Why I love the Treo series of handheld devices

By Yuval Kossovsky

January 24, 2005 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - Recently I was in the airport, where I witnessed the following scene:

A businessman is furiously typing away on his BlackBerry. A few minutes later, he puts the unit back into the holster on his belt, takes out his cell phone and begins making calls.

This was not the first time I had observed such behavior by a BlackBerry owner, and each time I have inquired about it, the answer has been the same. "I love this thing for e-mail, but it is a terrible phone," they say. "It doesn't feel comfortable in my hand or against my ear." One added, "It looks like a pancake, and I don't talk to food."

Enter the Treo 650 from PalmOne Inc. This device was built from the beginning to work as a phone and a data device. The design mantra was that it had to feel like a phone and a person should only carry one device. For any business user who has a Palm device and is tired of carrying both a Palm and phone, this is the perfect solution.

The Treo 650 has a bright color screen, the familiar Palm OS interface and the ability to run the entire library of available Palm OS applications. Moreover, PalmOne has a product available that allows the Treo units to hot-sync with Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes and Novell GroupWise, making the Treo a true enterprise-quality device.

Both the Treo 600 and 650 are excellent phones and personal information management (PIM) devices. A bit of history here. ...

The Treo 600 was introduced for the Sprint network in late 2003 and rolled out to other carriers over the course of 2004. It has support for 12-bit color, a 144-MHz processor, 32MB of built-in RAM, SD card expansion and infrared support.

The Treo 650 is currently available using the Sprint network, but a GSM model for Cingular's network is due in the next few weeks. One significant way that it differs from the 600 is the way it handles RAM (see below for a caveat). The 650 has 23MB of ROM, and additional RAM is placed on an SD card. It has a 320-by-320, 16-bit color screen, an improved Intel PXA270 312-MHz processor, a removable/swappable battery, and an improved user-interface design.

The 600 hasn't been discontinued now that the 650 is out, and PalmOne expects that the lower price of the 600 will encourage further enterprise penetration.

Both units come with the Blazer Web browser, which doesn't require WAP-enabled sites in order to operate. In

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