BrandBrains

My Treo 700p arrived from Verizon yesterday. Of course, the first thing I did (after Daddy Duty) was head upstairs to my home office to set it up.

So far, I’m unimpressed.

Pros:

• I like the new form factor. It’s a bit sleeker than the 650 series and more comfortable in my hand.
• The EV-DO connectivity is FAST - unbelievably fast, but I haven’t tried using it as a Bluetooth modem, yet. (More on that later.) My Wall Street Journal audio edition used to arrive pretty quickly on my Treo 650, but now it arrives in seconds.
• The Voice Memo utility is very useful. I was about to spring for a third-party application to handle voice memos on my Treo 650 and once again, this upgrade mitigates that.
• Dial-up Networking - this was the primary reason for the upgrade. I didn’t want to spend money on an EV-DO access card for my Powerbook along with the separate service. Now I don’t have to.
• The latest version of DataViz’s Documents-to-Go, now with a slightly improved interface and PDF support. (Of course, there was already PalmPDF, but it’s a bit slow and chokes on large files.)

Cons:

• Why did they change the button layout, again? The Treo 600, 650 and 700 series all have different key layouts. Granted it takes awhile to get used to new things, but the operation of the new design just doesn’t feel intuitive.
• Why does Verizon install all this crap onto the device without making it easy to uninstall? I’m not talking about the apps that are in ROM, but stuff like Versamail, which is a horrible mail client and doesn’t install as a single app, but as a combination of executables and libraries.
• Dial-up Networking via Bluetooth: “Mac users will have to connect to Verizon Broadband Access using Bluetooth.” OK. How? There are no instructions, drivers or modem profiles in the Bluetooth Modem Setup, nothing in the documentation, nothing on the Verizon Wireless web site and nothing on the Palm site on how to accomplish this. Google wasn’t very helpful, either. I’m generally pretty savvy about this stuff, but I’m stumped. Does anyone have any pointers for me?

As I write this, I’m in the air, on my way to Dallas for a meeting. I thought that I could skip the in-room internet access fee since I have EV-DO capability, but that’s clearly not going to happen on this trip.

I’ll share more as I get better acquainted with the device.

Technorati Tags: powerbook, verizonwireless, gadgets, audibleair, evdo, palm, dialupnetworking, macintosh, ev-do, treo700p, bluetooth, mobilephones

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