Treo 650 Delights and Disappoints

No Comments »September 16th, 2005

I’ve been using a Treo 650 for more than several months now. Overall I adore it. It represents a near perfect combination of mobile computing and communication. Not the best marriage of those two qaulities, but a good compromise. However, during this time I have seen the best and worst this little gadget has to offer, and its worst aspect has a name; Garnet.

PalmOS Garnet is so wickedly unstable it has become a liability. For the past two weeks my Treo spontaneously resets itself while sitting idle. I can be walking around and suddenly I hear the unmistakable phone activation chime emanating from my pocket. Yep, Garnet crashed again. Other times the device will inexplicably freeze up on me while I’m in the middle of something. It just freezes. You can’t even shut the damn thing off. Which means I have to pop the battery cover off, poke the reset button, and wait for my Treo to regain consciousness.
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My iPod is Dead! Noooooooooooo!

Comments OffAugust 11th, 2005

How do I compare thee to a summer’s day, with the smell of week-old road kill laying on the side of a highway? This morning, as I attempted to get my necessary gadgets in sync for another busy day, I noticed something strange about my iPod Photo; it won’t turn on! When I dock it with my Mac, it won’t launch iTunes. Plugging it into a wall outlet for charging has no effect. The bloody thing simply will not turn on. I even tried the ultimate quick-fix solution; swearing at it. Still nothing.

And this from a device that is less than three months old! I haven’t a clue as to the cause or solution to the problem. It was working fine last night, showing no signs of sudden infant death syndrome. Now comes the grim prospect of returning my pristine iPod to Apple, and being sent a scratched up refurbished unit. If that happens, the next iPod will go on eBay and will be the last such product from Apple I will ever own.

Needless to say, I am not a happy iPodder right now. Goodbye iPod, hello Zen Micro?