Ok, yes I did buy a Treo!

Only a few weeks ago I sold my old Pocket PC,  a fairly new Ipaq 4150 and an old Creative Zen MP3 Player.  I got about £450 for the whole lot and included quite a few bits of software and other bits like headphones and stuff I had acquired as free gifts along the way.  I wanted to de-clutter my life and was looking to free up enough money to upgrade my TC1000 Tablet to a TC1100.  Well browsing through eBay I saw a Treo 600 which I though was a great bargain,  for less than £200 I got the Treo, headphones that also work as a headset, and all sorts of other bits and pieces including a 1GB SD card. 

It arrived today and so far I am very happy, here are a few of the reasons why:

• Great phone, good media player, great Lotus Notes integration, the touch sensitive screen is easy to use with my small fingers, so I hardly need the stylus.  Replaces everything I sold in one device and adds a phone into the bargain.

I made a few upgrades:

• Using an existing licence for mNotes that I had purchased to sync with my Ipaq 4150 (the licence allows you to also sync with palm), I have very slick calendar, email and contacts synched.  At long last my Contacts in Notes are the same as the ones in my phone and hopefully always will be!  I don’t have wireless sync as my company is too stingy to GPRS enable my contract, but as I work from home and have GPRS on my Tablet for serious email its not too big an issue.
• I upgraded Pocket Tunes Standard to Deluxe, which is a really great media player.  It syncs perfectly with Windows Media Player and so I now have a pretty good music collection on my 1GB SD card.  I also copied over a whole load of technical conferences from IT conversations.  PTunes can be configured to automatically bookmark your location if you stop listening to an eBook and switch to something else.  I added a little utility called Freedom which allows you to listen to music/ebooks though the phone headset and auto pauses if you get a phone call.  I can see I am going to get through a lot of technical conferences while out walking!
• The standard phone software seems pretty good.  At long last I will probably manage to put people on hold, conference call etc,  now all the functions are so easy to see how to use.  Even better while on a call I can take notes and schedule appointments.
• I upgraded an old copy of eWallet for Palm and installed that.  I have always used eWallet to store my passwords, credit cards, licence keys, insurance details etc.  Now I always have that with me.
• The built in camera is not too impressive,  but the number of times I have wanted a quick snap shot when out an and about and not had my “real camera” with me :-(,  The resolution of 640*480 is perfect for blogs and I used a little utility qset to reduce the compression and hence improve the image quality and TreoShutter which makes the volume up and down buttons take a picture (easier)
• I have not tried it but I installed a movie recorder – movierec – as well,  I guess it won’t be too impressive,  but its worth a go.
• I also added a sound recorder soundrec, which is freeware and does the job.

Any disappointments:

• The phone microphone seems a little on the quiet side
• The keyboard is not a patch on my old blackberry, but I here the 650 is better.  The 650 also has a high res screen, but this one seems OK, it’s low res but small so it looks quite sharp to me!

Any other plus points:

• My wife gets my old phone to borrow, a 6310i, a great and very simple to use phone
• My eldest daughter gets my wife’s phone, a Orange SPV, a lovely smart phone locked to Orange.  Much too complicated for my wife ,  but Stephie has already got it mastered
• My Second eldest gets Stephie’s old phone.
• We have two spare phones now ready for when Stephie or my SmartPhones pack in (unfortunately all too likely) or for the twins when they are 9 (2 and a bit years).
• I have found ways around the TC1000’s performance issues, so I no longer have a desperate need to upgrade!