[weisz108]

I'm new to this forum, and I'm looking for some help.

I currently own the Treo 650, and while the idea of it seems amazing, it's been a big let down.
The Treo is constantly freezing on me and reseting. It drops call very easily and while I think it is on, it sometimes freezes and i miss out on many calls.

I have never owned a blackberry , but the new 8700 really does interest me. I would be using it mainly as a phone and a device to receive e-mail. Mainly for work, as I am on the road alot.

Does anyone have freezing or resting problems with their Blackberry's? It it a solid device? Would you recomend the move from the Treo 650 to the Blackberry?

Thnx

[mrpropaganda]

I have tried every PDA out there it seems atleast once, and I always ended up with my trusty Blackberry (going on 5+ years now with the BB). I am a gadget guy, so I love new toys.

But in the end, it has to work and be 100% reliable. And the BlackBerry is the only one that even comes close, in my opinion, to doing just that especially for e-mail. And the phone features on the newer ones are most than suitable for me (who travels regularaly in over 15 different countries).

Currently I have had a 7100V since they first came out and I have never had any problems with it. Although the new 8700 will definitely be the next one for me, I want to go back to the full keyboard.

Now if they would just release a 3G one I could use in Japan I would be set. Oh, and one that would work in Korea as well

[Mark Rejhon]

Hi,

BlackBerries are known to be among the most stable devices. There are various notable exceptions (early verisons of 7100 series software, for example), but on average, BlackBerry has been much more stable than Palm and Windows based devices. And Windows Mobile is more stable than PalmOS nowadays, with the improvements continually added to Windows Mobile. But BlackBerry still beats all of them in stability.

TREO is very good for many things such as videos and MP3 (BlackBerry cannot yet do this -- although this will change soon -- keep tuned.) There are some things that TREO will be well ahead for a long time, like number of software programs and a memory card slot, but those can be rendered unnecessary if you simplify your needs (use an iPod Nano for MP3's, etc.) With image size reduction to BlackBerry screen resolution, you can squeeze well over 500 photographs in just 10 megabytes of BlackBerry memory, rendering a memory card unnecessary.

Check my BlackBerry FAQ links below, relevant to BlackBerry versus TREO:

Why BlackBerry?
A good thread that covers some of the real reasons many people prefer to use a BlackBerry over multimedia handhelds running PalmOS/PocketPC such as Treo/iPaq handhelds.

BlackBerry Myths Busted: The Modern 2005-era BlackBerry
This document busts many old myths of BlackBerries, by showcasing BlackBerry technology advancements, including bright color screen, purposes other than email, wide software selection, ability to do Internet applications, instant messaging, and more. Screenshots included!

[Bear]

While I love my Palm TC, and have been a huge fan of Palm since '97, the Treo series in general has just been a dog. I tried a Treo 600 and returned it within about 4 days. The same with the Treo 650. Battery hog, dropped calls, lousy build quality, freezes and fatal reset errors. Lousy.

Switched to BlackBerry for my smartphone-of-choice and never looked back.

I still keep a Palm device for eBooks and games while I'm on the road, but my BlackBerry does everything else for me.

[crisambo]

Here's an article I received a while back from my T-mobile Rep.

Palm Sued Over Defective Treos

A new lawsuit is being brought against Palm over defective Treo 600 and Treo 650 smartphones. The suit claims the Treo fail at unacceptably high rates, are inherently defective and that Palm has mislead customers concerning the defects.

The suit Palza v. Palm was filed in the Superior Court of California, in Santa Clara County. It was filed on behalf of three Treo customers, but seeks to be certified as a Class action lawsuit, so that all Treo users would be represented.

The suit mainly claims that Palm has made misrepresentations and concealed information in the marketing, advertising, sale and servicing of its Treo 600 and Treo 650 models. It further states that Palm has been aware for a substantial period of time that the Treos were failing at a very high rate and Palm has not warned its customers or tried to prevent them from suffering system failures and data loss.

Some of the complaints include:

*Extremely poor sound quality and buzzing which is heard by the recipients of telephone calls, which makes the Treo unusable and makes recipients believe that the Treo owner is in a very noisy place when making the phone call (not caused by telephone service provider).

*Voice choppiness which is heard by the recipients of telephone calls which makes the Treo an extremely poor telephone (not caused by telephone service provider).

*Speakerphone problems making the speakerphone unusable or seriously impaired.

*Phone freezes and crashes often causing restarts and lost calls, which often require the use of a hard reset which loses all stored information (not caused by telephone service provider).

*Replacement of defective Treo 600 phones with defective and/or “refurbished” Treo 600 phones - creating a cycle of defective product - whereby owners continue to receive defective products until either they tire of the process or their warranty runs out.

The full complaint can be read here. http://www.techfirm.com/treocomplaint.pdf [37 page .PDF]
See also:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/...reosuit_1.html

[barjohn]

Let me add a few additional comments. I owned the T600 (I have not owned a 650). Setting aside the OS issues, what I found was that the big draw of having a handset more phone like in size with a full QWERTY keyboard turned out in practice to be less than I had hoped. Yes, you can thumb type on the keyboard, but you can type on a regular phone keypad with T9 too. That doesn't mean that you will want to. I had a BB950 that was just the greatest device to type and send messages on. Fast and easy to use. My only gripe was the B/W screen was hard to see in low light. I thought the T600 would be the answer. It wasn't! I hated typing on it. It never felt easy and natural and I avoided responding to emails until I was at a computer which kind of defeated the purpose. There are ergonomic limits which are hard to overcome without serious hand surgery that I am not willing to undertake.

Even going to a 7230 from the old 950 was not as good for typing even though both have excellent keyboards. It is only a few mm different. I am hoping the 8700c is easy to type on, at least as easy as the 72xx and preferably as easy as the 950. It may have less spacing on the keys which may make it easier to accidently hit the wrong key. I am hoping that the new key shape and layout is designed to reduce this type of error. If I were a hardware manufacturer of these converged devices I would try and license RIM's keyboard and the firmware behind it. This is where RIM beats everyone else hands down! (Maybe I should have said thumbs down). I also have the HP HW6510 and a PPC 6700. The HP's keyboard is not even close to a BBs. The PPC 6700 has the nicer spacing but the layout doesn't compare and the color scheme makes it hard to read the keys.

I hope this helps you decide.

[mobilemetal]

While I too have been in the Palm camp for many years. My Treo650 sits on my desk at home while a carry the BB 7280 on my side. Now I haven't signed up for BB service yet, so I only have access to cellphone and SMS while out and about. But the build quality is far superior to my Treo. And with the new BB 8700c comming out soon, I may just bite.

[weisz108]

Wow, thanks for all the great info guys. It really seems like BB is the way to go. I appreciate all of your help.
Now I just gotta wait till the 8700 comes out on Rogers in Canada and I'm all set!

[motorsport96]

I currently have the Treo 650. It sucks. It drops calls, it loses phone #s that i know i put in there, and the key board is way too small. I will be getting the 8700c. Heres a idea for anyone in a contract with Cingular and that doesnt want to pay full price. Add a new line for $10 and you get the 2 year deal. You dont save any in the long run but you dont have to pay retail upfront. Hope i helped someone

[Mikeslax]

I work at a help desk which supports several hundred Blackberry users. While I see the usefulness of the device, I do not see that it's any more or less reliable than any other similar device (we regularly have problems with the device and the service). From Palm users I did hear initial problems with the Treo 650, but everyone I know has said these have all been resolved through software upgrades. I'm also curious about the Treo dropping calls, since I heard just the opposite about the Treo - that it was a great phone. When I posed the question of BB vs. Palm on the Palm list I'm on, *everyone* that had used both devices on the list voted loudly for the Treo.

It seems to me that the reality of the Treo vs. the Blackberry is more personal than technical. This group is biased for the Blackberry and against the Palm OS, while my Palm group is biased in the other direction. To me both devices can learn from the other, and hopefully both the Blackberry and the Treo (and those that use them) will benefit.

Mike

[fcorey]

Mike, i dont doubt that you are correct about each group advocating their personal favorite. Over the years my company's changing standards have put me in the position of using a bb6750, bb7280 and now a treo 650. The blackberry is the best for email, period. While the costs of the devices are similar, my treo 650 needed additional software to work with our corporate mail servers. We already had a BB enterprise server so that cost wasnt an issue.
I will say that after some initial software problems with the treo 650 i do feel that its a pretty good phone. The form factor is managable in your hand. I never really liked the phone on the 7280.
However the overall package of the 8700c is appealing. Our B2B Cingular rep will be shipping me one to try out once they are in hand, probably around the 21st like everyone else. If the phone functions work as rumored I will likely switch back to using a blackberry. Bottom line is there is no one size fits all. I dont want a camera, and have no need for multimedia on my phone. If i want music I can use my ipod. So for me a blackberry is probably a better fit. But if you are a former palm user,or want more multimedia then maybe the treo is better for you.
I am just glab we now support both BB and Treo so I can choose my toy of choice!

--fc

[kitmoni]

Originally Posted by weisz108

The Treo is constantly freezing on me and reseting. It drops call very easily and while I think it is on, it sometimes freezes and i miss out on many calls.

Since it looks like your original concern is the stability of the device, let me say that moving from a Treo 650 to my 7250 was wonderful. The screen isn't fancy, and I only have 2,000 programs I can add to it instead of 20,000 -- but I can only have a handfull on there at a time anyway.

Blackberry devices are industrial strength when compared to Palm products. No cracking cases, no soft resets, no dropped calls. Nothing but uptime, sweet uptime...

[andrebsd]

Originally Posted by weisz108

Would you recomend the move from the Treo 650 to the Blackberry?

Sure... but seeing as this is a blackberry forum; I think most people would tell you to switch to the blackberry. If you asked the same question on a treo forum; people would point you to the treo.

[takeshi]

Originally Posted by Mikeslax

I work at a help desk which supports several hundred Blackberry users. While I see the usefulness of the device, I do not see that it's any more or less reliable than any other similar device (we regularly have problems with the device and the service).

There's definitely a bias depending on which forum you're reading at a given moment. I would still say that in my (admittedly anecdotal) experience that I have experienced far fewer crashes and freeezes with my Blackberries than with my Treos. On the other hand, T-Mobile's decision to not carry the Treo 650 due to the amount of issues they experienced with the 600 doesn't seem anecdotal to me.

You should try dropping a Treo 650 and a Blackberry... Except for possibly the 7100 series the Blackberry is certain to be more durable. It doesn't mean that users won't break them -- I just can't imagine giving them something as fragile as a Treo.

[anthonymoody]

FWIW I've found my current Treo 650 no more or less stable or finicky than my BB 7100t which now sits in a box (b/c the keyboard/text prediction sucked IMO - too many 2 and 3 letter words which share the same key combinations, eg. hey and get). And yes, my 7100t was using the latest firmware.

Both devices would hang every now and then. I'm considering the 8700t to replace my Treo 650 if it proves to be about as easy to handle physically and is materially more stable than the 650 and 7100t.

TM

[richard371]

I have a 650 with the latest firmware and it is rock solid. Phone is loud and clear unlike the 7100. I use it for everything and even watch movies on it. If I get the 8700 I will prob carry both until I can decide which one to keep. Also the looks and form factor of the Treo wins hands down. For business the BB wins hands down.

[Mark Rejhon]

Originally Posted by anthonymoody

FWIW I've found my current Treo 650 no more or less stable or finicky than my BB 7100t which now sits in a box

The 7100 was a very unstable phone when it got released. Not one of RIM's most stable releases. In contrast, the 72XX series have been generally rock-stable (especially the 7230/7280 model).

Hopefully the launch version of the 8700 series is a more stable device than the 7100 series right now.

[Jack T. Chance]

Speaking only for myself, and I am unanimous in this, it's the BlackBerry 8700 for me, all the way. I started out with a BB 950 (sold by AOL as the AOL Mobile Communicator). When AOL shut that service off a little over 2 years ago, they offered me a $100 discount on a T-Mobile Color Sidekick if I switched to that, so I did. After a year-and-a-half of unreliable, bug-ridden service, I dumped it in favor of a BlackBerry 7520 and haven't looked back. The BBs have caught up to, and surpassed the Sidekick in terms of the features I look for, and the difference in reliability, durability, and security of my data is night & day. The BlackBerry puts the Sidekick to SHAME!

If the Trxxx275;o 650 is even HALF as unreliable, even half as flimsily built as the Color Sidekick, it'd only make me mad as hell!

So, I'm sticking with what has worked best for me... my beloved "CrackBerry"!

[gabedamian]

I am think of switching over from a Treo 650 to the 8700 when it becomes available. I have found answers to all of my questions but one. Will I be able to organise all of my contacts into seperate groups like i can on my Treo?

[Mark Rejhon]

Originally Posted by gabedamian

Will I be able to organise all of my contacts into seperate groups like i can on my Treo?

Since late 2004, BlackBerryOS 4.0 and later, now allow you to categorize contacts. So the answer is yes. It's called the "Filter" feature - You can view only Business contacts, or only Personal contacts, or view all contacts. Just like on a Palm handheld. It inherits the categories from Outlook.