Give Our Abilities Time

So I switched from a Treo 650 to a 700p. The main reason I started this blog entry was to note my solitaire stats in case they do not transfer over to the 700p:

6028/60=100.46 hours of solitaire played. So like four 24-hour days of solitaire. Or, over the year or so that I had the Treo 650, 100.46/365=0.27 or 15 minutes a day, every day. That's really pretty impressive. My commute is like 25 minutes each way, about 10 of which are walking to the train or from one train to the other. And of course I have only commuted by subway three days a week for the last 10 months -- I am in St. Louis two days a week and usually stay put on the weekends.

(As an aside, I'm using the awesome new OneNote 2007 "napkin math" feature in which it does simple calculations in-line. Chris Pratley wrote that it was one of those things they created with no "use case" but just because they thought it would be cool, and I find that almost every day that I use OneNote, which is basically every day at work because I go to a lot of meetings, I wish I had it. Can't upgrade to 2007 until all my colleagues do.)

OK, on to the Treo 700p. Things that are great:

• EVDO is much faster than whatever the shitty sub-modem-speed network the 650 used. Goodlink like blasted down onto it, and flightaware.com is far faster than it used to be.
  
• Hiding your password in Blazer (the browser) for sites that require authentication
  
• Blazer deals better with putting you right to your site if you switch to something else
  
• Most of my apps (except Solitaire) installed right onto the 700p without messing it up
  
• The sync cable charges the device now, very nice touch (although I would characterize it as an oversight that the 600 and 650 cables didn’t charge off of USB)
  
• I don't know if it's the 700 or Goodlink 4.8.1.14, but I no longer have to manually change the time zone in Goodlink. The "Use Palm time zone" setting never really worked for me on my 650. As a person who went from EDT to CDT twice this week (STL Tuesday-Wednesday and ORD Saturday-Sunday) this feature is useful.
  

Things that aren't so great:

• I lost my stats in Solitaire :(
  
• The keys are going to take some getting used to -- Home is where Power/Hangup was, and Power is now where Menu used to be.
  
• The Verizon store (42nd & 6th) took like an hour from the time I was able to order to when I was able to walk out of the door. And, before that, I went and waited for half an hour at the 57th & 6th store before being told they didn't have it.
  
• The VZAccess Manager software is not letting me onto the internet on my laptop. Strictly speaking I am not sure I have a BroadbandAccess account, but I showed a printout of this page to the sales guy and he said I didn't need it. I assume he is wrong and that's why I can't connect. It's a bit annoying because I'd rather pay (or, in my case, expense to my company) for a service I intend to use than screw around all night to try and kludge it so it works.
  
• Update: I instead installed PDANet for the Treo 700p. I have owned this for the 600 and 650 in the past and it was OK with my old tablet, but never really worked well on my ThinkPad X41. So I was really hoping that Verizon's own VZAccess Manager tool would be better, but I'm noticing a day later that it can no longer even find the phone by Bluetooth (which worked last night) or USB (which never worked). Meanwhile, PDANet (or maybe Goodlink?) threw up a bunch of messages that the Dial-Up Networking stack is in use but then ran solidly for like an hour. DSLreports showed 548Kbps which is certainly good enough for me -- in fact that's more than twice as fast as the connection in my hotel room in St. Louis. So, if Verizon's salesman doesn't know how to sell me the BroadbandAccess service and tells me I don't need it to use the Treo 700 for high-speed internet on my laptop, then I assume I am not violating any terms of service.
  
• A day or so later, I resumed my laptop from standby and tried again. It quickly disconnected, shades of my prior experience with PDANet, but on the second try I was able to sustain a connection. It wasn't quite as good as the first one, since another DSLreports test showed 240Kbps, but that's what I get in the hotel so it's still definitely usable.
  
• If service is dropping in and out, like on a subway, apps will freeze when it's trying to look for service or briefly connects to service. This is pretty annoying and I may just end up turning off wireless before I go on the subway, which is also annoying (plus I enjoy the little email catch-up when the 2/3 stops at 72nd St during my morning commute).
  

I have to admit that I didn't look for other reviews so if you've read other Treo 700p reviews that mentioned the same stuff, then I apologize for wasting your time. I just have been such a slacker about posting that I figured I would procrastinate this entry forever if I actually wanted to also research it...