HOEI

The first questions to ask before buying a laptop is, “what will the laptop be used for and what are your accessory needs?”  I will give a couple of examples of decisions I have faced when searching for a laptop in the past.

User 1 - For a stay home mom who will be surfing, checking email, and saving a ton of digital photos (accessory via USB) Oh, and we doesn’t really like touchpad mouse option:

Answer: Look for cheap, wireless, DVD Player, and pointing stick option.  You may need to look for a huge hard drive, but maybe not.  I’ll come back to that.  You can find a good fit for this solution on auction sites or when employers cycle out and replace old machines. The last one is how I scored a $100 laptop (2 Ghz, 1 GB Ram, 40G HD).  I had to add a PCMICA wireless card since the smoke’n deal did not include integrated wireless.  As for storage, you may be able to make use of a networked server/workstation shared drive to Backup and store excess photos.  This is what we do sine we have a fairly small hard drive.  This latptop at your house can be a Mac, Linux or Windows machine.

User 2 - Road warrior network security engineer running virtual machines on the laptop and doing extensive data gathering (packet captures and vulnerability assessments) in addition to email, browsing, and document creation/editing (including detailed network diagrams and data manipulation using spreadsheets and databases).

Answer: Get a fast machine, with a good amount of memory and storage space. It must be fairly light weight and it MUST run Windows XP or Server 03 (MAC is a bad choice). You must run a dual boot feature with Linux or at least have a copy of Linux running in a virtual machine that executed from your hard drive.  Other virtual machines are often useful, but they can be stored on removable media.

That leads me to my final point.  Don’t get to wrapped around the axle on hard drive space on this machine but rather go with the largest drive that is available at the fastest generally accepted speed category available on the market.  For instance, I would go with a 200GB - 7200rpm/16MB Cache over a 320GB - 5400rpm/8MB cache.  Hard drive performance (i.e., spindle and read/write speed, cache, etc) is one of the most overlooked performance features on PCs and laptops. As for additional space, you will likely need some removable media anyway.  Removable storage is dirt cheap at less than $150 per TB.  As for solid state drives, they still have some maturing to do before a serious road warrior should trust them.

The move from the Treo 650 to Treo 700p has been fairly painless but has not come without problems. Here’s a list of the top three:

1. Calendar sync errors.
2. No Freedom Keyboard support for the 700p.
3. Bible Reader crash.

It was calendar synchronization errors that were the most prominent, but were the easiest to correct. The problem looks something like this:

“The application cannot be launched because it is missing localization information.”

I did a quick Google on some key words from this error message and found out that I only needed to do the following:

1. Perform a reset of the Treo 700p by pressing the power button while using the stylus to push the reset button found under the battery cover.
   
2. Delete or move C:\Program Files\palmone\Username\backup\calendar*.*
   NOTE: That means you would delete all the files beginning with word calendar from the backup files related to your user profile.
3. Synchronize the Treo 700p with my Palm Desktop.

The Freedom Keyboard issues were a surprise, but I am not really that heart broken. I would really like to try a different keyboard with my Treo anyway. I do love being able to blog with my Treo, but I found myself using the built in QWERTY keyboard just as much as the Freedom Keyboard. I found that my Freedom Keyboard normally stayed tucked away in my laptop bag. When remote web access was needed, I would more often use the Treo as a modem for my laptop as opposed to using the Treo with a wireless keyboard.
The Bible Reader problem still has me stumped, but it is not a show stopper for me. Admittedly, I have not spent much time on this problem. The folks over at Olive Tree software offer a Desktop Assistant program for the Bible Reader. I had problems with the Treo 650 when trying to get my custom DailyBible.pdb file to work. I have been writing a custom Daily reading Schedule based on the reading plan posted on my personal blog. I hoped that maybe my problems were related to the Treo 650. I hoped that the Treo 700p would be the answers to my custom reading schedule efforts. I was wrong. The Treo 700p actually crashed when trying to access the Daily Reading Schedule when the Extended memory was not configured. I don’t use the Bible Reader’s built in Daily Reading Schedule. I plan to email Olive Tree to see I am missing something with my test reading schedule.

Which one is the real cool toy? Is it the airplane he’s leaning on or the cool software for your PC that allows you to interact with your Treo 650 on the desktop using your mouse and keyboard?

I had no idea this PDAReach tool or the PDANet application was on the market. The folks over at June Fabrics have done a fantastic job with these two applications.

The PDAReach application ($24) as shown in the above image lets you display and control your PDA on the desktop. This is especially helpful for me since one of my favorite Bible study resources is my Palm Bible Reader software from OliveTree. The specific functionality found in Bible Reader is only available on PDAs. I can access the bookmarks notes and search feature using my PC mouse and keyboard using PDAReach. You can read more about my experiences with Bible Reader on The Land of Ozz. The PDAReach application works with just about any Palm OS device on the market.

The PDANet application ($34) allows for me to connect to the Internet via the unlimited data plan that I already have with Verizon Wireless using the USB cable that shipped with my Treo 650. Basically you can use your Treo 650 as a modem that can reach connection speeds up to 144 kps. I have done a little research and found a couple of other applications that help you use your Treo 650 as a modem, but I have not tried them.
These two applications from June Fabrics get high marks for affordability and functionality. Both products have trial versions available and can be downloaded from June Fabrics.

I found another good review of the Treo 650 today. Check out Geek.com. The reviewer Matthew Miller does a great job of giving it to you straight on the palmOne Treo 650 (GSM unlocked version). Matthew gives the Treo 650 a less than perfect, but fair review. I use a Treo 650 from Verizon Wireless.

Also see: Treo 650 vs Blackberry