Just about 6 months ago Verizon came out with their Treo 650 and I wanted one, so the day it came out I purchased one.
It was a god send, now no matter where I was I was able to access SatelliteGuys and our servers. This has come in handy many times, I have been able to SSH into the server and fix items without having to bug LER our server guru too much.
It also had a web browser which was ok but it was really slow.
A few months back I heard about about the Treo 700w, when I heard it worked on Verizons new EDVO newtwork I wanted one. While the Treo 650 did connect to Verzions X1 Network the adverage speed was around 56k, with EDVO I could get broadband like speeds, plus it had Internet Explorer not the stinky browser which was built into the 650.
Well CES came and I got to look at the 700w. I wanted one. Later that morning my wife called me and asked me if I had seen anything I liked and I told her about the Treo 700w.
The next day I was at CES and my 650 rang, it was my wife telling me she just got me a 700w, I was so happy but depressed at the same time, I was happy because I wanted it, and depressed because it was in Connecticut and I was stuck in Las Vegas.
When I got home I ripped into the box, I was very happy to see that all of my accessories for the 650 would also work on the 700 including the battery. I slipped my fully charged battery out of my 650 and put it in the 700w. It lit up...
And it took forever to boot, about 3 times longer then the 650 took.
I went online to Verizons website to activate it and I was told I could not activate the 700w online, so my wife called and activated it for me.
The first thing I did was go into internet explorer to pull up satelliteguys. I was disapointed, it pulled it up faster but not much faster then the 650. I also did not like the fact to view the page I had to keep scrolling back and forth to read anything. But I slipped it into PDA mode and was MUCH happier, and I could also tell the difference in speed now.
I got to be honest for the first few days I HATED this thing. It would lock up from time to time so I would miss phone calls. The keyboard was laid out a little differently, for example on the K key on the 650 was the : however on the 700w the : is not on the keyboard at all, instead on the K key is the ;
I was honestly thinking of taking the phone back...
But then it grew on me.
Then I found an application which lets me listen to Sirius and XM on my phone, I liked that.
Then I figured out how I can watch TV from home on my Treo using ORB, I loved that.
Then I found a site like GotomyPC.COM which lets me access my PC's at home and work (the site is logmein.com) , I really loved that...
The I found another application which I really love, and that is PDANet which lets me connect my Treo 700 to my laptop and gives me a full broadband connection. I must tell you doing it this way is so much faster and better then trying to view the web on the phone. I did some speed tests on EDVO, and the speed tests went from 200kbits all the way up to 742.4KBits!
The other day we went to the Laundrymat as our Washer broke, and I took my Treo 700w and my laptop in and was able to isten to music and browse the web just like I was sitting home. I was very impressed.
I will admit this phone is like an Echostar receiver after its first released (aka very buggy) about the worst thing it does is its phone functions just sometimes it locks up where you can't answer the phone when its ringing, or worse yet it dont ring at all.
I am told by Palm they are working on a firmware issue which should correct all of these issues.
One VERY annoying feature that I didn't talk about yet and the biggest downfall of this phone is the amount of memory the phone has.
While it gives you 50+ MB of space to store your programs, the free memory to run programs is a major issue. They only give you 24.45 MB to run your programs in and on a clean reboot with nothing running you only have 9.35 MB of memory free to use for your applications. There are times when I am listing to XM and trying to open an email and get the dreaded Out Of Memory Error.
Lets hope a software update can fix this issue.
So should you get one?
It's really hard to say... If you have a 650 now WAIT for them to fix the issues the phone has. While the speed is nice, the headaches aren't.
But because of all the things I could do now that I couldn't on my 650 it makes the 700w worth it to me.
It was a god send, now no matter where I was I was able to access SatelliteGuys and our servers. This has come in handy many times, I have been able to SSH into the server and fix items without having to bug LER our server guru too much.
It also had a web browser which was ok but it was really slow.
A few months back I heard about about the Treo 700w, when I heard it worked on Verizons new EDVO newtwork I wanted one. While the Treo 650 did connect to Verzions X1 Network the adverage speed was around 56k, with EDVO I could get broadband like speeds, plus it had Internet Explorer not the stinky browser which was built into the 650.
Well CES came and I got to look at the 700w. I wanted one. Later that morning my wife called me and asked me if I had seen anything I liked and I told her about the Treo 700w.
The next day I was at CES and my 650 rang, it was my wife telling me she just got me a 700w, I was so happy but depressed at the same time, I was happy because I wanted it, and depressed because it was in Connecticut and I was stuck in Las Vegas.
When I got home I ripped into the box, I was very happy to see that all of my accessories for the 650 would also work on the 700 including the battery. I slipped my fully charged battery out of my 650 and put it in the 700w. It lit up...
And it took forever to boot, about 3 times longer then the 650 took.
I went online to Verizons website to activate it and I was told I could not activate the 700w online, so my wife called and activated it for me.
The first thing I did was go into internet explorer to pull up satelliteguys. I was disapointed, it pulled it up faster but not much faster then the 650. I also did not like the fact to view the page I had to keep scrolling back and forth to read anything. But I slipped it into PDA mode and was MUCH happier, and I could also tell the difference in speed now.
I got to be honest for the first few days I HATED this thing. It would lock up from time to time so I would miss phone calls. The keyboard was laid out a little differently, for example on the K key on the 650 was the : however on the 700w the : is not on the keyboard at all, instead on the K key is the ;
I was honestly thinking of taking the phone back...
But then it grew on me.
Then I found an application which lets me listen to Sirius and XM on my phone, I liked that.
Then I figured out how I can watch TV from home on my Treo using ORB, I loved that.
Then I found a site like GotomyPC.COM which lets me access my PC's at home and work (the site is logmein.com) , I really loved that...
The I found another application which I really love, and that is PDANet which lets me connect my Treo 700 to my laptop and gives me a full broadband connection. I must tell you doing it this way is so much faster and better then trying to view the web on the phone. I did some speed tests on EDVO, and the speed tests went from 200kbits all the way up to 742.4KBits!
The other day we went to the Laundrymat as our Washer broke, and I took my Treo 700w and my laptop in and was able to isten to music and browse the web just like I was sitting home. I was very impressed.
I will admit this phone is like an Echostar receiver after its first released (aka very buggy) about the worst thing it does is its phone functions just sometimes it locks up where you can't answer the phone when its ringing, or worse yet it dont ring at all.
I am told by Palm they are working on a firmware issue which should correct all of these issues.
One VERY annoying feature that I didn't talk about yet and the biggest downfall of this phone is the amount of memory the phone has.
While it gives you 50+ MB of space to store your programs, the free memory to run programs is a major issue. They only give you 24.45 MB to run your programs in and on a clean reboot with nothing running you only have 9.35 MB of memory free to use for your applications. There are times when I am listing to XM and trying to open an email and get the dreaded Out Of Memory Error.
Lets hope a software update can fix this issue.
So should you get one?
It's really hard to say... If you have a 650 now WAIT for them to fix the issues the phone has. While the speed is nice, the headaches aren't.
But because of all the things I could do now that I couldn't on my 650 it makes the 700w worth it to me.
