How Palm's Treo Got Boost From BlackBerry Lawsuit 135
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Palm ramped up its marketing campaign for its Treo smartphone while rival Research in Motion was embroiled in a patent fight, the Wall Street Journal reports. 'The result: at least 1,500 new inquiries about the Treo in the past few months from corporate customers, resulting in 600 free trials, Palm says. In total, Palm says it has more than doubled its number of sales leads since October. "The doors have been opening," says Ed Colligan, Palm's chief executive. At a November staff meeting, Mr. Colligan says he told his staff to "step things up. We have to go back and knock on doors and respond as fast as we can." ... Internally, Palm executives say they believe that the Treo will outsell BlackBerrys by the end of this year.'"
that sucks (Score:5, Informative)
the blackberry is popular because it does mobile email REALLY well. It also excels in one hand operation because of the clickable scroll wheel. It's also intuitive and easy to use - as well as significantly lighter than its bulk would indicate.
the blackberry isn't an browsing device - it's for voice and text - and it's ideally suited for the workplace.
I haven't used the windows mobile treos, but the palm treos are heavy with small keyboards. The units don't multitask well - and they CRASH. I've never hada blackberry crash - treos freeze up all the time.
maybe the windows mobile treos are better - but treos need to go a long way, from form factor onwards, to truly best the blackberry atwhat it does.
Re:Push email on the Treo? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:that sucks (Score:5, Informative)
FUD!! Treo's crash due to 3rd party applications (at least with up to date firmware and default applications). If you get a crash on a Treo you can dial #*377 (code is dependent on Treo type) and it will tell you what application crashed it - remove the 3rd party app that's crashing your system and your fine again! The main reason why the palm Treo's are so good is that there are loads of 3rd party apps, however a lot have been written by hobbyists or for previous versions of Palm OS - why do people keep blaming Palm for other peoples errors?
If I put a cron job on my Linux box doing an init 0 every 5 minutes does this mean Linux is unstable??
Re:You are already screwed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Push email on the Treo? (Score:2, Informative)
There is also GoodLink, which I believe is more blackberry-style push where the network operator is involved -- network notices the device, tells the messaging server it's online, and then the messaging server initiates the connection and sends the data.
TREO 650 (Score:5, Informative)
Lots of inquiries, not so many buyers. (Score:4, Informative)
The worrying is over now and we're sticking with BB/BES.
Re:Push email on the Treo? (Score:3, Informative)
the biggest problem is that the treo suffers from bad design. The battery when low will cause buzzing in the phone audio and the damned things lock up and die on a regular basis.
I have yet to have a blackberry lock up to the point of useless like the 4 treo's i have had all have done.
if you like to have a reliable phone. do NOT get a treo.
Re:Treo 600 a nightmare/Treo 650 perfect for my ne (Score:4, Informative)
Palm's in general have been great. but they always failed horribly when they tried to marry them to a cellphone. I had the origional Qualcomm Palm unit and it sucked horribly in life and stability. Then I have tried off and on the treo's and all of them had a major flaw that makes them useless. The flip treos would break their hinges within days of getting it, the 600 and 650 have lockup issues and a shielding design flaw that palm refusesto fix (It's even in the 700's! I know of 2 people that have the 700w and they get the buzzing when the battery is lower than 1/3rd.
until they decide to quit making them cheap and put time into making a robust pda/phone that will last more than 12 months they are not practical.
Re:that sucks (Score:3, Informative)
The Treo is the most versatile device I've ever used, wrapped in a great, simple, and above all usable interface. A great phone, great synchronization with my computer (I use Missing Sync on Mac OS X for sync with Address Book, iCal, iTunes, iPhoto, file sync, etc), it has full internet access, multimedia capability, games, you name it. I now have a single address book that supplies my phone, PDA, e-mail, instant messaging, etc. And did I mention it wraps all of this functionality in a really, really usable easy interface?
Just try to do a *fraction* of this on a BlackBerry. On a BlackBerry you get... e-mail. Yay.
On my Treo now (off topic, but damn, it's a versatile device):
Internet
MicroVNC - not just VNC, but SSH tunnelling, TightVNC and server side scaling support - secure access to my desktop from anywhere
Directory Asistance - Great front-end interface to online yellow pages, white pages, etc
KMaps - Google Maps on my phone - excellent
pssh - SSH from anywhere
Quick News - RSS feeds on the go (you like them on the desktop? They're invaluable on the phone)
Multimedia
TCPMP - The Core Pocket Movie Player - plays anything I throw at it - MPEG-4, DiVX, etc, and plays the full-size versions, too! Incredible performance, and open source.
pTunes - A usable iTunes-ish music player with playlists, skins, and the like
Camera/RescoView/etc - don't forget the camera, video recording, or taking your photos with you
Productivity
DocsToGo - Office documents
PalmPDF - Based on xpdf, and works really well
Pocket Quicken - Manage my finances and enter Quicken data anywhere
SoundRec - Voice Recorder for quick notes
Games (of course)
Bejeweled2 (because my wife is addicted to it)
CliFrotz - Adventure, Zork, etc will never die
Frodo - Because running my first computer on my phone is too much fun
ScummVM - Classic games are still great
Re:Push email on the Treo? (Score:1, Informative)
I guess... although the Chatter developer claims you transfer approximately the same amount of data no matter whether you use timed syncs or IDLE push. I believe that -- either you have the connection initiation data every time you wake up and sync, or you have smaller "hi, still idling" messages at similar intervals. Obviously he does not have a server-initiated-push mode in his application to compare against. But my guess would be the savings are not huge -- the bulk of the data is the body of the email, which has to be sent anyway; the difference is just any keep-alive messages to maintain the GRPS and IMAP connections. I can see this is not 100% ideal, and certainly not the cleanest design ever -- similar to the frustration with RSS feeds being pull not push. But like I said above, it's a 99% solution for most people.
My experience is the device lasts about 18-24 hours with Chatter running and continuously connected in the background, plus some phone and PDA use. I charge it every night, so that works fine for me. I know blackberries last for several days of continuous email operation, but I would attribute the difference more to screen type (Treo has a much better/brighter backlight and a sharper/larger screen) and the fact that I use my Treo as a cellphone too, which obviously drains the battery more quickly than data applications.
My treo is for personal use, so the Chatter solution is perfect for me. I just set it up like any mail client to connect to my existing IMAP service (a personal hosting plan at Dreamhost). Everything just works! I can see that this is not the proper model for large businesses, but for medium-sized and small organizations, and for places that place high value on interoperable standards and the ability to easily swap out or intermix server and client components from different vendors, this is a good fit.
Re:Push email on the Treo? (Score:3, Informative)
My biggest problem with it is that the speakers aren't loud enough but I use volumecare to get around that. I also like MP3 ringtones and I use Ringo for that. Between the two, I'm sure that's where I get the random crash a week, but it's never been while using the phone.
As a phone, Blackberries are HORRID, the phone function ALWAYS wants to call the last number dialed, it's a stupid "feature" that persists in the newest devices. Plus you have to dial the number and then fiddle with the scroll on the right to activate a call. DUMB. There should be hardware buttons for call and end.