stocksfamily.org The web site of Brenda, Campbell & Richard

As anyone who knows me already knows, I've been a PalmOS user since way back in the days of the original Pilot. Twice now I have attempted to make the switch to Windows Mobile, but I just can't do it.

 The first attempt was a few years back when the XDA II mini was released. At the time I was looking for a single device that would mean I didn't have to carry both a phone and my PDA. The earlier models were just too big for my liking. The XDA II mini was about right size.

However, it was totally unreliable. I'd always be performing a soft reset, often more than once a day. To me it just wasn't stable enough to use as a phone.

I had the opportunity to change over to a Treo 650. Now, I've read a lot of reports damning the Treo for having a buggy and unreliable operating system, but I've never seen it. It's certainly a lot more reliable than the XDA.

Now I've tried again, by moving to a Treo 750. Instead of PalmOS, this one runs Windows Mobile 5. The main reason for the change here was to support my employer's choice of email platform - they are a legacy Blackberry shop but are trying to move to native Exchange push mail. And it works pretty well for that.

Palm have done a pretty good job with this phone. They have taken the basically pen driven Windows Mobile, and made it almost able to be totally driven with one hand. The phone experience is much better than it was with the XDA. It's not as "phone-ish" as the 650, but it's not bad.

However, it's slow, unresponsive, and unreliable.

Even with no third party applications installed it needs to be soft reset on a regular basis. There is some strange problem where it just stops giving alerts for events like an incoming phone call. Useful. They have released an update for the AT&T branded version, but not for the one I have yet.

It's not all bad. The 3G support is pretty good. Web browsing is actually usable. But I'm sad to say that I have reverted to carrying two devices: my old Treo 650 as a phone, and the 750 as an email device.

 So much for convergance. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the production version of the open phone coming from OpenMoko will actually be usable. If not, at least I can hack it.