My office has switched me from the very reliable AT&T Blackberry Curve to a Sprint Treo 800w because Sprint is giving the company I work for the service at such a huge discounted rate.  Also my company saves money by not using the Blackberry service (a comparison of $25 per month versus $5 per month). 

Of course it doesn't matter that you are paying the extra for reliability and quality.  With the AT&T service I had worldwide coverage and I had a signal 98% of the time, never dropped calls and my blackberry never locked up unlike the Microsoft OS phones I have which every one has locked up on me forcing me to remove the battery to reset it.

I was one of the first users to get the new Treo 600 when sprint released it many years ago. It was a phone that used the Palm Operating System. It was awsome that I had an organizer and a phone all in one. I have to admit that the phone never locked up but you could tell it was an organizer before it was a phone, meaning the phone didn't always make a connection or receive a call due to not strong signal strength.

The company I work for faded out the palm based phones and moved to a Windows Mobile and Blackberry environment only. Of course I was in love with the touch screen operation of the Treo 600 so figured I would upgrade to the Treo 650(Sprint) which was a Windows Mobile device. Had some issues with the phone locking up alot and so I was upgraded to the Treo 700(Verizon) and the lockups continued and the signal strength was even worse even though people around me with Verizon just phones were working just fine.

Verizon said I should move to more of a device that concentrated more on being a phone and PDA secondary. So they sent me a Motorola Q and the lockups were on a consistent basis. The worst part about Windows Mobile phones locking up is you have no idea they are locked up until you go to use it and notice you can't navigate the phone. The Motorola Q requires you to remove the battery to reset it. This becomes a bit scary to reset a phone while driving not to mention you no longer have the feeling you can rely on your phone.

Verizon sent multiple Q's as replacement but never solving the problem. Once the Verizon contract was up, I switched to the only Global Celluar provider in the world, which is ATT and moved to a Blackberry Curve 8300. I can honestly say it took a little getting use to from a palm based phone or Windows Mobile but it has been nothing but reliable. Strong signal, no lockups, always works and the phone side is just as strong as the PDA side.

If you need to go cheap and easy then go Windows Mobile but be prepared to experience frequent lockups and a very low reliability rating. Of course most of use come to expect this from Microsoft anyhow.

if you need a reliable and quality phone/pda then you may want to consider a blackberry. They may have a slightly higher cost to maintain for the service, but I can assure you with all my travels and conversations with coworkers with other devices... blackberry is the correct answer, at least until the iPhone provides the functionality we need in a phone/pda like sync with microsoft exchange.

You decide... cheap and easy(Microsoft Windows Mobile) OR reliability and quality(Blackberry)

I was one of the very first people to get a Treo 600 when they came out. I was previously a big user of the Palm and even tried the Sony Clie.

My thought was what a great idea including the organizer on the phone. This way I will have all information on one device meaning less to carry around and I will always have the information because I always have my cell phone.

So I went to 5 different Best Buys (the only one carrying the Treo 600 when it was first launched) and finally found one. Had my sprint service switched over and I was rocking and I loved it (and I better at the $600 I spent on it).

I had the Treo 600 for about a year and a half to two years (which is long for me). I then moved further up north in Michigan to the outskirts of Flint. I soon found out that Sprint currently has no service in the outskirts of Flint.

So I moved to Verizon and along with the Verizon service came a Treo 650 (Bluetooth baby!!). I was pretty excited seeing how it is suppose to be an upgrade to the Treo 600. Better screen quality, faster processor, Bluetooth but the still somewhat slow internet connection (not the broadband speed they advertise on other PDA's like the 700w eventually).

I was disappointed with the Treo 650 somewhat. It was still a nice phone but not a strong phone, more of a strong PDA with phone features. While searching for contacts it would lock my entire system up and I had to perform a soft reset on it. With the Treo 650 the battery is now removable (not that I ever found a need to remove the battery). The battery cover caused the device to squeak and make noise while you held the device. I never did use the Bluetooth technology of the device.

So after working with Verizon (which by the way had Excellent customer support) I obtained a replacement phone which turned out to be the new Motorola Q serieis phone. This phone reminds me ALOT of the old blackberry phones. Same type of features but running on Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system. So far its pretty nice. I am very impressed with the power it delivers to include quality in sound in such a slim light case. This phone in your pocket you would never know is there until rings. It has only locked up on me once which required either powering off the phone and turning it back on or just remove and reinsert the battery and then turn the phone back on.

So I give this two thumbs up at this time and would recommend the phone. I am able to maintain a conversation with the Motorola Q phone in areas my Treo 650 would drop. So I believe the phone portion of the Motorola Q is stronger then that of the Treo.

In short... if you want a phone with PDA functionality then the Motorola Q is for you. If you want a PDA with phone features then maybe the Cingular 8125 is more up your ally.

Once you've chosen your moblog, be sure and add the e-mail address you need to post your pictures to in your contacts, and add the URL of your site to your mobile favorites.

Add to contacts:
Press Start
Select Contacts > New
Type in the name of your mobile site
Scroll down to E-mail: and type in the e-mail address
Select Done


Add the site URL:
Select Internet Explorer
Select Menu > Add Favorite
Type in the site URL
Press Add


Here's an example of how easy it is to use a mobile blog. I signed up for a free blog with Textamerica. They gave me an e-mail address, and a URL for my site. It only took a few minutes, and no credit cards changed hands.
I took a picture of a cloud out the window of my office on my Windows Mobile Smartphone. Better than the coffee cup on my desk. This is how I posted it to my moblog using my Smartphone:

Press Start
Select Messaging
Select MMS
Select New
Select Menu > Recipients > Add
Scroll to the contact you added following steps above and select
Type in a subject, which will be your caption
Type in text, which will show up under your image when you open a larger version
Select Send

One word of warning – yes, this will count on your data charges. If you plan to post a lot of pictures, get an unlimited data plan.
Becoming a moblogger is fast, fun, and one more way to enjoy your Windows Mobile powered device.

I am very much into mac's and I recently moved to the MacBook Pro which I use for work and personal. It's my everything machine. Well I am oncall "alot" and work provides a verizon aircard for that purpose when I'm not near a wireless hotspot.

So this verizon aircard worked very well on my powerbook G4 and I expected it to work well on my macbook pro. Well that's what you get when you assume. I assumed the macbook pro had a pcmcia slot, well it doesn't. It has the new slot that I don't have any cards for but is suppose to be the wave of the future.

So how do I solve my remote networking problem? I could go back to using my crappy Dell Latitude D810 that has pcmcia slot but it also has its fair share of lockups, blue screens of death and other Microsoft gifts that they expect us to live with. No, I don't think so.

So I found this software called pdanet that will run, unfortunatly only on windows but what I do is I load it in a parallels window of XP and it does create that network connection with my Motorola Q using the Verizon network.

It's not blazing fast or anything but compared to nothing it works well. I can honestly say it's not as fast as the Verizon Aircard but I am okay with that.

With Blackberry and Palm you are able to setup a special alert option when you see a email or text message from someone or if that email is marked urgent.

I have not found a solution for the Windows Mobile devices.

Closest alternative I have found can be found http://www.pocketpcsoft.com/features.php (Create a Friends List)

Have a look here and see what ATT has to say http://www.wireless.att.com/learn/messa ... il/faq.jsp