Paul's Down-Home Page

Today marks the end of my first week carrying the Verizon Treo 700w as my primary phone. I haven’t traveled with it much, which means it hasn’t been subjected to the true acid tests that I usually use to judge a smartphone’s worth. However, the Treo has been remarkably stable, and it remains considerably faster than the MDA I last tested.

Audio and call quality have been excellent. The Treo line has always had a very good speed-dial implementation, and that’s also true of the 700w; it’s simple to peck in a few letters of the name you want to call (well, as long as it’s not a company name!) and dial it. Palm has obviously spent a good bit of effort on small touches, too; for example, if you turn on the device PIN lock, you can enter your PIN using the number keys on the keyboard without having to first touch the Option key. Palm also includes a Today plug-in for Google searches, which is handy.

When I was in Detroit this weekend, I got to use the 700w on an EvDO network. Subjective performance was excellent. I didn’t do any speed tests, but I did tell Outlook to pull down several large attachments that people had sent me and was pleased with the sync performance. Overall, I think it’s fair to expect EvDO speeds to beat EDGE speeds consistently, by a factor of 4-5x in some cases.

I used the camera to shoot some pictures and video over the weekend. Not bad, but not super-impressive. I shot two short 30-sec clips at a concert this weekend; at the end of each clip, the phone gave me the spinning Windows busy cursor for a very long time, and now I can’t find the videos. I haven’t taken the time to re-test in a better-lit, less distracting environment.

Of course, the 700w isn’t without its flaws. It refuses to recognize the same 2GB mini-SD card that the MDA happily used. I suspect it’s because of the card’s size, not because it’s a mini-SD card in an SD adapter. The card doesn’t work in my Treo 650 either. The MDA has a few advantages, too. I really like the Communications Manager software that HTC includes; because it’s mapped to a button, it’s easy to quickly turn Bluetooth, wi-fi, EAS, and/or the phone on or off. The MDA has two additional buttons on the right side that can be mapped to different applications; the Treo simulates this by letting you bind app launches to the four primary buttons, plus a different set of bindings when the Option key is held down. This is a little awkward; I think I’d rather have the extra buttons along the device edge. The built-in wi-fi is useful, too, although I’m not sure the tradeoff in battery life is worth it for my typical usage patterns.

Overall, though, I’m very pleased with the 700w; it’s a strong contender for the not-exactly-coveted title of “most likely to be hanging on Paul’s right hip”.

Update: I just saw that Verizon said they’re going to allow EvDO phone owners to tether their phones as modems. This is a pretty good deal, since it would let me drop my existing aircard subscription and move over to using a tethered phone.

Wow, looks like RIM is starting to feel the love from Exchange ActiveSync. They’re now offering a “free” Express version of BES; it supports up to 15 users, and the first user license doesn’t cost anything. In total, BES Express supports up to 15 users, with users 2-15 costing you US$99 each. So, a fully loaded 15-user server costs you $1405, compared with $1099 for the “Small Business Edition” of BES (which then requires CALs @ $99). This is not quite “free”, especially since you’re still paying the RIM device tax. Having said that, it’s an interesting move by RIM to capture a market segment that has historically balked at paying the Big Bucks for the full-blown version of BES.

Breathless press release (titled “Spammers Use Bullying and Extortion to Intimidate Members of the Blue Community to Give up Fight Against Spam”) from Blue Security, complaining that “spam terrorists” are attacking their users by– you guessed it– sending spam. The difference is that the spammers are threatening to send even more spam to BlueFrog users unless they opt out. I don’t know that I agree that it’s bullying or extortion, but I am certain that it’s not surprising.

The US Senate committe on homeland security and governmental affairs released its report on its investigation of the US government response to Hurricane Katrina. This should be required reading for anyone involved in messaging or collaboration systems planning. It’s not very pleasant, but it does set out, quite clearly, where they think the problems lay.

Called out for special positive mention: the US Coast Guard. As a Marine, I am honor bound to make fun of the other armed services whenever possible. However, I’ll suspend that rule in the case of the Coast Guard.

What a great show! The sessions went well, the attendees enjoyed the sessions, and Nice is a fantastic place to visit. The big news was that PowerShell is now upon us, and that Exchange 12 is now officially named “Exchange Server 2007” (big surprise there; can’t believe that was actually under NDA).