My Treo 700p: "She loves me, she loves me not???"
I'm down at my computer typing this editorial tonight; where I would normally be snug in bed, writing it on my Treo. Why give up a soft pillow for a basement seat? Simple: I'm in the mood for some music while I write...and, my Treo can't give me a pleasant music experience, if I am using another app at the same time.
And that, my friends, is emblematic of my discontent with the Treo 700p, and with the management of Palm, Inc.
When my 700p isn't lagging, freezing, re-setting or stuttering it is an awesome business & personal tool.
It provides me with more power, more memory and faster data speeds then my previous 3 Treos ever had. All of these enhance the Treo-centric tasks that have become my natural processes over the past 4 years. My Treo is my organizer, travel coordinator, music machine, email monster, GPS device, camera and digital album, eBook reader, and much more. However, having said that, I must state that as much as I enjoy the extra 'oomph' of the 700p, I pay for it with a device that is less converged, less stable, a lot less easy to use and a lot less fun then my Treo 650 ever was. So, why did I ever buy it?
Palm and Sprint were good enough to let me test/review one early last Summer; and, as a result of my overall impressions, I bought one for myself, and paid full-price. I didn't worry about the issues, because all brand-new devices have them. My Treo 600 and 650 both had terrible issues when I first bought them; and, Palm issued terrific firmware updates within a few months that addressed the worst of them. It made sense that Palm would follow suit for the Treo 700p, doesn't it? I was so sure of it, that I made a point of bringing it up in the first paragraph of my July 18, 2006 review of the 700p:
"Up front, I liked the Treo 700p enough to buy it as an upgrade to my irreplaceable Treo 650. However, that’s not to say that its perfect (it isn’t), or that Palm doesn’t owe us a firmware update (they do)."
Consider that I wrote that 7 months ago, and Palm has yet to come out with any concrete statement or plan to address these issues (for the number crunchers, it was exactly 212 days ago). Compare that with the infamous NVFS issues surrounding the first batch of Treo 650s (yep, I owned one of those, too): within a few months, Palm had shipped each owner a 1GB SD card to alleviate the worst memory issues, and had released the first of 3 firmware updaters that eventually eliminated most of the problems (of course, we still had to buy our own license of PowerRUN). The same goes for issues with the first batch of the Treo 700w...a patch was issued within a few months. Now, lets consider the battery issue with the brand-new Treo 680: patched and fixed already, thank you very much. For those who still doubt Palm's commitment to Treo owners, there is news that Treo 750 owners will be getting an upgrade path for the brand-spankin' new WinMo v6.x.
That's all terrific, but in the midst of all this tech-support legerdemain, there has yet to be any official comment from Palm on the Treo 700p problems...other then an extremely cryptic and marketing-centric letter from the Product Manager for Palm OS Treos.
For me, its troubling on a number of fronts:
- I don't know if I will ever get anything like the capabilities that Palm assured me (and every 700p buyer) that I would enjoy. For a salesman (like yours truly), Caveat Emptor is fightin' words.
- I personally recommended this device to you...Palm Addict's readers...on the strength of Palm's promise that these issues would be dealt with in a timely manner. If Palm continues to balk and procrastinate on the matter of a remedy, then it makes me guilty of shilling damaged goods for them.
- In the past, Palm's Product Managers were always accessible to the press, and would talk about these issues. The 700p's Product Manager is someone that Palm Addict has not dealt with in the past, and he has deflected repeated requests for an interview. The best that my PR liaison could arrange was for him "...to break out of a meeting, and talk to (me) for 5 minutes."
As long as these bugs, lags and deficiencies remain, the 700p is much more like my old Treo 300 was, then my 650. It is a lot of individual capabilities loaded into a single brick...but, they don't play nice together.
Do I hope that Palm, Inc. is going to provide the 700p owners with a potent remedy? Yes, I hope so.
Do I believe that Palm, Inc. is going to provide the 700p owners with a potent remedy? I can only hope.
For those who have yet to peruse or contribute to our Treo 700p thread in the Forum, go take a look. If you are an unhappy 700p owner, who wants to document his/her issues where Palm, Inc. will see them...PLEASE post to the thread.
In the meanwhile, all we can do is stay tuned, and hope the program gets better.
