PDA showdown: Blackberry vs. Treo 700p
The Treo 700p wins.
For me, at least. I've been a user of Palm OS since around 1999 or so. About 9 months ago, or so, I got a Blackberry. I tried real hard to find some love for the 'berry, but it was tough going. There are relatively few third party apps for the 'berry, which was a surprising letdown. On the other hand, the 'berry did what it was supposed to do pretty well. It was an okay phone, though I always felt dorky talking into it. And it was an okay calendar and organizer, though I never really dug into it once I began to understand that it would never really bend to my will. The email stuff was fine, though I don't really need or want push email. I'd rather just hit a button and get the email when I want to get the email. I had some minor gripes with the email sync between the 'berry and my Powerbook, but nothing that was a dealbreaker, just annoyances. The bluetooth functionality never really worked for me--apparently RIM used some obscure version of bluetooth that eliminated the use of some software that I wanted to use. Overall, though, the 'berry and I had a rather lukewarm relationship. I was known to let it run out of battery power and just leave it that way for days. That's about how much I relied on it's organizational capabilities.
The Treo on the other hand...now this is a nice unit. I love having Palm software available to me again. First thing I did was load up LauncherX and DateBk5, both of which I had previously purchased and my reg number still worked. Next was Filez, which is free. Then ShadowPlan, which I'd used before and liked. I can't find my reg number for Shadow, so I'm putting it through it's paces to see if I'll buy it again. I love the camera and the ease of posting pics to Flickr. Love the expansion slot--dropped an old 256mb SD card right in there. The phone is great--better than the 'berry in my opinion. The volume on the speakerphone is a little low, but I understand there is a fix for that. Sync between the Powerbook and the Treo is flawless, especially with Missing Sync, which I had left over from my Tungsten. And bluetooth works like it should--wireless sync with the laptop was a breeze to set up.
There are probably a few software odds and ends that I had on my Tungsten that I haven't reloaded yet, but the thing that's been more pressing for me is figuring out how to use the Treo as a modem for my Powerbook. The Treo picks up Verizon's EVDO network which delievers broadband-like speeds over the air. EVDO really works great, and I've been really pleased with the speed which, at DSL levels, is a fair bit faster than the Blackberry which poked along at speeds comparable to a 56k modem. Using bluetooth, I'm supposedly able to use the Treo as an EVDO modem for the Powerbook. This sounds pretty cool, and could save a few bucks when I'm on the road and have no choice but to pay for hotspot wifi access. It also vastly widens the availability of the internet on my Powerbook. No luck with it so far. The Treo and the PB recognize each other, but I errors when I try to connect. I think the next step may be to contact Verizon and see if I need to turn on DUN access or something. Everything I've read says this is required and I just figured my corporate "all you can eat" data plan covered it.
Anyway, regardless of the modem thingy, the Treo rocks. No real complaints so far, but I'm still exploring the depths of the machine. More later, I bet.
