One of the blogs I've been follwing very closely since I got involved with the Nokia Blogger Relations program is Ring Nokia. Stefan Constantinescu stays on top of Nokia happenings with a fierce dedication that I really admire. He's given me some good ideas of things I need to test more thoroughly, and he's pointed me to some things other people are doing that I adapt and fit into my own testing and experimenting.

The other day I posted some thoughts about my Treo usage vs. the Nokia N-series, and Stefan almost immediately echoed back with Cat's out of the bag: Ken prefers his Treo. And I think he's wrong, but he asks an important question that I want to take a stab at - What do Treo's do that N-series (more like anything running S60) can't do?

First, I'm going to give some history as part of my answer to the question. In deference to the great work my friend Andy is doing on Working Anywhere, that isn't a new concept. I did the legwork to introduce telecommuting in a division of AT&T many years ago and have pretty much been a road warrior, working anywhere since the mid-1980s. My first mobile system was a TI Silent Writer 700 with an acoustic-coupled modem and a box of thermal paper. Yes, it's true. I took it on business trips and did work in hotel rooms with that beast. And I graduated to the Compaq luggable. I really did carry these beasts on the road. I still have a 1989 vintage Toshiba laptop running DOS, loaded with Word Perfect and Qmodem. And it still works. And it has a DOS-based TCP-IP stack and serial Ethernet adapter if I really feel inclined to wax nostalgic. Working anywhere is an important part of my life that I've written and talked about a lot in the 5-6 years I've been blogging.

I'm a long-time PDA user. Long time. I had two of the old Sharp Zaurus clamshell PDAs back in the day. This really was 10 years ago. They were incredible devices. Absolutely incredible!

The Zaurus had hyperlinking between contacts, calendar entries, to do items and notes. It had a modem attachment. And they had an AT&T mail client for email and a Compuserve client built in. They were untouchable at the time. I compared an Apple Newton and the Zaurus kicked butt. Hands down.

Then the Palm Pilot came along. To be honest, that was a difficult change for me. I tried the Pilot and abandoned it more than once. I was resolute that I needed to advance and carried both devices for nearly a year before I made the switch to Palm.

Once I'd made the switch, I was a pretty loyal Palm user. I used nearly every iteration of Palm that came along. I bought A TungstenC for WiFi the first week it was available. I bought a second TungstenC when I wore the first one out. I used it for email, blogging, web surfing. I still use a Palm LifeDrive today, but mostly as the equivalent to a video iPod. I use it for music and movies, but the PDA functions now sit idle.

The Palm PIM software has long been held up as the leader in the PDA world, and rightly so. It offers ease of use and funtionality that's unparalled on any other PDA or smartphone. I'd tried WinCE mobiles along the way, but they were crude and disappointing. But Palm has failed in many ways to leverage their strengths.

When the Treo700W was announced, I made the decision to shift for two reasons. Two drivers. First and foremost was EVDO (wireless broadband) connectivity. I'd used, and still use, a Blackberry with 1XRTT radio. It's useful, but boring. To be honest, it's the worst cell phone I've ever used. Blackberry, or Crackberry, while addicting, doesn't excite me. The PIM simply integrates all the flaws of Microsoft's Outlook, but with fewer features. I've played with other Blackberry devices, and they just don't excite me. Not even the Pearl excites me. It's a boring device with no element of fun to be found.

The Treo700W allows for full integration with the Microsoft office environment, from Outlook to the office suite. It still can't begin to match the rich set of capabilities third-party packages in the Palm OS provided, but it meets business needs. And it provides SMS, IRC, IM tools, supports blogging and multiple email addresses, surfs the web with ease. It replaced the Palm OS, albeit still with a Palm device. But now my loyalty to Palm has been diluted. I've accepted Windows Mobile and embraced it.

In the spirit of working anywhere, the Treo700W has served as my only computing platform on many a businees trip. The only adjunct peripherals I carry are a bluetooth headset and an infrared keyboard. I've written many an email and document on that keyboard. And the Treo700w gave me a mobile camera that was always at hand, and easy to share pictures/

The Nokia N-series presents a new platform. Different hardware and yet another new OS. I'm not unfamliar with Nokia phones. They've always been, in my view, the best in mobile phones. But I hadn't used on in several years.

The N73 quickly won my heart. It's convenient in size. The keyboard felt a built small, but the crisp and clear screen, and seamless application flow was superb. Integrating the basic Outlook PIM functionality led to easy synching of contacts, calendar, to do tasks and notes. The camera, with its 3.2 megapixel Zeiss optics, quickly proved the Treo camera was less than mediocre.

The N93 added two new dimensions to my mobility. It included WiFi in the mobile again, hearkening back to something I've grown adept at using. And the camera opened my eyes to videography. Not that I hadn't explored video, but the N93 puts a quality of output potential in the palm of my hand that no other device ever offered.

Most recently, the N80i took center stage. I love it and use it constantly. It's not quite a nice a camera as either the N73 or N93, but it still clobbers the Treo. The Gizmo VoIP capability plays to the WiFi and other needs I have. The Lifeblog and Flickr integration in all the N-series phones is something I find great use for, even if it is really just a replacement for something I can already do on the Treo.

What's the shortcoming on the N-series? Stefan's question made me think about this, and for me, there's really only one. And that one may be in my mind. The Quick Office sutie on the Nokia allows easy reading of MS Office documents, but no ability that I've found to edit or create them. Jonathon Green was kind enough to stop by and leave a note mentioning that I should be able to do so. I think i just need to upgrade to the commercial version of Quick Office and edit/creat capability is mine.
Of course I'll need to add a wireless keyboard, but that's easily accomplished.

There's still one big advantage to the Treo - email. The Treo supports multiple email addresses very easily, and I use that feature. I use it, but I don't know that I need it. Adjusting the way I deal with email will take a little time, but seems easily accomplished.

So to fairly respond to Stefan, yes, I'm still wedded to me Treo, but that's a habit I can see breaking. In my real world, the N80i will quickly become my primary mobile device, with some add-on software and a bluetooth keyboard. The Treo, will still be at my side, but I'll switch from infrared keyboard to bluetooth on it so I only need one keyboard. The two devices are on different carriers, so I expect that I'll "upgrade" to carrying two devices for business needs. But the Treo will take a back seat and slowly fade from memory. It's a device that's lived it's lifetime and is quickly becoming a dinosaur.

For me the struggle is all about the broad functionality of moving from PC to PDA to Smartphone. The Smartphone is almost smart enough. Almost. And for the convenience and feature set it offers, I'm game to learn how to live without some of the habits I've built over time. They're probably bad habits to begin with.

Just some thoughts on my personal evolution at working anywhere and mobile devices.


Technorati Tags: Nokia, N73, N93, N80i, N-series, Treo 700W, PDA, PIM, mobility