Palm Treo 650 & Treo TripKit Giveaway

OK - I'll play along. True Story - A couple weeks ago, I had an apointment to close a big deal and was scheduled to rendezvous with an associate before the meeting and then head over to the client together. My associate assured me that he had all the info needed and not to worry - just meet him and he'll get us there. Well, something came up and my associate could not meet me in advance - but he was the one that knew how to get there! And I was already on the road! He started to ty to give me directions over the phone but he was confused and his directions were convoluted. Luckily, I have a Navigation system in my car so I asked him for the client's address so I could plug it in. He didn't know it nor did he know the phone number for me to call! He just "knew how to drive there". It was now 1:10pm and the meeting was at 1:30pm so time was tight. I finally remembered that I had just downloaded a freeware application called "Directory Assistant" and I told him not to worry - I'd just meet him there. With Directory Assistant, you can look up Yellow/White Pages info of businesses and people via the Treo's web access. I simply plugged in the name and city/state of the client and BOOM! I had the address/phone of the client, plugged it into my Nav system, and I was there right on time. Needless to say, we got the business and the rest is history. The Treo paid for itself many times over that day. And kudos to Rick Whitt, Developer of "Directory Assistant".

http://home.triad.rr.com/rlwhitt/palm/

This one time...at band camp...I had my Treo and used it to look up a number to call to get pizza. I used the google search where I typed in pizza and the zip code, and the list of pizza places came right up.

Ok, here's my entry: My trusty old Treo 600 has done pretty good for me, it saved me the week we bought our house with email when I was otherwise offline, but more fun for me has been the surprisingly good pictures it's taken in some exotic locales. I hate lugging around a camera or anything else I don't have to. Heck, that's why I got a Treo, I didn't want to have a PDA and a phone. I figured the camera wouldn't ever do me any good, but wanting to save space, I decided to take it on a couple of trips to the Middle East. The results, while not exactly 8x10 wall-framing stuff, I thought were pretty darn good and certainly web presentable. Check out these shots from Lebanon http://www.menavista.com/lebanonjune2004.htm and these ones from Egypt http://www.menavista.com/egyptdecember2004.htm

One friend even used this shot http://www.menavista.com/Qayt%20Bay/Picture426_11Dec04.jpg on the cover of an Arabic instruction book he's selling now. Not bad work for my trusty old sidekick. That said, sure wouldn't mind upgrading to that 650!

Gamal

My trusty Visor Neo, still running after all these years, is a key component of my geocaching kit. Whenever I go caching, I load all of the geocache descriptions onto the Neo, and use it to keep notes on whatever I've found along the way.

Geocaching is a hobby where you use your GPS to get you to the general vicinity of a hidden contain -- the geocache -- and then you use clues from a web site -- the cache description -- to find where the container is hidden.

Some geocachers are very clever at hiding things and it's very useful to have their clue with you. Once, when trying to find a particularly difficult geocache deep in the redwood forests of Northern California, I read the clues from my Neo several times and searched for a long time with no luck.

I had hiked many miles to the secluded area of an open space preserve and wasn't looking forward to returning empty handed, so I searched for longer than I normally would for a hidden geocache.

Finally, I put my Neo down on a pile of pine needles in an old tree stump, and walked off to see if I could get lucky. Having no luck at all, I returned to the stump and picked up the Neo.

Doing so, I accidently brushed away some of the pine needles. They were covering the geocache. I had set my pda down on top of the cache I couldn't find, and wouldn't have found it if I hadn't picked it back up.

Marty Fouts
Linux kernel developer
Available for work after 2 Dec 05

I suppose my best PDA-related travel story would be finding my way through the wilderness with a Bluetooth GPS. It's not as exotic as some others, I guess, but I'd never pass up a shot at a T650.

I live pretty far off the beaten track. Very far. You can smell the cows, that's how far. Around here, the roads can be tricky, and if you get on the wrong one you can find yourself making a major detour. I once saw a road which couldn't be driven along because of the inconveniently large creek passing through the middle of it, right overtop of where the road used to be. I should note that this was not on the map, but then I think the mapmakers were scared off by the banjo music. There are also roads where you can drive for ten or fifteen miles without a single turnoff, driveway, or anything else to turn around in.

Context over, on to the story. I was even farther out than usual that day, down somewhere in Alleghany or Cattaraugus county on my way to Pennsylvania. I had decided to take the scenic route.

This was my first mistake.

On my map, it was only flagged as County Route 400-something (I can't remember the exact number). The fact that nobody wanted to name it should have been a hint. It looked innocuous enough, but once you were actually driving along it, you got to realize how far into the wilderness you were when you saw the road going up a steep hill, with no guardrail--and the asphalt of the road was literally starting to slide off the edge of the hill.

Once you're on one of these roads, it's very hard to get off of them, because the rare connecting roads usually look exactly the same, and there are few to no road signs. You could get lost with remarkable ease. I actually drove past a few houses that were so far from civilization that I think the owners were people who had gotten stuck out there some time in the 1980s and never made it back. I think I saw a "Re-Elect Reagan" sticker on a rusting Oldsmobile.

Here's where my trusty handheld and Bluetooth GPS came in. With an exact location for myself, and a full set of maps on the handheld, I was able to plot a set of roads that would return to civilization, then follow them precisely. Although I must say, I am glad that I went that route--it was a spectacular view, not to mention another addition of my list of places to hide out from the law and/or dispose of bodies.

This is a true story of how I used my M505 to get my butt out of the middle of nowhere in Laos and back to my hotel without knowing the local language and without my rescuers knowing English.

A couple years ago, during the depths of the .crash, I got involved in this project to bring telecom and data service out to a remote village in rural Laos. The prototype was built here in the US, and we did some basic testing and integration here as well before flying the system, myself and a couple other geeks over there to do the local integration and then set it up.

The foundation I was volunteering for had their office about 10 miles outside of the city of Vientiane, the capital. Like many cities in small developing countries, Vientiane goes from bustling downtown with paved roads to wooden/cement block shacks and dirt roads in nothing flat.

One day I was at the foundation office, in deep geek mode arguing with a couple of the PCMCIA wireless drivers we were going to use for the systems and totally lost track of time. Afternoon became dusk which became dark and when I looked at the clock on my laptop and it said "23:30". I packed up, locked up and headed out the door into pitch black darkness. There was a streetlight about half a mile away, but other than that it was completely dark. This is not a part of the world where everybody has or can afford electricity, so the complete lack of light from the houses across the street wasn't terribly surprising, but still annoying.

I could either wait in the pitch dark for a passing tuk-tuk(a 3-wheel motorized pedicab, nobody has a real car this far out), hope he didn't hit me before he stopped, or I could walk back into town and hope I was not set upon somewhere along the way.
I decided to wait. Walking back in the dark was likely dangerous and if nothing else I could always let myself back into the foundation office and sleep on the floor.

I wait 30 minutes before one zips by, completely oblivious to me.
About 20 minutes later, the same thing happens. Finally, after more than an hour of waiting and occasionally frantic waves, one driver sees me and pulls over. I gleefully run the few steps over to my anonymous rescuer hand over the card of the hotel I'm staying at. He looks at me, nods, and says something in Lao that I didn't understand. I say "15,000 Kip!", the amount I'm willing to pay for the ride. This is about $1.50 US and what I can get a ride for during the day. It's ridiculously low for nighttime, but I'm trying to appear adept at haggling and in control of the situation.

He shakes his head and repeats the same phrase. We go back and forth on this a couple more times, neither of us understanding each other. He looks like he's getting ready to be done with my pasty white geeky ass and take off when I remember my Palm.

I whip out my M505 and go to the NotePad application. The backlight blazes out into the comparative dark and lights up the road around us. I'd only been there a couple days, but the one thing I'd picked up on was that everybody seemed to know Arabic numerals and how to use a four-banger calculator regardless of whether they knew English or not. Commerce is truly the international language.

So I move over to where he's standing and in plain sight scribble "15,000" on the screen, then hand it to him. He shakes his head, scratches out the 15,000 and writes 70,000, which is WAY more than I even have on me. He hands it back. I scribble out the 70,000 and write 30,000 and hand it back to show him. He scribbles that out and writes 45,000. That's fine with me(being precisely what I have on me), so I nod demonstratively, grab my PDA, throw my pack into the vehicle and jump in.

We zip off into the night, stopping briefly to pick up a local, who I notice gets on for all of 5,000 Kip, and about 20 minutes later, I'm at my hotel. I get out, grab my backpack and empty my wallet, placing a sheaf of 5,000 Kip notes in his hand. We nod and smile at each other, before I head into the hotel and he zips off into the night.

Hi guys, I don't know how many Brits you get on here, I check PIC daily and love reading the news and your comments. Anyway here's my story (this is true):

Every year my wifes family hold a family reunion camp in the middle of Wales (UK). We don't go to a dedicated campsite, one of her uncles owns a peice of land literally in the middle of now where.

Before leaving for our camping trip I had been watching a few items on ebay, one item was quite rare to find on ebay and had lost auctions on similar items before, and I didn't want to loose this one! I checked with wife's uncle who had a house about 25 miles away and asked if I could head over there on the night the auction was due to finish and watch the item, which was ok with him.

The auction was due to finish 3 days into the trip, but come that evening I suddenly remembered about the auction but didn't have enough time to make the trip. So armed with my T3 and bluetooth phone, set out to fine some signal to dialup.

I was luckey to find a spot with 2 bars, and using Web Pro, connected to ebay and watched the end of the auction which I won.

Returning back to camp happy, I told those who were interested what I was able to do with my Palm and I think I sold about half a dozon units that night!

Look forward to reading more of your stories, they are all pretty cool

A couple of years ago I got a Treo 600 and started using it for everything. With the right apps, there isn't much a PalmOS smartphone can't do. (I still don't understand why Palm doesn't have a website showcasing all the things you can do with the Treo.) I was planning a trip to Hawaii and used Google to research things I wanted to do during the trip. Having Internet access with you all the time is great because you can actually do something productive when you would otherwise be wasting time (waiting in a line, during the commute to work, waiting for meetings to start, etc.) I actually booked the trip with Expedia on the Treo, had the confirmation emailed to the Treo and then entered the itinerary into DateBk 4. I was quite impressed with myself that I'd booked the trip entirely with a phone and I kept boasting to everyone about what I'd done, but most people just looked at me kinda funny...

After arriving, I was able to use the Palm Zagat app to find a decent local restaurant and then used the Directory Assistant app mentioned above in Gekko's post to find a local bank + used an online map service for directions to the bank + restaurant. A friend had emailed me about a (clothing optional!) beach, so I then headed out that afternoon with a beach towel, sunscreen, a bottle of water and my Treo. The beach was in a VERY secluded area and was only accessible by going down a steep, unmarked trail by a cliff. The beach turned out to be one of the nicest I've ever seen and besides a couple of topless co-eds frolicking together in the surf, there was no one to be seen along what was probably over a mile long perfect stretch of sand. Eventually the perky Sappho Girls tired of frolicking on the beach and headed back to (I assume) frolic in private. So then it was just me and the beach. What a rough life. I dozed off to the sound of the waves and woke up a couple hours later as the sun was setting. I was reluctant to leave this perfect beach, even though it was getting dark. Eventually I headed back to my car. As I walked down the beach, suddenly the clouds came out and it was pitch black. The tide also had risen, wiping out the pathway around some sets of rocks that came out from the cliff dividing the beach into sections. Great. I literally had to feel my way over the rocks. "Perfect Beach" had suddenly become "The Beach From He11". Eventually I came to the end of the beach and realized I must have passed the place where the trail back to the road started. The trail had been almost impossible to find in daylight and now I was having to find it in the dark! I realized I was probably going to have to find somewhere on the beach to sleep until sunrise and hope high tide didn't wipe out the beach (and me along with it). Then I remembered I had my Treo with me. If you ever owned a Treo 600, you'll know it probably has the brightest backlight ever put on a PDA. (It's bright enough for cops to use to blind people in roadside checks...) I turned the Treo on and within 10 minutes I found the trail. With the Treo lighting the was I was (barely) able to follow the narrow trail back to the road.

Sure you can use a Treo to do everything a desktop computer does. But most importantly, it also makes a GREAT $500 flashlight!

TVoR

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Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
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The Palm eCONomy = Communism™

The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038

NetFrontLinux - the next major cellphone OS?: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=8060#111823

A few weeks ago I was travelling home on a Sunday from a wedding. Having left my laptop at home to travel lightly, I was carrying only my Treo and Dell Axim (yes...I have both!). I saw a report that one of my best fantasy football players was determined to be too injured to play for the day, and winning the matchup that week was essential to keep my hopes alive for some money at the end of the year! The site I use for my team is not quite compatible with the Blazer browser, so I wanted to use my Axim's Pocket IE, but the airport had no wifi! Step in the amazing Treo 650 with its BT dialup networking. I quickly set up the dialup connection, got online, changed my roster, and made my flight! I ended up winning the week by a few points, keeping my hopes alive. The fact that the Treo allowed me to do that in a pinch saved me big time!

Back in '98 shortly after landing my new big IT consulting job, I upgraded my Palm Pilot Pro with the Palm III upgrade card (remember the one with more RAM and the IR port?). I'd been out of college for less then a year. I promptly added business cards so that I could use the new beaming functionality (wasn't 1998 a cool year for PDAs?).

As was often the case, when a consultant wasn't on an assignment, I went on a sales call with one of our business development people to help out with some short term configuration management work.

The sales meeting went fine (I was still learning the art of "consultant speak"; you know, lying, without really lying) and we had managed to almost convince the client that we were the right firm for the job. As we were nearing the end of the meeting, Ellen (the sales woman) reached into her pocket to get a business card and was shocked to find that she didn't have any.

I pulled out my Palm and said, "Does anyone have a PDA I can beam the information to?"

Lucky for us, the client (decision maker) had just purchased a shiny new Palm III the day before and was excited to use it (his first PDA). As he pulled out his PIII (with the nifty new form factor and flip lid) he told me that this would be his first beam!

The beaming went smoothly, I was able to give him both mine, and Ellen's information, and the next day we were informed that we had won the project.

I'm at least a little convinced that his excitement at having his first beaming experience swayed him to pick us for the project.

-Mike
miknny AT yahoo DOT com

So I was at an academic conference in downtown Chicago last winter, and this large group (~10 of us or so) I was with decided they wanted some authentic deep-dish pizza. One of the guys, who used to work in Chicago several years ago, said he knew where a Giordano's was, so we all hopped into cabs and met up at a street corner about 20 blocks away from the hotel.

That's when it got interesting. We wandered over a couple of blocks (his memory wasn't spot on) and found ourselves staring at an empty storefront with "CLOSED" sign in the window. That Giordano's was no more.

Chaos erupted. There we were, 10 strangers in a strange land huddling together in the sub-freezing night with nary a cab around. Everyone got out their cellphones and then stopped, realizing they didn't know anyone to call for directions to the nearest pizza joint.

Then I pulled out my Treo 650, fired up Handmark Pocket Express, and searched for "pizza" near the address we were standing. I found a Giordano's a few blocks away, pulled up the map of it (one tap), and off we went. 20 minutes later, we were feasting on hot 'za.

Whenever I see people from that group, they always mention my "amazing, magical phone" and tell others about how it saved our lives...or at least our evening. :-)

Last year after Christmas (got a TREO650 and a GPS from Santa!), we drove from Dallas to New Mexico to go snow boarding at Angel Fire (they got a great board park there!). I got a GPS and Mapopolis to route us there. Well, Mapopolis claimed some tiny road off the interstate and directly through the mountains would be the quickest route. 2/3's of the way into this road, it became one lane. Next we saw a sign that we are traveling through a natural game preserve. Had to stop for Moose, wolves, etc. that would occasionally be in the road. I looked at my car's Miles Till Empty display and saw 32 miles. Uh Oh. No gas stations around here, do we turn back or go for it? I looked at the Mapopolis miles to go readout and it claimed there was 28 miles left. We decided what the heck, might as well add some excitement to the trip. Will the gas display be right, will Mapopolis be right. If both are right, we should make it to Angel Fire and a gas station. If not, we're sleeping with the moose! Well, the gas display was wrong (due to altitude affecting combustion?), but Mapopolis was spot on. We made it with 2 miles to spare on the gas readout. Whew! Thank goodness my Mapopolis/TREO 650 combo worked!

A few years ago when I was working for a NASA contractor I took a trip to Indiana to do some radiation testing on a computer system we were evaluating for use in a Shuttle payload. For me, the Treo was just simply an integral part of not only getting there, but getting the job done.

Sure I did all the boring but essential stuff via the personal organizer functions: Packing list via HandDbase, flight scheduling on the calendar (checkout FlightStatus for checking your flight's status on the road).

But a lot of folks don't know how much real computer stuff a Palm can do if you know a little hackery... I made a homebuilt powered serial cable and was actually able to log into the serial console on our test bed system while they were setting up in the particle accelerator. The portability of the Treo serial rig was really handy to run into the chamber between tests and make sure the system was still functional between bombardments. You know you are a serious geek when you impress the guys running a particle accelerator :).

David

A few years ago I went on an international trip for 10 days. I loaded my m505 & SD to the hilt with all documents and data that I would possibly need. It was all in order for each days events.

On the flight from NY to Columbia, I put the thin m505 in my back pocket for the ride. I must have been sitting on one of the buttons for the 4 or 5 hours because before we landed I pulled it out and it was dead. Charged it in the hotel and it was totally dead and had to be hard reset. I had no backup and almost all my data on the card was accessed by 3rd party apps that got lost in the drain.

Needless to say, that was a loooong week with basic PIMS and no data. The word "backup" became part of my vocabulary after that.

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com

A good friend of mine was able to take a vacation in Sao Paulo, Brazil recently. I could not. I was in Washington, D.C. visiting family, freezing in the first taste of winter.

Now, while it is always wonderful to be with family, there are times when it is preferable to be on a warm beach with a cocktail chasing the ladies.

My friend was chilling on the beaches of Bahia, doing just that. Since I could not join him or his friends, he snapped several photos with his Treo 650 camera and sent them to me via MMS, including a quick video of everyone wishing me well.

I felt that I was transported thousands of miles from our Nation's capital to the warmth of Brazil.

I responded in kind, snapping a few pictures of the Capital Building in the crisp November light of late afternoon, along with a video of me bundled up in fleece.

Global communications via a handheld device such as the Treo 650 brought friends and strangers closer together, wirelessly.

I use my Palm Treo 650 everyday. But I never expected it to be such a versatile tool. My wife and I were traveling in the carribean. We did not speak the language but as any tourist destination it is not a requirement. Luckily as we arrived my wife asked if I could take pictures of the hotel and the surrounding area to send to our kids later via email. I did as I was told. We decided to go sight seeing and got separated from our tour. With not speaking the language and having no idea where we were the Treo came to teh resque. We flagged down a cab and showed him the pictures of the Hotel and surrounding area. He was able to identify the facility and take us back home. That evening the power went out in the Hotel. Dark and unaware were anything was we used the Treo's light to help find our way in the dark. Needless to say my wife and I are sold on our Treo. Which is a good thing when it comes to convincing here to purchase the next generation Treo.

Ever been lost in a country where you not only dont speak the language, but can't read the signs?

Tokyo is a fun place to visit, but can be daunting for a westerner. I was over there for business, and decided I would try to find the Sony store in Ginza, and visit Akihabra (Electric City) to find a Clie NX70V to replace my Visor Deluxe. The irony is that:
1. The only way I had to navigate the subway system was using an english version of subway maps I downloaded.
2. Translation dictionaries and pointing at the screen a lot (icons, Romanjii, and really bad pronounciation guides).
3. I could only find Japanese versions of the Clie.

At the end of the day it highlighted just how critical a device like this is for international travellers -
* Translation dictionaries (I have also used Italian and French in my travels)
* Maps (subways maps in particular)
* Currency conversions (update before travelling)
* Expense tracking (one thing I really miss form the Visor).

~ "Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed." - DV ~

My husband recently started using a Treo 650 for his work and was all excited to get it. He had a business trip to go no the following day and didn't take the manual with him. I tried calling him several times with no success. It turned out he couldn't figure out how to make the thing ring so he didn't know anyone was calling.
We quickly figured it out and he has been loving it ever since.
LOL :)

Some years ago, my wife and I traveled to a Christmas white elephant exchange at a distant relative’s house.

When my wife started unwrapping her “gift”, I noticed that the giver used a Palm IIIxe box for it (the top of the line model at that time). I managed to whisper to her to go along with me, pulled my own IIIx out of my pocket, turned it on and somehow passed it to her unnoticed to slip into the box as she was finishing unwrapping it.

You should have seen the look on the face of the gift giver when my wife pulled a functional Palm out of the box instead of the white elephant. Her agitated declaration of "I can't believe you left the Palm in the box..." to her husband alerted the rest of the guests that this was not what was intended to be given and was a very expensive mistake.

Sensing a quickly growing discord between the couple, my wife pulled the real “gift” out of the box and I confessed to the trickery, to the great relief of the gift giver and much laughter from the rest of the guests.

I've often griped about my Treo's lack of stability and buggy behavior over the year that I've owned it, but all I have to do is look back three years ago, and my Treo becomes my best, most trusted friend all over again.

Back in 2002, I was preparing to take my first trip overseas with my new girlfriend. We were headed to London for a week-long getaway that I wanted to document and share with everyone back home (I was really proud of myself for finally crossing the "pond"). So my plan was this: I would take photos with my brand new Minolta DiMAGE F100 digital camera, pop the SD card into my Palm m505, download the pictures to SplashPhoto, then swap out the SD card with my Palm Bluetooth SD card, connect to my SE T68i, send the pics as attachments in the new version of Snappermail, pay ridiculous data roaming charges, and share my joy with everyone. Even though it sounds absurdly confusing now, I determined after testing this setup several times stateside, my cobbled together solution would work just dandy.

Well, on day one in London after visiting the National Gallery and the British Museum, I figured I was going to give the system a go with my own works of art. After downloading the pictures and doing the SD card dance, I connected to the internet only to find that my version of Snappermail was only good for 30 days!! I had bought the damn thing a month before, but in the early days of the program, they had these weird forced upgrade periods. Don't ask me why.

Needless to say I was freaking on the inside while trying to keep cool in front of my girlfriend, who was already figuring out that the guy she was dating was in fact a really big closet nerd. I hunted down an internet cafe to download the latest version of the software, but remembered I had no way to get the program onto my Palm. The whole plan was foiled. Foiled by a thirty dollar piece of software.

Now did the rest of the world cry out in protest at the lack of photos of me pointing at various crap in England? No. But I was certainly quietly bummed out the rest of the time.

Moral of this story is, I'll take buggy hardware that does everything in one place most of the time, over four things that work perfectly apart but might not play together because of a minor glitch any day of the week.

I've taken my Treo 650 traveling many times, and it's always a great tool to have around. However, my favorite travel story happens to involve somebody else traveling -- I was actually out at a park near my home playing bacce ball. A friend called in a panic, having just reached an unfamiliar city and lost the directions to her destination. I calmly looked up the directions using Mapquest on my Treo, called her back, and relayed them, thus saving the day.

So, it's a travel story, but it's somebody else's travel. I hope that still counts.

We drove from Ohio to Florida- yes, crazy I know; with a 4 year old and a 12 year old- The MP3 player and The Core Pocket Movie Player on our Zire 71 and Zire 72 made it a just a bit more bearable- the usb car charger was a must have as well.

This summer we went on a family trip to the east coast. One day before we left I thought it was time to upgrade to a treo 650. I dreamt of having email and internet access for our 4 weeks away. Well, I got the treo, synced my contacts, and we left to Boston the next morning. Everything went great... for a while. Internet, email, text messaging, checking the weather reports, etc.. It really came in handy. Then we got to the main part of our trip which happened to be in Canada. Verizon failed to mention that none of those functions work there. So that's my story. For most of the trip my treo 650 was just an expensive cell-phone. Hopefully, next time we go to Canada the internet will work. I hear they might.

Probably my most favorite story to tell would be the most recent,

When I went to see Elizabeth Town with a couple of my friends, my good friend Hilary dropped her ring onto the floor. Of course this is a movie theatre and so it was nearly pitch black. I pulled out my trusty Zodiac and turned the backlight all the way to max. I then started scanning the floor in hopes of finding her class ring. I kept trying to find it, but I had no luck. Then I saw a little flash of light coming from the row in front of us (the theatre had stadium seating). I stuck my hand down the crack between the seats and I got her ring back!

The world will end in 2006. Just as it was predicted in the bible along with the release of Microsoft Longhorn.... :p

I am in the process of selling my house and traveling in my van and by air. My current treo is my main link to the electronic world. A few weeks ago I got an email from the ship's captain that my mother had collapsed while in Tunis, Tunisia. The ship's doctor had chosen to leave my mother at the local hospital and continue on without her. I am the only other family member with a passport so I had to arrange a flight to Tunisia, communicate with the American Embassy in Tunis, arrange travel back to the United States, translate French, email my sister, the insurance company & my mother' doctor while in Tunis...all in 72 hours and all on my Treo. I did, however get a Tunisian stamp on my passport for the effort...oh, and a big thanks from Mom. Treos Rock!

Cutler Ferchaud

I had the opportunity to go to Sicily on business and decide to bring my Tripnav GPS with me. I used it with Handmap to get to Mt Etna and then decide that wasn't good enough to see it from the base and decided to climb up a local climing trail to the mouth of the crater. I used pathaway to find my way back. What a view.

I've gone to several trip with my PDA and my usage has grown each and every time

First trip was with my Handspring where I used it to keep a journal of my travels. It worked quite well but grafitti is very slow.

next trip, i had upgraded to an M505 and had a stowaway keyboard too. This was awesome. Journal entries were a snap. Plus metro made travelling a bit easier in HK and LA.

I had the m505 for a while. It made a good adhoc photo album, street finder, and journal book. I wish i got a travel charger cause lugging the stock cradle was a nightmare!

When my m505 drowned, I started travelling with an ipaq1910. Oh man, that was fun.. dismal battery life, unreliable alarms, no keyboard again, The only thing it was good for was mapopolis. Too bad it was SLOOOW..

Now I have my h4150. Wow.. what an improvement. Mapopolis works great, metro got be through the subways of paris, excel kept track of my money, calculator helped convert euros, and the built in wifi let me send a few emails here and there through unsecured hotspots! Woot. I dunno howmany times I checked for free wifi in europe.. but it was great. net-addicts rejoice!

I had to drive from Milwaukee to Chicago for a business meeting. Unfortunately, I was having car problems, so my boss loaned my his Buick Park Avenue for the trip. His car had all the bells and whistles including a feature that when you park the car and turn it off, the driver's seat automatically lowers all of the way and backs up all of the way so that you can get in and out easier. On the trip, I was using my Palm to reference phone numbers and my calendar while making phone calls. While using my Palm, it slipped out of my hand and underneath the seat. I couldn't reach it so decided to wait until I got to my destination to retrieve it. Upon reaching my destination, I turned the car off and listened in horror as my seat lowered and literally crushed my Palm.

Back in college, my friends and I took a road trip up through canada down into michigan to visit someone's family. We knew we'd be crammed into a car on and off for four days, and it would be tough to keep track of directions to all the places we needed to go.
We used my trusty old palm m100 to track all the directions using mapquest and such. We had a very successful trip (minus a seriously weird speeding ticket).

So, I'm in the 122nd Ohio Army Band, based out of Columbus, OH. This past Veterans day we were scheduled for a Veteran's Day parade up in Maumee, OH, 150 miles north on an old military bus that couldn't go faster than 55 miles an hour. We were prepping to depart when somebody checked the Weather Channel and discovered a rather nasty storm front was sweeping down from Canada at a diagonal and would be pounding Maumee 'round time we were due to step off. So, we called the parade coordinator in Maumee and asked if the parade was still on. It was still set for 11 am, if anything were to change, they'd send us an email and give us a call.

We departed Rickenbacker ANG Base at 7 AM and started north. Even 100 miles out, we could see the massive storm front looming. I busted out my snazzy two-week old Treo 650 and browsed to weather.com. The storm wasn't to Maumee yet, but there was a nice thick swath of red just to the north in Toledo. An hour out, it started to pour rain on the highway. Whip out the Treo, and see that Maumee is getting drenched, and it doesn't look like the nasty weather will be stopping any time soon. So, the Commander pulls out his cell phone to call the parade coordinator and discovers that his phone's battery has died. Insert panicking here.

The phone number is back on base, but there's nobody there that can get into his locked office. And while he carries a car charger in his briefcase, the old beaten Army bus doesn't have a car outlet (we've been issued buses without gas pedals - just a stick sticking out of the deck). But... if it was cancelled, there was an email out there in cyberspace screaming to be read. I remember that the commander's email is a Yahoo account. I pull up Yahoo Email on my Treo and approach him, asking him to put his info in. He gives me that "What the hell is this thing?" look.

I tell him that it's a Palm Pilot cell phone. More weird looks. "It has internet."

"Can you go to Yahoo on here?"

"It's already there."

"Wow."

I prompted him again to enter his username and password and he realizes what I'm saying. Check your email because your phone isn't working. So, he logs in and finds an email saying that the parade has been canceled. He announces the cancellation to the bus full of half-drunk Army bandsmen and is met with cheers.

The driver pipes up, "Where do we turn around?" Again, Treo comes to the rescue. Within a few minutes I've pulled up a map showing an exit where we can stop and get breakfast and start on the two hour trip back to Columbus.

"And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."
"My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man."
President John F. Kennedy, Inagural Address, January 20th, 1961

Was going out on a daily bike ride and had just downloaded the MP3 of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy the day before so I threw my Palm in my gearbag behide my seat and put on the headphones (I dont normally take my palm on rides). I rode out to a new area which were very twisty hilly roads. Next thing I knew I was 25 miles out and completely at a loss to where I was (which was a shock as I have never got lost on a bike ride before). I looked at my watch and realized that I had to pick up my kids in an hour and a half and Im 25 miles out and lost and no phone service! Then it hit me, I pulled out my Palm, loaded up Mapopolis and within minutes I was back on track. Needless to say that I always carry my Palm with me on bicycle rides now.

I've been traveling for a long time now . . . almost 5 years . . . ok, maybe this is stretching the definition of travel!

When I first moved to China I had a difficult time of it, perhaps the most depressing year of my life! The main problem? Communication! Not knowing how to say 'lightbulb,' much less being able to order food or make friends can really take it out of you.

Now I'm not one for a lot of studying, so the language thing was coming along slowly until I began to hear/ read about this interesting device called a Palm and this dictionary program 'Plecodict' (then called 'Oxford Dict'). A trip to Hong Kong to pick up a 2nd-hand Clie and a bit of downloading later I was a new man! No more scrawling pictures in busy markets or flipping pages during conversation, with my trusty b/w Clie I was a one-man translating machine! Unfamiliar road sign? No problem, just scribble in the character with the built-in handwriting recognition. Never heard that word before? Hah! Writing on the palm was so much faster then a paper dictionary, not to mention lighter and smaller! I could even save words into the flashcard file to practice later.

When the Clie's screen went funny it was followed by a Tungsten W (a mistake- took a half a year of searching to cobble together enough programs to read Chinese SMS. Though I did enjoy being able to type words into the dictionary while biking through traffic! ) then my current T|E, which is hard at work every day. Besides translating my Palms have gotten me through Hong Kong's labyrinth of subways (MetrO), entertained me on 24 hour train rides (Handstory and Palmreader), helped me introduce my life to strangers and friends (Photobase) and stored all the little bits of information that I can't live without.

When I first bought a Palm it was a cool gadget- now I'm studying TCM at a University here and I can't imagine what I would do without it!

Years ago we were stuck on a DC9 in the back, next to the engines. Talk about loud! My wife and I beamed messages back and forth for 2 hours because we had no other means of communication!

Last April, we went to visit our daughter in Japan. Not knowing Japanese, I bought the Beiks English-Japanese lexicon to add to my Palm Tungsten T3. It worked great (although our menu choices were limited to Japanese words spelled with English characters.)

One of our stops was to a traditional Japanese hotel--a ryokan. While there, we met a French family that spoke neither Japanese nor English. Luckily, we had the French-English lexicon, too, and we acted as "translators" for the other family. (OK, so maybe I remembered a few words of French from high school, too.)

Having also loaded up with the Metro subway maps, the Japan Rail schedules and a few e-books (for the train rides), I didn't miss my computer at all. I even used my WiFi card in Tokyo (which seems to have hot spots just about everywhere) to keep in touch by e-mail with our son back home. (Now, if someone could just create a VoIP application for the Palm, I'd be all set!)

My T3--don't leave home without it.

We were vacationing in St. Maarten for a week. One day, we decided to hike up the mountain that has a terrific view of the eastern side of the island. We parked the rental car, hiked for about an hour, then headed back to the car. Little did we realize that someone went through my backpack in the trunk and specifically stole my T3. What was interesting was the fact that we couldn't figure out how the person opened the trunk since the car was locked and there wasn't any indication of a struggle to open the locks. Also, the thief was very discriminating. He or she only took the T3 and my cell phone, and did not take the other stuff we had in the back.

Oh well, that gave me an opportunity to upgrade to a Treo 650. Good things come in unexpected places.

My favourite story ever, because it's the only time anything like it has ever happened in my 21 years of existence.

Ever since Schoolies, my friends and I have made an annual tradition of renting a big house somewhere, splitting the bill ten ways and having a week of drunken madness in a new place. This year we picked Runaway Bay, Queensland. One night we decided to drive over to Surfer's Paradise and check out our old Schoolies stomping grounds. We wound up in a bar watching a *hideously* ugly man (think the love child of John Candy and Michael Jackson) and one of the most stunning girls I had ever seen covering a bunch of old pop songs from the 80's. I wasn't the only one who'd noticed - every other guy in the bar (young crowd, as always in Surfer's) was doing their best impression of a cartoon character; eyes bugging out and tongue unfurling onto the tables in front of them. My friends included.

After about half an hour, their set was over. Count Ugula went to the bar to get drinks, and the girl was sitting on her own at a table near the stage. I couldn't help myself, and I knew I didn't have much time before someone else tried it. I stood up, walked over, and sat down next to her. I was greeted with a faint look of disdain.

"Excuse me," I said, "but if you let me sit here and talk to you for just five minutes, my friends are going to be insanely jealous. May I?"

That got me a laugh. I was in! Or so I thought. The conversation very quickly started to splutter and die, and I could tell I was about to crash and burn, when she received a message on her phone (some old-model Nokia). She tried to send a reply as we were talking (a *really* bad sign) and wound up cursing at it.

"I've got no credit left. Can I use your phone?" she asked.

Uh-oh, I thought. This is it - the point where I show how much of a nerd I actually am and get written off, like so many times before....

"Sure", I reply, and tentatively pull out my Treo.

"Oh my god," she laughs as she takes it in, "What the hell is that? Like a mini laptop or something?"

"Kinda, yeah," I reply. Then I remember one of the more useless but crowd-pleasing PalmOS apps I'd installed recently - minordemon's Gaydar. "Actually, it's my Gaydar."

"Your what?"

"I'll show you..." I pass the Treo. "Point it at your mate there." Count Ugula is leering at a barmaid. "And press the button on the screen."

The result of this "scan", of course, always comes up Gay. Anyway, I thought it was kinda amusing, but she thinks it's one of the most hilarious things she's ever seen. She wants to try it on everybody. After we've "scanned" everyone in the bar, she demands to know what other stuff the Treo can do. I give her a quick rundown. She insisted I stay for a couple of drinks. I mock-grudingly accepted while the voices in my head clapped, cheered and rioted in the stadium.

We wound up getting very drunk, taking pictures of other people in the bar and then defacing them with the stylus (Media lets you draw on pictures). I invited her back to the house... and she said yes.

My Treo got me laid.

Beat that.

Tim Carroll
Your friendly customer service robot
(and big Treo fan)

One of my favorite uses for my Treo on business trips is to browse the web using Blazer. I love to check and catch up on the latest news using my treo. In one particularly boring training, I used my Treo to catch up on Treo related news.

I also love listening to podcasts on my Treo when traveling.

My story is not exceptional, but my old Palm Tungsten T amazed my brothers in August 2003 during our trip to England. We went from Italy to London and after a week we decided to spend a day visiting Stonehenge. On our way back to London, we stopped in Salisbury, a beautiful city with medieval art and architecture. We visited the magnificent Cathedral and took some pictures outside with our digital camera.
We were resting on the garden in front of the Cathedral, it was a warm sunny afternoon. A friend from Italy called my brother on his mobile phone and we described him the marvellous place. He was so interested that my brother asked if he could send him a picture. At that time we had no camera-phone, but I had a solution: I took the SecureDigital card from the digital camera and inserted it in my Tungsten T, then we wrote a greeting message, attached the picture and sent it with the GPRS connection of my SonyEricsson T68i, through Bluetooth link with the Tungsten T.
My brothers already knew the versatility of Palm handhelds, which I have been using since 1999 for study and all my personal activities, but that time they were really impressed.

When we left New Orleans the day before Katrina hit, past experience with New Orleans' many, almost unbelievable near-misses with fate in the shape of a major hurricane lead us to believe that in all likelihood, we'd be back in the city within the week. So beyond the 2 cats, 2 dogs, a small assortment of shorts, tshirts and underwear, we didn't truly pack for what will have been a 4-month exile by the time we get home at Christmas. Though we'd shared frantic calls with our circle of friends the day we packed to leave ("Are you leaving? Where are you going? There are no hotels open ... what are you doing?" etc ...) we found ourselves, after the storm and the levee breaks and all the devastation, with no clue where many of our friends, family, and coworkers landed and how they fared. Cellphone service was basically gone in the city, leaving the lifeline connection we'd all assumed would be there - cell phones - useless. Discovering that we could still text-message those who were otherwise unreachable by cellphone (the protocol is different) was a godsend. The treo allowed me to research hotels on the evacuation route, keep track of everybody's location (I added a new menu label - "PK" - for everyone's Post-Katrina contact number) - even work on my client's websites while on the road. I had audiobooks on mp3 to keep listen to on the driveÑour odyssey would take us from New Orleans to Texas to MassachusettsÑand the list goes on and on. Some crises call for a Swiss Army Knife; this one called for a Treo.

Sometimes it's the simple things that get you. The other night I was just getting home from a long day and I pulled into my garage - and it was pitch black.

I whipped out my Zire and used the backlight to guide me out of the garage.

A Palm is - Life in the Palm of Your Hand