Jul 14 2006
PDA Showdown
One thing I’ve quickly realised in my new job is that I need to start using a PDA again. It’s just not practical having to manually sync my Filofax organiser with kGTD and iCal. I really have missed my Tungsten-T, although it did live a rich 2.5 year life before dying a few months ago.
So, given my current situation, desktop enviromnent and basic PDA needs, I guess my requirements are:
- Works with iSync on MacOS X out of the box – the deal breaker
- Palm Powered – I don’t want a Windows Mobile or Symbian based option, mainly because of the wide range of software available for PalmOS
- Bluetooth – to use iSync without needing a cable
Now, let’s look at my wishlist:
- QWERTY keyboard – because it’s faster than Grafitti
- Integrated email Client – so I have a portable, non Crackberry email solution
- WiFi – so I don’t have to pay my mobile provider rediculous amounts of money all the time.
- Quad Band GSM/GPRS/UTMS Phone to allow comprehensive roaming (if I go down the Smartphone route)
So, I guess my options are the Treo 650 and the T|X.
The Treo is more expensive, lacks WiFi and is currently becoming obsolete in the US. On the other hand, it is a quad band phone, supports GSM (which I need in Europe, so the Treo 700p in the US is DOA to me) and basically satisfies every requiement or wish list item I have with the single exception of one – WiFi.
The TX is the cheaper of the two and it satisfies all of the requirements except for the QWERTY keyboard and the quad band smartphone. I guess I could use it with my tri band mobile phone to effectively satisfy my wireless GPRS/UTMS requirement. Then all that’s left is the QWERTY keyboard, which could be dealt with by a bluetooth keyboard.
Hmmm, it seems I’m at an empass – do I need WiFi or a QWERTY keyboard more? Does anyone (preferably an existing Treo 650 or TX user) have any suggestions?
Got to ask, how about a Nokia 770, it’s a pretty niffty device and does most of the things you are looking for
Steph
Because it fails on the dealbreaker.
I need iSync support. I’m not going to invest in a PDA that needs me to manually sync the contents like I’m doing to paper. Plus I like PalmOS, it’s simple, intuitive and almost fault free.
Looking at the specs and thinking about it, I think I’m going to go with the TX and try and squeese a quad band phone out of the price difference to the Treo 650.
The Treo is nice, but it’s aged a little since it was released. I’m probably going to use this PDA for 2 years, so I’d prefer more specs and a modular 3G data mechanism (ie a seperate phone) allowing my piconet be upgraded more gracefully then “all at once”
I seem to remember there being a wifi addon thing for Palm devices that went into an SD slot, or something…
I’ve already looked into that, except there are no official drivers from Palm for the Treos. There was an unofficial driver hacked up, but reports say it makes the Treo continiously power cycle until you hard reset it to factory defaults. So that’s not an option