Thursday, December 11, 2003

One week review of palmOne’s Handspring Treo 600

This review is slanted because I’m comparing my experience with the Treo 300 to the new Treo 600. I liked the Treo 300 for what it is, a PDA with an embedded phone. However, I love the Treo 600 for what it is, a phone with an embedded PDA.
The Treo 600 is intuitive. Its functions are easy to access and use.
-The new 5-way navigation adds to that easy of use. It is so useful; I’m amazed it wasn’t included on the Treo 300.
-The screen is backlit so well that you can view it in direct sunlight.
-The appearance of its size is more phone-like. It even has a thinner and shorter profile than many flip phones.
-Battery life is much improved. Normal usage without recharging during the day hasn’t drained the battery to the halfway mark. Normal usage is a few phone calls totalling an hour or so talk time, internet access thru out the day, playing games when bored, text messaging, taking pictures to play around, IMing etc.
-New Palm OS 5.2 is more stable.
-Internet access is twice as fast as dial-up.
-New keypad layout needs about a day to get used to, but once you are used to it, it works well.
-The device is highly customizable without the need for third party software.
-It can communicate in every from of electronic communication type available: Voice; SMS (full functionality requires TreoSMS600 on SprintPCS version); AOL, Yahoo, MSN and ICQ IM chat (with VeriChat); fully fuctional Internet; IR beaming of course; and can even send Faxes (using free Adobe Acrobat software). Additionally, Blue Tooth and Wi-Fi SD cards will likely be compatible with the Treo 600 shorty to add even more avenues to the internet in addition to PCS.
Ok, ok, I’m getting tired of listing thangs about the Treo 600. Just take my word for it, the list of qualities and thangs this device can do is at least 5 times longer than what I’ve included here. It’s a great, intuitive, flexible, and powerful tool that eliminates the need to carry around multiple devices, all in a relatively small package.

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