A few years ago, I wrote an article speculating on what I thought it would take to make the perfect writer's PDA. I got into this biz because I thought there had to be a better way to write on the go than how I wrote my first novel , longhand in a paper day planner.
As many of you know, I picked up a Treo 650 this week (this one's from work, but I'm buying on of my own next weekend so I can do horrible things to it like customize the ROM). How does the Treo 650 measure up against my baker's dozen requirements? Comments about the 650 are in italics , and remember the original article was written over three years ago, in July 2002.
1. High-resolution screen readable indoors and out. It goes without saying that if you're going to write on a PDA, you should be comfortable reading it. No one's first drafts are perfect. And keeping with the idea of mobility, if I can't see the screen outside or even indoors next to a big window, I may as well be at my desk. Transflective screens like those in the Sony NR-70V and the HP iPAQ 3950 seem to do the best job at this, although organic LEDs (OLED) or electronic ink might do even better.
I was a bit skeptical at first that I could go from the 320x480 screen on my Tungsten T5 to 320x320 on my Treo 650, but now I'm a believer. This is brightest, crispest, clearest screen I've ever seen on a PDA, the equal in quality if not real estate to the VGA Pocket PCs I've seen. It looks bright and clear in direct sunlight as well, something my T5 isn't. As for the drop in size, I haven't found Blazer any less useful (I always use it in optimized mode anyway) nor are ebooks any less engaging. I'd call this one a big win.
2. 1 megapixel or better digital camera integrated into the unit. This one's mainly for journalists, but it would be darn handy for those of us that do reviews as well. Let's face it, kids, a picture really is worth a thousand words, and if you can capture and process a picture on the same carry-with-you-everywhere device you use for writing, so much the better. Sony has the right idea with the NR-70V-- what good is that fancy 5 megapixel digicam if you left it at home?-- but it needs a little more to be really useful. Slap in the 1 megapixel unit Pretec uses in their CF camera and we're in business.
This one's a maybe. The camera in the Treo is VGA, or 0.3 megapixels. However, it can capture QVGA video, and the picture quality of the VGA stills is quite good. Early prototypes of the Treo 650 had 1.3 MP cameras, but they couldn't get the light levels right. In other words, the image was printable, but it looked horrid. The pictures taken on a Treo 650 may look grainy in print, but they look great on screen.
3. Wireless radio capable of data and voice. Lemme ask you something. If you use your mobile device to write a great story on the go, but no one can read it until you get back to the office and sync it to your Internet-connected PC, did it really matter if you were mobile? Okay, yeah, I know, setting and ambiance help; I myself seem to do most of my best writing in restaurants. But how much more effective would you be if you could email your piece to your editor the moment you finished it, no matter where you were, then called him to tell him to check his mail (and send you your check)? Mobile and wireless go hand in hand, and as much as it pains me to admit it— because I don't have wireless data access myself yet— a mobile device without wireless connectivity is quickly becoming about as useful as a PC with no Internet connection.
The Treo 650 wins big here. The voice quality is better than my Sony Ericsson T608, voicemail, speakerphone and other features are easy to use, and I don't have that "why yes, that is a brick on my face" feeling when using it without a headset that I had with my Pocket PC Phone. More to the point, on my Sprint 1xRTT 2.5G data, I get ~60kbps data connections, fast enough to not only send Word docs as attachments but even download the occasional podcast. Life will be better still with cable-speed EVDO, but it's pretty good now. Also, there are a lot more mobile friendly internet services than there were when I wrote the original article. Not only is Blazer more practically useful now than Pocket IE was in 2002, but I also have Kmaps , Directory Assistant , Quick News , Agendus 10 (for weather), Chatopus and last but not least, Pocket Tunes for Shoutcast music streaming. The always on internet connection is an integral part of what makes a Treo a Treo.
4. Professional-grade word processor. All three of the major mobile platforms-- PalmOS, Pocket PC and Symbian-- seem to have this one covered by now, with gaps here and there. Word count and spell check are musts for mobile writers, and WordSmith, QuickWord, and Pocket Word have that sewn up. But even the best of the current mobile word processors fall short of perfection. Mobile writers need editable tables. They need stylesheet support. Embeddable graphics. Basically, anything that it would take to make a document fit for publication straight from the handheld, comprende?
(Heavy sigh…) We got tables, but we're still missing true style support in anything other than the behemoth that is TextMaker on the Pocket PC, a desktop-grade word processor than even brings the 624MHz Dell Axim X50v to a crawl. But on the Treo, both Documents To Go (included standard) and Mobi-Systems Office (well worth the price to upgrade) can edit Word documents natively and attach them to outgoing emails. 'Nuff said.
5. Email capable of sending attachments in desktop-readable formats. Of course, the reason that mobile word processors have to be so full-featured is so mobile writers can submit assignments from the field— or from McDonalds (I wrote the original article in a McDonalds) . This means also having an email program that can attach fully-formatted word processing documents and send them without requiring any format conversions by the recipient. Inbox on the Pocket PC does this, but mail handling is still a big Achilles heel for PalmOS.
Not anymore. The Treo 650 ships with VersaMail in ROM, which has full support for not only Office format attachments, but both POP and IMAP mail servers, syncing with Microsoft Exchange over the air, and lots of other nifty features. That said, I still only use it for sending attachments. Most of my email is Gmail in Blazer. This web thing is going to catch on, I tell you.
6. Good outliner/brainstorming application. Ideally, this would be built into the word processor (Pocket Word on the Handheld PC 2000 platform supports outlining), but I'd settle for a good third party application. It may seem like I write most of my columns "off the cuff," but a lot of thought, organization and planning goes into making the good ones. The best I can do now is a quick bulleted list in Pocket Word before I start fleshing it out, but I'd love to be able to have a real hierarchical outline. I bet a lot of other writers would too.
I don't think either Documents To Go or Mobi-Systems Office support outlining, but they don't have to. They can read PalmDoc files, and both of the Palm OS heavyweight outliners, ShadowPlan and Bonsai , can export to PalmDoc. Oh, and both outliners work well on the Treo 650.
7. Card expansion. Internal RAM is never enough. Card expansion is a must so that storage for documents/pictures is effectively unlimited. Such storage should be integral to the unit, and not require the removal of the storage card to enable networking. What good is it to put big documents on the card if you can't email them without copying them to RAM before you swap out the memory card with a NIC?
I have a 1GB SD card in my Treo, and I can't imagine going without it. Not only is that where all my ebooks, audiobooks and podcasts live, but my lesser used applications live there too, thanks to ZLauncher. The Treo 650 is much better than previous generation Palms at using the card storage to full effect, including offering to save downloads there from Blazer.
8. Voice recording, from both a microphone and the telephone. I'm a big fan of voice recording for quick ideas when I'm in the car, walking or otherwise unable to stop and grab my stylus or keyboard. Let's face it, a lot of life's best ideas come to you when you're not able to write them down right away, and if you wait, they pass right on out of your head. But more importantly, voice recording is a necessity for recording interviews so you can review and transcribe later while focusing on the conversation of the interview now. (Bonus points if recording can be directly to MP3 to save space.)
Ahem. I'm still working on this. There are lots of voice recorders available for the Treo, and sound quality is on par with dedicated digital voice recorders. However there are some weird limitations. If you want to record a phone call, you can't do it over a headset. You only get your side of the conversation that way, and that's not much of an interview. If you use the phone up to your head or use the speakerphone options, you can record both halves of the conversation with third party voice recorders. Two questions: why doesn't Palm include a voice recorder application themselves (they clearly have the technology to do it, they let you record ringtones)? And why don't let make call recording built-in? Pocket PC phones do.
9. Heavyweight PIM. Do I even need to explain this one? A mobile writer has to keep track of assignment deadlines (tasks), meetings, interviews (appointments) and contacts. Lots of note space a must, since it makes sense to keep all the notes for a contact with that contact. Note to PalmSource: 4k of note space isn't enough. The former president of the Colorado Palm Users Group switched to an iPAQ mostly because he needed more note space for client records.
I'm testing the beta of Agendus 10 and this thing rocks. 32k notes on the Treo 650 is lots of space, and Agendus has great support for the Treo, including dialing from just about anywhere you see a contact.
10. Wide variety of input methods. No single input method is perfect for all situations. Handwriting recognition is great for quick jots, but a pain in the rump for long text. A detachable keyboard is great for hundreds, thousands of words, but requires a flat surface and set up time. A thumbboard is a good middle ground, but less "natural" than pen input and slower than a full-size keyboard. Include the option to use any of them, as well as on screen keyboards like Fitaly and anything else people come up with. Variety is good.
The Treo meets this one, but like the recording thing, only with some help. There's no support for Graffiti built in to the phone, but you can add it for free with Graffiti Anywhere. Personally, the thumbboard is so useful and the Treo integrated so tightly with it that I've not felt the need to install Graffiti Anywhere yet. As for foldable, full-size keyboards, I got a chance to play with a Bluetooth Stowaway today. Setup was relatively painless (once I figured out the driver was not on the CD and went to the web to get it) and it doesn't wobble like the similarly-designed Palm Ultrathin Keyboard did. The built-in niche for holding the PDA seems like it was designed for the Treo, fitting the curved edge perfectly. I'll have to get one of these for really long writing sessions away from my PC.
11. Pocketable form factor. Again, do I have to explain this one? For the tool to be useful, it has to be ubiquitous. It has to go everywhere. The first time you need it and didn't bother to bring it along, it wasn't worth the money. And while pioneering early adopters like me might be willing to carry a couple of pounds of electronic gear everywhere I go, eventually the whole package-- PDA, detachable keyboard, thumbboard, radio, etc.-- will have to come in under 10 ounces, preferably as low as 6, or people won't bother.
The Treo weighs in at a tidy 6.3 ounces, or 178 grams. It's also smaller than most Palms, and nicely rounded to fit comfortably in both hand and pocket. I have absolutely no problems carrying this with me anywhere and everywhere I go. The catch is that the ThinkOutside Bluetooth Stowaway adds another 5.6 ounces, or 160 grams. That's 2 ounces more than my limit of ten, but still under a pound. Then again, with the thumbboard, I don't have to carry the Stowaway everywhere, just where I think I might need it. The Treo is fine by itself for most writing sessions.
12. Good battery life. If the device has all eleven of the other features listed above, but conks out after 90 minutes of use (ahem, iPAQ 3650), then it's not a tool, it's a chunk of useless metal, glass and plastic. A writer's PDA needs enough battery life to get a full day of hard use on a charge (12-16 hours of on time with side/backlighting). Given the size constraints listed above, this might not be possible with current lithium battery technology. Word on the street is that the Toshiba e740's battery life goes straight in the dumper as soon as you turn on the radio. So we might have to wait for alcohol fuel cell technology to mature before we see this materialize.
The Treo doesn't get 12-16 hours of hard use, but it gets more than half that. I haven't had the chance to really stress test the battery yet, but it's easily as good as the battery life in my Tungsten T5, and that's with more internet access. But the Treo has a trump card no other Palm has. The battery is removable. If I need to, I can carry a spare.
13. Reasonable price. Let's face it, most journalists and other mobile writers aren't rolling in dough. While an HP iPAQ 3970 with a few accessories and a Bluetooth cell phone could do most of what is listed above, the price makes it impractical. $750 for the 3970 + $250 for a Bluetooth-equipped phone + $100 for a Pretec CF camera + $100 for a CF Plus sleeve to fit the camera + $45 for a thumbboard + $100 for a Stowaway comes to $1,345 before tax and shipping charges. That's real money, and despite what I said before about mobility coming at a premium, fourteen hundred bucks is probably too much for the average mobile writer to justify. As more people adopt mobile technology, the price of that technology should be going down, not up.
Did people actually pay $750 for the iPAQ 3950? Well the Treo is less than that no matter who you buy it from. Even the unlocked GSM version straight from Palm is only $700. Generally, a Treo 650 runs anywhere from $200-600, depending on carrier, specials and what contract you're under and go for. Most people will pay somewhere in the $400-500 range, about the price of other high-end PDAs.
So how does the Treo do? It meets all of my criteria, though sometimes with a little help. It's small and light enough to be an everyday companion to a mobile writer, can handle both voice and image capture, can create and email professional-quality documents and can connect to the internet for research.
Is the Treo 650 the perfect mobile computer for a writer? Let me put it this way. It's the closest I've seen yet.
