Quickies: Visor Edge, i705, Treo

About the unit itself ... there's no question that if Palm made a unit that was metal, color, high resolution, and looked like a m505, I'd prefer it over this. But that being said, I think that right now this is the best solution out there for email notification. It's great to be out of the office and have it vibrate when I get a new email. And for anyone using a III or VII, the physical design of the i705 is certainly a step up.

If you were to cover up the unit so all you could see was the screen, you'd be hard pressed to distinguish it from a VIIx. The wireless service is certainly no faster than it is on a VIIx. It runs 4.0, it's rechargeable, uses MultiMail Deluxe as its email client, and has a utility for turning the antenna on or off by a schedule, but that's about the only difference. The showstopper, of course, is the "Notification" menu item in MultiMail, which allows you to hear an alarm, see the LED flash, or have the unit vibrate when you receive emails. You can even set it to only notify you when you receive certain emails based on a filter you configure (I'm assuming the Blackberry can do all this, but it's all very novel to me personally).

The Treo is very cool, and it's always been a dream of me to have a PDA and GSM phone in one small unit, but it has its downsides. For me, getting realtime corporate email on the i705 is huge, and the unit is just small enough so I feel OK about carrying both the Palm and my phone in my pants.

As for coverage, there have been a few brief bouts of no service, but I think they've been flukes, because otherwise I've been consistently getting 70-90% signal strength (I'm in metro Detroit).

In summary, I'd say that if you generally love Palm and you like what the Blackberry can do for you, the i705 is your answer. If wireless data is not priority one, then maybe the Treo is the way to go. Either way, next week, play around with the unit at your local CompUSA/Circuit City/Etc. and decide for yourself.

He is a troll with no money...

>Mobitex is the defacto industry standard for
>wireless data communications with networks operating
>in 22 countries. It is a packet-switched radio
>technology that provides always on instant two-way
>messaging and data delivery. Our core network covers
>93 percent of the urban business population in the
>U.S. The Cingular Wireless Mobitex network has been
>optimized to provide the best in-building coverage
>and best device battery life available in the
>industry.

If I recall, Cingular is all of the Baby Bells' wireless services put together (BellSouth + Southwestern Bell, etc.) so Cingular's network is still based on the BellSouth Mobitex network of the Palm VII series.

Just goes to show how much B.S. spouters there are on this board. Atleast this time one of them got the online version of a b***hslap...

How'd that go again?