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Treo Family is Great & they do Entertainment!

There's been a lot of talk here and elsewhere about how great or not great the Treo 650 is going to be and I thought that it might be worthwhile revisiting one of our most popular posts which describes a little of what you get to experience when you own one.

As is fairly obvious to anyone who reads Treonauts with some frequency, I absolutely love my Treo 600 which I've now had for a little under a year and judging by the number of units sold to date so do a great many other people.  So what is it about this gadget that makes it so cool and why will I most definitely get the Treo 650 when it's released - make it soon please...

As its name implies the Treo is about having three-in-one:

COMMUNICATIONS - First it's a great phone (OK a bit bulky perhaps) and the ability to synch all my contacts/calendar/etc. with Outlook is fantastic.  The email and SMS functionalities are also some of the best that I've come across and the built-in Blazer browser certainly does the job.

PRODUCTIVITY - Secondly it's a great business tool.  I've already mentioned Outlook synchronisation but there are also literally thousands of other productivity software out there to help the business professional.  Just visit our Treo Software Store (which lists 3,320 biz apps!) and you'll get an idea.

ENTERTAINMENT -Thirdly and most importantly for this discussion it's a great entertainment device.  Among others, you can:

  • listen to music MP3's & stream Internet radio (in the US) via Pocket Tunes' deluxe version ($27.95) which can stream shoutcast stations and works brilliantly!
  • record any audio such as a memo, your kid, a concert or a meeting with tools such as Personal Audio Recorder or SoundRec or best still use mVoice which is my favourite to date
  • watch movies & videos using Kinoma, Firepad, CorePlayer (the only player to support native .avi playback) software and convert your DVD's to watch on the Treo with Pocket-DVD (yes the screen resolution of 160x160 is poor on the T600 but it works as a proof of concept and I can guarantee a WOW effect when you show it to colleagues and friends + it's great fun on a plane, train, bus or tube journey... T650 will be a completely new experience for movies with the high-res screen),
  • take pictures using the built-in camera and make short videos using a software called MovieRec,
  • even use it as a webcam with this Palm Webcam software 
  • carry with you and watch your entire picture collection and show it to family, friends, colleagues - the Treo becomes a digital photo viewer and digital music picture frame (when you leave it to run a slide show in your cradle) with tools such as SplashPhoto and once resized I've managed to put over 1,000 pictures on a 32MB SD card (all of this also never fails to impress...)
  • you can read ebooks of all sorts while on the move buying them from places such as eReader and Mobipocket or for free from Project Gutenberg and also listen to audio books from Audible (to which I've gotten addicted)
  • if you are motivated to read on your Treo (I'm starting to get the hang of it) then you can also check out an offline web browser called plucker
  • you can also use your Treo as a mobile RSS newsreader but you'll need to install two more pieces of software here and here or just this one HandRSS (my favourite) or mNews
  • now I found out that you can also do some moblogging (mobile blogging) while on the move using this nifty little software called HBlogger (and it's free...)
  • in order to keep in permanent contact with your online buddies via instant messaging you'll also be able to use AOL for Treo 600 or VeriChat which will allow you to communicate across all major IM networks like Yahoo, ICQ, MSN and AIM simultaneously
  • I can even use my Treo as a universal remote control for my television and stereo using a software called OmniRemote
  • and finally you can also play games of all kinds from traditional ones such as backgammon to possibly the best game for the Treo, Warfare Incorporated and the maddeningly addictive Monsta

Basically, as a mini 'computer' you can pretty much replicate all the functionalities of your PC on this little handheld device and with the ability to perform all of the above entertainment activities the Treo 600 or forthcoming 650 'should' be considered the uber-portable digital entertainment convergence device (for this see and participate in the recent Treonauts survey which revealed that 75% of Treo owners consider it to be a great portable entertainment device).  So much has been said about the iPod for example but can it do all of this?  Can you tell me of another smart phone that comes close to matching these capabilities?  I didn't think so...

The ultimate tagline should read: The Treonauts Have More Fun!

                                                


Posted by Andrew on October 12, 2004 at 01:44 PM

Treo 600

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Comments

1
by Fred | Aug 24, 2006 2:16:56 PM

For those surfers who have come across this older article, the software Palm Wecam ONLY works with the Treo 600. It will not work with the 650 as of right now. Hopefully they'll update it soon.

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