The Dark Side of the Phone...

Besides all the other weekend activities going on, I have been partially consumed with trying to get my new phone working. I have a hard time resisting the lure of new technology, and the Palm Treo 800 was released last week, and after many lunchtime discussions with friend Wayne, we both ended up getting one on Friday (both of us had our 2-year phone rebate coming and a bunch of other incentives made it fairly cheap). This model has 802.11 wireless and GPS, a significantly better camera, as well as Sprint's high-speed EVDO network capability. The one hitch was that it runs Windows Mobile, not Palm OS which has been on every Treo I've had since the first Treo 300 I got in 2002. This is my 10th Treo (but only the 3rd one I've actually purchased - I bought a 300 to start, got a replacement under warranty, upgraded to a 600, got FIVE replacements under warranty, AND a 650 as a replacement when they quit making the 600s, and finally bought this new 800). I took a good look at Windows Mobile, wanting to make sure I wasn't getting into something I didn't want. It does have some downsides, but it is a lot snappier than the Palm OS, and the newest 6.1 release did look like it fixed a lot of problems. So I jumped in...not knowing that getting my data from the old Palm OS calendar, tasks, contacts, and memos was going to be very difficult. The main difficulty is that you have to sync to Microsoft Outlook instead of Palm Desktop. I followed all their simple and then "extended" directions, read all sorts of forums, and tried many many syncs to no avail. I finally broke down and bought a program I found that allowed you to migrate the data directly from Palm Desktop to Microsoft Outlook - something that they should have provided in the first place, but it did turn out to be worth the money, as it copied everything over flawlessly.

So finally this morning I had almost everything re-set up - I'm still learning about Windows Mobile, but so far I actually like what I see, and I believe with all the other phones that run this, it will probably be a good choice in the long run. (I can already see Michael and Cory shaking their heads wondernig why I didn't just go to an iPhone - yeah, get Apple to not sign exclusive deals with AT&T :) The sync software for Windows is much faster and more reliable than the palm sync ever was, the phone uses MicroUSB which is supposedly the future of phones, and, well, I have it and now I'm going to use it. GPS-enabled Google Maps is QUITE awesome too - I may never get lost again. And after trying out the camera yesterday, it is decent enough to take normal pictures on, as long as there's an ok amount of light.