel charger (prongs fold down) and a car charger standard. I think this will meet my needs battery-wise but for people who will be away from any sort of electricity for extended periods of time, this could be a big problem.

8 ) You could risk having Sprint drop your data service (or whatever they'd do), but there's an app available (about $38 ) which lets you hook the phone up to a laptop to use it as a modem. Because of the slow Dragonball processor (presumably) browsing via Blazer isn't as fast as Sprint's Vision service is capable. Using this program and a serial cable (or IR), allows you to take better advantage of Sprint's Vision service via your laptop and would work nicely if you travel with your laptop. As I said though, Sprint frowns upon this so use it sparingly so they don't notice excessive data usage on your account. I'm thinking of downloading the demo of this app to see if I can get it to let me browse the web with a PPC via IR.

9) There are several IM apps available. Right now the best one seems to be VeriChat which supports multiple protocols and allows you to stay "available" all the time and be notified when someone wants to chat with you even while you're using another program. Yes, even though the Palm doesn't truly support multitasking, there are some apps which "get around" this to do much of what you'd want a multitasking OS for.

In short, I really like this thing but I wish it had OS5/ARM and a 320x320 screen (among other things, but those are my top two). I was tempted by the Hitachi but I'm concerned that:
a) It looks like it will be too long (tall), because of the taller-than-wider PPC screen combined with the thumbboard.
b) Along the lines of (a), I'm concerned that this device will be too top-heavy.
c) In order to somewhat compensate for (a), it looks like they may have made the screen smaller, which could hurt usability (e.g. - buttons smaller, harder to position a cursor, etc.).
d) Again, in order to compensate for (a), they seemed to have dropped the application buttons, so it looks like you'll have to go to the Start menu to get to any app.

Still, I'd love to play with one once it comes out. But I think the problems I mentioned demonstrate the need for a PPC more along the lines of a the Sharp Zaurus SL-C700.

Scott

Janak Parekh
02-26-2003, 05:01 AM
a) It looks like it will be too long (tall), because of the taller-than-wider PPC screen combined with the thumbboard.
Yes, I'd say that this may be the biggest PPC yet. OTOH, if it really packs all the features in it might be worth it (it even has SDIO, it seems, so we might actually get CDMA + WiFi!). Witness the excitement over the NZ90... ;)

--janak

Sheynk
02-26-2003, 06:22 AM
im planing on making a jump by connecting 8O my 3955 to my LG phone with unlimited vision....yes with a wire 8O

bdegroodt
02-26-2003, 02:04 PM
Great review Scott! Thanks!

mrdbsql
02-27-2003, 04:21 AM
Well.... I just sold my Treo 180 (b&w version of the 300) on Ebay for none of the reasons mentioned above:

You'll need to replace it every 3 months or so unless you treat it gently.

I bought one 4 months ago from Ebay. Almost immediately Handspring replaced it because I intermitantly couldn't hear the incoming caller for ~30 secs unless I had my earpiece plugged in.

Then, a few weeks ago, it started resetting every couple of days, even after I removed all software and did a hard reset. When Handspring replaced it, I decided to cut my losses and sell it while it was 'new'. (I was honest in my Ebay listing that it was a replacement). Various forums I checked suggested that the other models are similar.

Things peculiar to my usage may be that it was always in my shorts pocket, and thus probably physically stressed more than if on a belt clip, say. Confirming this was that it only crashed when I was carrying it, never if I left it on my desk.

Other random comments:

+ the reception was *almost* as good as the Nokia 3390 it replaced, so no complaints there
+ multi-country GSM was nice the one time I needed it
+ I LOVED the feature set. Coming from Palm (still converting to Pocket PC, the Ipaq arrived today), I didn't miss the lack of MP3 player, yada, yada, yada. Rather I noticed how well the dialer was integrated, how other apps worked so well (e.g. the 3rd party plan usage tracker), how much more useful it made my Palm (already vital to me!), and one less device in my pocket.

Something like the Treo is definitely a killer phone. It just needs to be as physically solid as a cell phone! Kudos to Handspring by the way. Although it took several calls to get a replacement the 2nd time ("just try this"), they were nice about it - and remember, I wasn't even the original owner (though I'm not sure they knew that).

Hope this helps.

shawnc
02-27-2003, 03:53 PM
I've heard of many problems like those described by mrdbslq, but I had absolutely NO issues with my Treo 300. I just sold it because I found myself using its many features less and less once I got my Axim up and running. But for instant internet and email access (no syncing up via Avant Go :evil: ) it is really a extraordinary device.

It was a very reliable and sturdy machine.

bdegroodt
02-27-2003, 07:10 PM
I've heard of many problems like those described by mrdbslq, but I had absolutely NO issues with my Treo 300. I just sold it because I found myself using its many features less and less once I got my Axim up and running. But for instant internet and email access (no syncing up via Avant Go :evil: ) it is really a extraordinary device.

It was a very reliable and sturdy machine.

Yeah. I went into the Circtuit City to take a look at one hands on for a while. It was beat to hell (Damn NYC animals!). The flip was busted at the hinges and taped back onto the main unit. Didn't bode well for my desire to switch. If I already had Sprint as a carrier, I'd probably be compelled to do it, but switching cell providers is the delta I'm not willing to mess with without good reason.

I saw the Tungsten W was released in the U.S. by Palm this week. Anyone know what's the deal with GPRS Class 10 radio? Palm makes it sound like some big advantage. I don't even know what class the T68i radio is. Any advantages on this Class 10 vs whatever I have today (Like auto reconnect etc)?

lucia316
02-28-2003, 01:21 AM
I almost went for the Treo, but went e740 instead. Glad I did. I like having the separate devices. When I go out and I don't need my PPC, it is nice to just have my phone and not this bulky all-in-one device. Sprint makes it tough. If you went with the TMobile Treo though you could just swap the sim card in and out of the Treo and a phone. What a hassle though!

Cool idea, but I think the MS Smartphones have a better plan/system when it comes to a phone with a PIM. Plus the Treo felt kind of flimsy. Did love the keyboard though.

L316 8)

Scott R
02-28-2003, 01:34 AM
I know this is a PPC site and I get a lot of heat as it is, but I just wanted to add a few comments based on some of the additional comments some folks have made...

1) The Treo had a QC problem at first, from what I understand, but I don't see a whole lot of posts at TreoCentral these days about quality problems. At least not with the Treo 300.

2) As far as "bulk" issues. I find the Treo 300 to be pretty tiny and thanks to the built-in screen cover, I carry it naked in my pocket. While it's bigger than many cell phones these days, I'd imagine that it's smaller than an e740.

Scott

Janak Parekh
02-28-2003, 01:36 AM
I find the Treo 300 to be pretty tiny and thanks to the built-in screen cover, I carry it naked in my pocket.
This is indeed something I'd like to see more of all around the board. The HTC Pocket PC Phone is a logistical challenge because of the lack of a screen cover; most leather flip-top cases are not conducive for talking. The flip Smartphone by Samsung is promising in this regard, and I'm curious what Hitachi will bundle with their Communicator.

--janak

Scott R
02-28-2003, 02:38 AM
This is indeed something I'd like to see more of all around the board. The HTC Pocket PC Phone is a logistical challenge because of the lack of a screen cover; most leather flip-top cases are not conducive for talking. The flip Smartphone by Samsung is promising in this regard, and I'm curious what Hitachi will bundle with their Communicator.
Two things (getting off-topic, but perhaps more on-topic for a PPC site):
1) The other thing I didn't like about the T-Mobile device was that it lacked a side scroll wheel. My Samsung i300 had a side up/down toggle and select button which served the same purpose. For a smartphone, I think you really need that sort of thing so that you can scroll through your contacts one-handed to make phone calls. That said, I find that with my Treo, I actually go through the trouble of using the thumbboard because Handspring did a nice job of integrating this so that you can type the first letter of the person's first name and start typing their last name and it quickly narrows down the list in the contacts app. Then you can use the side-scroll wheel to select the one you want (if you aren't already on it) and push it in to dial it.
2) The first time I saw pics of the Hitachi device I have to admit I was tempted by it. At first glance it actually looked like it had a built-in clear screen cover but after looking at the pics more closely, it looks like that's not the case. Nevertheless, I'm skeptical of the value of it for the reasons I already mentioned in my previous post plus a new one (as a result of the recent rumors of the next version of the PPC OS): If the next version of the OS will now natively support landscape mode, I really think that the ideal wirelessly-connected PPC should not only include some sort of thumbboard, but also be based more around landscape mode when browsing the web.

Scott

Janak Parekh
02-28-2003, 05:21 AM
The other thing I didn't like about the T-Mobile device was that it lacked a side scroll wheel.
I can see that, but the d-pad isn't terrible. I've been playing with one, and can easily one-handedly go to the speed dial or call log and initiate a call.

If the next version of the OS will now natively support landscape mode, I really think that the ideal wirelessly-connected PPC should not only include some sort of thumbboard, but also be based more around landscape mode when browsing the web.
Stupid question, though: how would you handle the thumbboard in landscape? The device isn't really designed to rotate. :) Or are you thinking more along the lines of that HP prototype Flash animation that came out about 4 months ago?

--janak

bdegroodt
02-28-2003, 03:23 PM
Stupid question, though: how would you handle the thumbboard in landscape? The device isn't really designed to rotate. :) Or are you thinking more along the lines of that HP prototype Flash animation that came out about 4 months ago?

--janak

Janak- on your advice, I've started using ThunderHawk. As you know, that's a landscape mode application and I think it's awesome! The little keyboard that pops up makes me really wonder how you could get a landscape keyboard. But honestly, that type of keyboard would only be reasonable if you were using it for lots of typing (PIE, Word, Excel). But if I was on the run and wanted to look up a contact or check my calendar, I'd prefer to see the keyboard at the bottom of the device (Like the Blackberry). Tough call on the keyboard.

BlueTooth keyboard-Any mode you want.

lucia316
02-28-2003, 11:14 PM
2) As far as "bulk" issues. I find the Treo 300 to be pretty tiny and thanks to the built-in screen cover, I carry it naked in my pocket. While it's bigger than many cell phones these days, I'd imagine that it's smaller than an e740.

I think any PPC is going to have bulk to it. I would agree thought that the e740 is good sized. Definitely longer, but it is a slimmer device than the treo. I was think more along the lines of bulk in the pocket and bulk as compared to a cell phone.

As stated I want something that I can go out with and not have a whole PDA to carry as part of my phone when I don't need the PDA.

L316 8)