Recently I made the move from Verizon to Alltel and took the opportunity to upgrade technology while I was at it. I've eyed Palm Treo models in the past, but never really had a great enough need for one. Now that I've become fully dependent on my Palm TX, however, I thought it was time to take the plunge and combine my pocket tech devices.
Enter the Palm Treo 700p smartphone.
Initially I was blown away by this device. I had my calendar, phone contacts and medical apps all in one place (not to mention that I could wireless browse the web wherever I had a signal and could use the phone as a broadband modem for my MacBook Pro). I spent hours entire days customizing every nook and cranny, adding in all the important information from my personal and work life. I categorized, itemized, and generally engaged myself in all forms of geekery. It was utopia for those first couple of days.
Then it happened.
This would probably be a good place to step back and mention that throughout all of the installing and customizing I had yet to HotSync the Treo to my mac. This was and still is due to the fact that I can't get it to work right with Windows XP under Parallels. I couldn't just install the software on my mac because two of my medical apps require windows to update and synchronize over the internet. I installed half of the apps by plugging into the computers at work and the other half I simply emailed to myself and installed through the palm directly.
So here I was cruising along until one night I decided to download and install the latest immunization schedule program "Shots 2007" for simple reference. It just so happened that I forgot to erase the previous version first, however, so when I installed the new version it asked me if I wanted to "replace the database." I hit OK and that's when it all hit the fan. The Treo began restarting over and over again in a never-ending cycle. When a few soft resets failed to break the cycle I knew I was totally screwed.
This was about the time when all of my years of telling people to back up their data came back to bite me in the ass.
A hard reset later I was holding a factory blank palm with none of my apps, none of my calendars, none of my contacts, and most importantly, none of my medical databases. I had kept a record of every patient I had seen this year at the office and their medical complaints, I had records of all of my procedures, I had my time card...they were all gone. I rocked myself back and forth as I fought the urge to throw my new phone out of the window.
I've finally gotten everything back and more, and what's more important I've purchased a backup program called Resco backup that automatically backs up the entire Treo to an SD card based on a set schedule. Since "the crash" I've had other hiccups and needs for a hard reset, but I've managed to keep everything current without any loss of data and that's good enough for me.
This definitely isn't the device for everyone and it has it's oddities. I still get unexpected resets when making phonecalls, and the size is larger than what I'd gotten used to with my old slider phone. The fact that I can carry my palm and my phone in one device outweighs all the negatives, however, especially since I now have a cameraphone and can browse the internet and my feeds during down time.
Amen, brother. The Treo is the quirkiest, buggiest, device I've ever owned, and I probably want to throw it out a window at least once a day. But I can't live without it...
BTW - glad to see you bloggin' again. Your genius has been missed :)
Posted by: MarkLee | 02/27/2007 at 11:31 AM