If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny!!! Consume you it will!!!
Take a look at how many steps it takes you to change or add a word toward the end of a longish calendar entry, and you'll see my primary objection to WM. I know there are addon programs that reduce the difference, but it's not uncommon for WM to require 200% of the screen/key controls to accomplish the same thing, compared to PalmOS. Sounds like Exchange Activesync works better -- giving you multiple folders and also task sync, where Versamail only gives the Inbox and doesn't sync tasks. That's nice. Can you give us an update on Sherweb at some point? I'm looking. They appear to be very small, which could be good, and staffed with execs who are very young, which can also be good, and perhaps the French accent you noticed comes from them being in Canada, which I'm not sure how to feel about!! Cheers, Don -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Levi Wallach Sent: Thursday, October 04, 2007 8:19 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [Treo] Switching Teams There seems to be more interest lately about Windows Mobile. So I thought I would come out of the closet, so to speak ;-) I switched to a Treo 700wx about two weeks ago. I was going to wait for a while to post this because really I have't really been playing with it very much since I've been working some crazy hours. But I thought I'd give you some initial impressions. First of all, why did I do it? This goes back a few months ago when the firmware update dame out for the 700P. I installed it, and for doing so I was rewarded with a device that no longer worked the way I wanted it to. Specifically, Chatter, the program I used more than anything else, became crippled. I could not set it to be in push mode because after a short period my phone would start saying "too many sockets are being used." So I had to set it to quicksync every 15 minutes or so, but even then, half the time it couldn't connect, and when it was trying to, everything would freeze and I couldn't use my phone for a minute or more at a time. Versamail as well had issues. Apparently I was not alone as the forums at Treocentral are full of people with similar issues after the firmware upgrade. So I tried to do what others did and called Sprint, then when they gave up, Palm in order to get a replacement device. After troubleshooting hard reseting, redoing all the network stuff, waiting to see if the same thing eventually happened, etc., it was determined that they couldn't fix it, so they said they would send me a replacement. That was mid July and I got it 3-4 weeks later. Of course, it had the SAME FIRMWARE UPGRADE and so didn't solve the issue at all! At this point work was getting crazy and I just didn't have the time to sit on the phone for hours with Sprint and Palm again wait days to tell them it still wasn't working after similar wipes/resets, and then wait another month for yet another replacement. So I just decided to grin and bear it. Then the announcement about Palm not coming out with a new version of PalmOS for 12-18 months kind of was the straw that broke the camel's back. I thought I'd start doing some research at alternative platforms. My main issue was that I wanted to have push email and be able to sync all my outlook data wirelessly with my hosted Exchange account. Both Blackberries and Windows Mobile devices do this natively. I did some research and found that for me (Sprint SERO Plan), it would cost an additional $40/month for a Blackberry! So that was out. I started looking at the different WM devices that Sprint offered and the more research I did, the more I found that the 700wx was probably the best bet for me, since the phone itself is pretty much identical to the 700p, it's just the OS that's different. Also, most accessories that work in the 700p work in the 700wx - the charger, sync cable, cases, batteries, SD cards (although no SDHC yet I don't think), etc. I found someone selling a 2-month-old wx on Craig's list for $250, got them down to $200, and it even came with an extra battery. I got sprint to do an "ESN Swap" and got my phone working fairly quickly. Ok, so here are my impressions so far: It takes a while to remap your brain and fingers to perform various things. I've had a PalmOS Treo since the 600 over 3 years ago, so my fingers were very used to doing things in that OS. WM is different and you need to get used to it. I'm still getting used to it, but I'm a lot faster than I was when I started. Can you do as much with one hand as with the PalmOS? Not out of the box, but apparently with some tweaks/hacks you can, but I haven't done anything with those. To be honest, one-handed operation is not the most important thing for me. Syncing outlook data is easy and seemless with a hosted exchange account. You can look at all your mail folders by navigating through the tree. There's no quick way (ie keypresses) to go to specific folders that you want to see most (I use subfolders to handle different Yahoo! groups and such that I read), but apparently there are hacks you can install that will do something like this. Also, unlike Versamail, Tasks are synced, however notes are not, but you can sync notes via the outlook instance on your pc. There's a predictive text completion tool built into the OS, which can help increase typing speed. Google maps lets you use a gps receiver to track where you are. However, it doesn't quite integrate the directions into this tracking. You can see the directions and you see the overlay of where you are in those directions, but Google Maps doesn't detect where IN the directions you are so that it can tell you what your next turn is - you still have to keep doing that manually. I've heard that another free tool, Windows Live Search, is better in this regard, but I haven't tried it yet. Syncing with the computer is a little different. It doesn't download a kind of mirror of your device to a backup folder the way PalmOS does. You have to buy a seperate backup program to do this. Also, I don't think there is a tool to backup to an SD card, but I need to confirm this. "Activesync" is the name of the sync to the computer, but it's also the name of your syncing to an exchange program, so the terminology is a little confusing. Anyway, it provides an easy way of syncing various types of media - pictures, music, video, etc., with the device, and also provides a mechanism for installing and removing programs. So you can remove a program on the device itself but later re-ad it via sync as it will remain in the sync library (or whatever you call it). The OS itself has a much more polished feel. I've not used one of the many PalmOS launchers for years. I played around with one or two but never really got into them, so opted for the built in one. Still for the most part things just feel more solid and less "klunky" than PalmOS. It's only reset on its own once, but of course I haven't had many apps on it, so I'm not really pushing it too hard yet. :) It's also very nice to be able to switch out of an app and then go back into it and find everything in the exact same place (can you say multitask? ;-). On the WM side, the corresponding term to launcher is "taks manager" and there are a lot out there that enhance the built in one in many ways. There are also tons of individual tweaks and "hacks." Some of these are just changing registry entries the way you would in Windows. Others are scripts you can run in at least one kind of scripting language, although I'm not sure what the scripts do precisely - whether they just change a bunch of registry items, or something else. Here is a big thread on Treocentral showing how various people have altered their "today screen" which is the main screen of your task manager: http://discussion.treocentral.com/showthread.php?t=108855 A couple of other nice things: 1) apparently Palm's wifi card works on the 700wx 2) TomTom has a version that works on the WX, but apparently there are at least two other, perhaps 3 competing products similar to it (not just the more antiquated Mapopolis) I'm sure there's a lot of other things I'm forgetting, but anyway, it's generally been a very positive experience and I haven't even begun to play with all these new programs I need to start trying out, all the hacks and tweaks, etc. It should be fun, as long as I can manage to get some time to do it! I was going to sell my 700P, but instead offered it to my wife who often asks me to check her email when we're out. She has a SERO account like me so she has unlimited data, so she now can do everything I could with no extra charge. Unfortunately there is no similar group to this one that concentrates on WM Treos, although I'm sure there are ones that are more general for all WM devices. Since most people here are big PalmOS advocates, I don't know if that will change, but there seem to be more people getting tired of Palm's flubs and sluggishness with the PalmOS and PalmOS devices so who knows! But since my wife still has a PalmOS device and because I still think this group generates lots of interesting discussion outside of specific OS-related or app-related discussions, I think I'll be hanging around here for a while. :) Levi
