connecting*the*dots

Someone please explain to me how I went from razzing my NYC neighbors about owning dogs just last year, to hanging out at a dog park the size of a football field with a bunch of slobbering, noisy mutts… and my own puppy.

No need, I’m digging it.

Video shot from my Treo 650 (Sprint, as long as this phone lasts me a few more years, I’m officially happy)

I’ve got one bullet left in the chamber, so this had better work.

This is a pissed-off customer rant. Proceed with caution.

To make a very long, frustrating story as short as possible, I lost every contact from my Treo 600 added over the past 5 months. There was some kind of a sync corruption that actually busted my phone — turning it off when receiving incoming calls from non-Sprint networks.

The same thing happened last December and the local Sprint store gave me a substitute 600, which worked fine until I tried to sync it this past week.

After it busted on Thursday while I tried to sync up my new contacts from last week’s Beyond Broadcast conference, I spent a good deal of time on Friday, Saturday and today in the local Sprint store, with the culmination of the first two days having me walk out of the store with a “reset” phone.

Today, I skipped the pleasantries. Within minutes I was vociferously arguing that they needed to make me happy or I was going to cut my contract. After 3 hours in the store this afternoon and speaking to what seemed to be the entire corporate ladder to approve a buyout of my contract termination fee, the store manager finally worked out a deal with me to receive a free 650 upgrade.

Fine.

But what a God awful, painful process to get there.

Even though it was obvious to everyone I spoke with that my phone kept busting/erasing data during the Palm sync process, they wanted nothing to do with my sync log sheet. Both their internal tech folk and the folk on the other end of the phone, kept recommending a reset of my phone, which had already been proved to be a useless approach. At one point, the manager started to lean towards it being a network issue or an issue with my computer… something they could do nothing about; you know, “time to go home Mr. Coon and search the web for answers”… Well, that’s when I lost it, diving into a tirade how:

• I’m locked into a two-year contract with Sprint (like the rest of the cellphone customers of the world!)
• They branded my Treo 600, so I can’t use it with another carrier (therefore I’m holding you responsible for *any* problems. Screw hunting down Treo or Palm or Mac tech support!)
• I’m standing in their brick and mortar customer touch point (and you can’t help me!? wtf!)

I couldn’t help it, I got Jersey on their asses. And that must’ve been the language they understood.

So yeah, the long-story short is that I now have a new Treo 650… and a new 2-year contract. Fuckers.

Prepare yourself for my soon-to-be-written email asking for your contact information… again.

/end rant

UPDATE: My new 650 is working like a charm. Next time Sprint folks, just give a seven year-long customer with an unfixable problem a free upgrade. It’s good business.

Yes, that’s about as obvious of a statement as George Bush declaring that John Kerry wants to raise taxes. Of course good product design is good. But you never truly know how good you have it, until you’ve experienced the bad.

The Treo 300 was terrbile.
The Treo 600 is good… really good.

I’m probably 6 months behind the curve on reviewing this piece of work, but hey, I’m a busy guy, remember? Here’s the tape-measure comparison:

Round 1: Casing
Treo 300: A big, plastic, flip-top toy. I was afraid that if I dropped it, I would have a thousand pieces of mula resting at my feet. The lid broke on me twice, and without insurance, you have to buy a replacement. Apparently, Handspring can’t fix lids. Bogus excuse for poor product design/engineering.

Treo 600: A little weighty, but sturdy, smaller, and sans-lid. When resting it in your hand, the shell feels as though it’s a part of the technology itself. Seemless design.

Round 2: Speaker/Input
Treo 300: The speaker phone was pretty weak. Actually, I think the volume of the speaker phone option was just as loud as when I held the phone 3 feet away from my head on the default setting. And that leads right into the big problem; every word spoken by the other party could be heard by anyone standing near me when I had the 300 *pressed against my ear*. The speaker was located at the top of the lid and reverberated big time against the cheap plastic. On more than one occasion, a person told me that they could accurately document my conversations from 5ft away. My international man of mystery lifestyle can’t afford such invasions of privacy.

Treo 600: Tre chic. No lid and the top of the device has a slightly raised speaker mound that is positioned to fit within the ear itself. The sound leakage is curbed dramatically and I can now breathe easy when communicating "incommunicado." And for when I’m kicking back in my palatial 697 sq. foot apartment? You guessed it–a speaker phone that has the power of a real speaker. What will they think of next?

Round 3: Keypad
Treo 300: The keypad was qwerty styled and large enough to keep your thumbs accurate while inputing characters. Unfortunately, the keypad made the phone extra-wide and unmanageable in size and the layout of the extraneous buttons/characters are a bit strange.

Treo 600: Qwerty is still the style, but the arrangement of all the input is much more streamlined. The keyboard is smaller, which would make you think that using the keypad for SMS would more difficult, but PalmOne really worked hard on the ergonomics to make the down-shift in size. Each button comes to a very slight rounded tip, which enables for increased accuracy on a smaller keypad. The only problem I am having is when I attempt to access an IVR system and enter account numbers or the such. The volume on input is so low that unless you have reflection of input on the screen, you’re somewhat guessing if your input was right on.

There’s more I could get into, but I’ve already painted myself a bit too geeky. If you’re heading into the G3 phone realm, take a long look at the Treo 600.