Treo 650 Review

So I purchased a Treo 650 from Sprint PCS. I didn't even know about the phone until I walked into the store. I used to have Sprint a few years back and hated them. Now that's all changed. They have the best plan in my book, basically you buy 'blocks' of minutes so they don't rape you with overage charges. For instance, I have a $50/700min plan, but if I go over, they sell me a 100min block for $5 (5c/min if I use all of them,) this way I don't get raped, and I still end up paying a lot less then my old Verizon plan. (http://vzuscks.com is temporarily down)

So it's been a while since I've used a Palm OS pda. After moving to MS Pocket PC, it's hard to go back. These are my complaints:

1. Hot Syncing is SLOWWW! (minutes instead of seconds) It takes forever just to sync contacts and such, let alone any media. The hot syncing also locks the Treo during sync. That's really annoying on a slow sync, Pocket PC allows you to use the PDA and the host software while it is still syncing, it's much quicker, and it gives you a detailed breakout of what components are being synced.
   
2. The OS sucks. Pocket PC is a full fleged OS. The applications on Pocket PC are so much more robust, the media players, the Word editor, the Web Browser, the Contacts, the Calendar.
   
3. There is no scroll button. I would hope that the volume keys could actually be used to scroll a web page, but no dice, I'll have to look into a hack for that one.
   
4. It has a sub-mini headphone port. That means you can't plug in normal headphones or components. I think I even have to buy a special adapter, not the typical radio shack adapter. Bluetooth should be installed in car radios so devices could send a signal directly to them. I wonder if there are any bluetooth to FM transmitter device?
   
5. On the Pocket PC, I could hold the stylus down on an object and it would pop up a context menu similar to right clicking with a mouse. This was a very useful and efficient way to run common tasks. The Palm OS does not have an option like this.
   
6. When Palm tries to guess if text is a phone number, it must be in the form of xxx-xxx-xxxx, it can not handle (xxx) xxx-xxxx. That is so retarded.
   

Pro's:

1. Thumpad. Much needed in my life. The Treo doesn't have a grafitti pad, but with a thumb pad, you don't need it. I hear there is software that allows you to write grafitti across the screen.
   
2. Wireless - Although it doesn't have 802.11 WiFi, that's not such a bad thing. The internet access is slow, but not killer. The more I think about WiFi, the more I realize it wouldn't be available where I needed it, in stores, out on street, ... If I need internet access, I'm most likely gonna need it where WiFi isn't around.