Posts Tagged ‘Palm Pre’

Fascinated for a Week Part 1

Friday, October 8th, 2010

For my summer retreat this year I was considering going minimalistic, sans notebook computer.  As I was going to be away for eight days, it was important the device I would bring was up to the task.  My smartphone days go back to when Palm dominated the industry, so I have a fair amount of experience when it comes to PDA’s and smartphones.

A couple of weeks before going I had concerns that the smartphone I was using at the time, a Samsung Omnia II, wouldn’t be sufficient if indeed I did not travel with a notebook.  Thus my search for a new PDA started.  As Mr. T (aka Mike) was also looking for a new phone, we hit the Verizon Wireless store together after lunch at Panera Bread in Clifton Park.

We focused on four phones, the HTC Incredible, the Samsung Fascinate, the Motorola Droid 2, and Motorola Droid X. We didn’t look at the BlackBerry Tour, Storm 2 or Palm Pre as I previously had those and Mr. T had a Storm.

While I like physical keyboards, I wasn’t thrilled with the one on the Droid 2, also when comparing the screen size to the Fascinate and Droid X, it was lacking.  Mr. T was of the same opinion.  The speed on the incredible was impressive, as was Swype, though with the smaller 3.7″ screen, it was at a disadvantage.

That left Motorola’s Droid X to battle it out with the Samsung Fascinate. Both Mr. T and I thought the display on the Fascinate was superior.  We were also a little concerned that the Droid X was just a tad too large. The fact that the Fascinate had Swype was icing on the cake.  Each of us decided that was the phone to get.

Stay tuned for part 2.

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The Problem With Technology

Tuesday, August 17th, 2010

Recently we had a client come into our computer and IT repair facility in Clifton Park.  He was having an issue with his BlackBerry from Sprint/Nextel.  The problem was centered on connecting to his Microsoft Exchange Server.

We followed our advanced diagnostic procedures for this type of issue.  When this didn’t lead to a solution, we had to contact the vendors of the product.  When all was told, we spoke with six people from three different companies.  With the exception of one person, the others weren’t even able to grasp an understanding of what the issue was.

Fortunately for our client, he didn’t have to deal with the frustration as our motto is “Eliminating HI-Tech Frustration” and we took the brunt of it.  These days there are so many variable and so many products from different vendors involved, determining exactly where the issue originates is no longer as simple as 1, 2, 3.

The problem with technology is too many large companies cut corners by providing inadequate technical support staff to properly resolve their customer’s issues.  One of our advantages is with the example of the person who brought in their BlackBerry: we are all power users and run a variety of smartphones with different operating systems such as: BlackBerry, Palm WebOS, Android and Windows Mobile.

Information provided by: HITman Services, a computer and IT services company located in Clifton Park, New York.

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A Power Users Take on the Palm Pre

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

Let me begin by providing you with my background so you have a basis upon which to base my reviews.  My time using (Personal Digital Assistants) PDA’s dates back to the HP OmniGo, one of the original devices.  I have owned about ten different Palm devices, along with smart phones from BlackBerry, Qualcomm, Motorola and Nokia.  I am a very heavy user of calendar, tasks, notes and contacts and have tens of thousands of entries.  In all the time I have used PDA’s I doubt I have played an hours worth of games.  I do rely on reading PDF’s, Word documents, some Excel spreadsheets, and am a heavy user of email, texting and the Internet.

Recently I tried an HTC Imagio running Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional.  I found the screen very touch and the time to complete a task dramatically longer than when using a BlackBerry device.  I couldn’t take more than about 10 days of using it as my productivity dropped and the phone just doesn’t cut it for business purposes, in my opinion.  The only positive to the device was the ability to manually set how far back I wanted the calendar to go.  Syncing with Microsoft Exchange worked as expected with no issues.

This past weekend I purchased a Palm Pre.  The form factor is very good.  Once you get the hang of the gestures, the user interface works spectacularly.  While the keyboard is small, I found it easy to use and the accuracy very good.  When typing, the Palm Pre does not automatically add a period when pressing the space bar twice as BlackBerry’s do.

The Palm Pre does not have the ability  to set items as private, so if you are synching to an Exchange Server and others have access to your calendar, everything typed into the Pre calendar will be available for all to see.  Memos and tasks do not automatically synchronize with Exchange.

While reading PDF documents on the Palm Pre works, it requires a fair amount of scrolling.

The multi-tasking is fantastic.  I had Verizon’s VZ Navigator, the calendar, Opera, the weather and several other applications running simultaneously.  Very cool.

Overall the Palm Pre is a very nice device for those who do not require a heavy duty business PDA.

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