I Love My Treo

Listen to the podcast: I Love My Treo

Transcript

OK, I'm going to geek out a little here. Friends that know me have heard much of this before, but it's true ... I do love my Treo.

As I've done before, I'm recording this podcast from inside my RV - you may notice a little background noise, as this time, I'm visiting relatives in rural Whatcom County Washington. Yes, I'm surrounded by cows and corn.

Once I'm done recording, I'll upload it, and publish it - just like I do at home. Except that this time, it's all via my Treo 600 cellphone.

The Treo, and the unlimited data plan from Verizon wireless, really turned out to a great investment for me. Like now, when I travel, I can remain connected anywhere that there's a reasonable Verizon signal. Though here, I do have a signal boosting arrangement - you can read more about on my site - did I mention that I'm out in the sticks?

This isn't the new EVDO system either. It's Verizon's existing high speed data network, getting me roughly 100k bits/sec down, and 45kbits/sec up - roughly three times a good dialup connection (and we don't get good dialup speeds out here ... did I mention that I'm out in the sticks?) If you're used to DSL and other broadband technologies that may sound slow, but it's definitely enough handle a reasonable email load, as well as web surfing.

More importantly for me, it's enough for me to run my business. From pretty much anywhere.

And that's pretty darned cool.

The Treo's connected via USB, with software called "PdaNet", and acts as a modem. Actually it acts more like a normal network connection - push a button on the phone and a few seconds later I'm connected. The newer Treo, the 650, using Bluetooth instead of a cable - my experience with Bluetooth and Windows have been less than stellar, so I'm reserving judgment on that for now.

The Treo also lets me stay connected without my laptop. Anywhere, any time, I can fire up Snappermail, a pop-3 mail client, and check and/or deal with any pending email. That, a few games, an Adobe Acrobat Reader and the Treo's a pretty good all-in-one device that I'd be hard pressed to live without these days.

So tell me, what're you using to solve these same problems?

What's in your pocket?

I've placed links to software mentioned and some of my related articles in the shownotes for this podcast. Visit askleo.info, and enter 9163 in the go to article number box. Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear from you.

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