- What phone headset should I get? I do not yet have bluetooth. My phones, both cordless on landline and wireless, have 1.5mm plugs. Previous headsets have been flimsy and had such bad sound quality that everyone insisted I stop using them. Suggestions?
- I may need to dump my Sidekick and get a new PDA. My needs are: a terminal program that does ssh; a web browser, however small; a decent email program. I’m looking at Blackbery and Treo and some other smart phones but would be interested in hearing about what you think.
- I know the blood runs hot when defending technologies, so don’t flame each other or I’ll give you such a PINCH.
DEAR LAZYWEB
Published
Be My Blog 
Everyone made fun of me for the MDA but I loved it. I’d still have it if I could afford to pay for the web, or if I had actually needed it at all.
I have no advice.
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what’s an MDA? I only know it from JERRY’S KIDS
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i was going to suggest that as well, but i don’t know how you feel about the windows mobile stuff, or how well it would interact with your crazy apple land.
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yo. the only thing i don’t like about it is the slide-out keyboard deal. those always feel BREAKABLE to me.
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I have a Nokia 9300i for this purpose which has the benefit of being about 40% as expensive as those other ones, but having used it a while that is possibly the only benefit.
My friends with Treo 700’s get much, much more use out of their devices and faster data speeds, and I think the units are considerably faster. I have also come to hate Symbian.
One other good thing about that unit though: it does have a nice wide screen, and you can run putty on it, so it is pretty decent for ssh. The web browser is painfully slow. Messaging (sms, email) is ok, nothing special, also slow when accessing real interweb mailboxes.
It does support blackberry connect if that is something you care about.
Bluetooth works well, and with Bluetooth I do like the Jabra headsets. (I have a BT500 I think?) They’re very slim and understated compared to some of the Lieutenant Uhura nonsense people have sticking out of their heads.
If I did it again right now I’d spend the extra cash for a Treo. The extra hardware cost is inconsequential compared to a year’s worth of access fees.
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regulate has the hdc tytn and swears by it. Its released by cingular (as like the 8550 or something) and its pretty elite. gets faster internet than our dsl, does all the things you want, AND, has a kb that is comfortably comparable to the sidekicks (which is always the deal breaker for me on blackberry, etc. regardless of the fact that i have tiny hands, they just arent comfortable to type on, and i have to think to type which completely defeats the purpose of having a kb on the device.) It also has a touchscreen and stylus, tons of buttons, including ones you can program, and has yet to crash or do anything super retarded. (He got his like over a year ago at this point from UK, but it was released in the us in november iirc)
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oh yeah it also has a fullsized screen which is amazing, and the screen slides up sort of similar to the sidekick (doesnt swivel) to reveal the kb. The screen is probably at least 1/3 more area thant the sk screen if not more. The device itself is about 1-2mm thicker, but not as long. Very square shaped.
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oh yeah and WHY DONT YOU LIKE JUST WAIT AND BUY AN IPHONE!!!!!!!
😀
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im not even going to get started on smartphones – except to say look at mobileburn they have good full reviews on most of them out there.
As far as the headsets i Have a Shure Quietspot which i love/d untill i got BT, also i have heard good things about the Etymotic Research corded headset
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I too have an MDA from Tmobile, and while I know you’re not a Windows person, I too am not a windows person – I am VERY happy with it.
It has all the bells and whistles I need and want, and then some. I have heard (however I have not looked int) that there is a linux compatible client for syncing. I don’t know about Apple.
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Missing Sync, on the Mac, has two products–one for syncing Windows Mobile devices and one for syncing Palm devices. I can’t speak for the Windows Mobile version, but the Palm version works a million times better than the “official” ones from Palm and Apple.
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I have to say that the Treo (with PalmOS… I don’t know about the Windows CE version of the Treo) does everything you want it to:
* The built-in browser, Treo, is great but sometimes chokes on large pages, pages with lots of images, or pages with large images.
* Xiino is a 3rd party browser that goes through a proxy that automagically zips up text and resizes images. They don’t have to be resized in the browser, so take less memory/CPU, and the file transfers are smaller so less bandwidth. It would be a perfect browser, except some of the JavaScript capability is broken and because the proxy is in Japan, lots of sites (including Google) think you want the Japanese version, until you find the “switch to English” link.
* TuSSH is a great SSH client, but if you want 80×24, expect something as readable as a 3 point font. If you’re just using command-line stuff, you can comfortably use a readable font, but if you are using a full-screen curses application, prepare to get the magnifying glass.
* Email–I don’t know. It comes with VersaMail, which is adequate for sending. I don’t ever check the mail on the Treo, but understand that it works decently. It doesn’t do push email like the Blackberry, though. (I’d bet there was probably a 3rd party app that does push email, but don’t know what it is.)
* IM–I know you didn’t mention IM, but VeriChat does a wonderful job of AIM and Yahoo (and I think ICQ and MSN), and works using a push model, so you don’t have to be running the application. Unfortunately, it does not handle Jabber (GTalk and LiveJournal.)
* upIRC is an awesome Palm IRC application. ’nuff said.
* Google Maps in the Treo is a beautiful application. With the other handheld platforms, they used a clunky Java runtime, the Treo app is native and is FAST and EASY!
* GSM EDGE + Treo + Bluetooth + PowerBook = Crazy Delicious. Internet from anywhere. Admittedly, it’s only about 128k, so you’re effectively on a wireless ISDN, but it’s better than nothing when there are no open WiFi access points. And it’s perfectly fine for ssh’ing into a machine from a *real* terminal.
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