Great for person away from the office

Author's Rating:

Pros: Small for a Pda full keyboard IMAP, POP and Sync extra applications

Cons: Battery usage style dated windows version

The Bottom Line: 
A no frills palm pda for those wanting to reconnect to the office, email or applications.

Author's Review
I spent a fair amount of time researching my phone / pda. Since I was looking at the 2-year contract price, I needed on that would stand up during that period. I chose the TREO because of its email abilities. Competing BLACKBERRY devices required licenses at the office, and since I was not one within the office that my company would pay for, I needed an option outside of having a BLACKBERRY.

TREO met the need with its sync and imap functions. It allows me to sync to my work email, contacts, calendar and tasks without the office needing to provide further infrastructure of licensing. I should also note that this is not a unique feature with new models.

Gmail however with this particular Windows Mobile 5 version works pretty poorly. Through POP settings, the Treo likes to stop checking messages for no reason, and on IMAP settings, all body text only messages are downloaded blank. This is not a problem specific to the Treo, but in my opinion, firmware upgrades should do whatever is needed to handle these large popular email applications.

Battery usage is poor at best, often requiring battery tending throughout the day. Chat applications are a strong drainer so being "connected" is not always a good idea.

On of the big perks about this being a Windows device is the large amount of extra and after market software available. I can easily find calculators, quicken applications, games and a wide variety of productivity applications. This is great for expansion and should keep me using the device until my contract expires. I did not see an easy reboot option on the device, but thanks to after market software, I downloaded a convenient application to suit my need.

I've now had the device for about 9 months and it has handled many drops. Despite the batter drain throughout the day, I am still using the original OEM battery. The keyboard all still shows the original numbers, and I am an avid typist throughout the day.

Finally, with newer sleeker models, this TREO is beginning to look dated.