For geeks like me, gadgets are like crack. Last week, I took a big hit off of the PDA/Phone pipe. Aaaaah, the rush.

What that means is that I bought a Treo 600. It's a Palm Pilot and a cell phone, and a camera, and potentially a fly swatter. Fear me, Musca Domestica! Now that I've had this device for about a week, let's review it.

So far, I'm quite pleased. I was looking for a Palm Pilot that was not too big, because I really wanted to carry it around with me all the time. One of the smallest Palms I saw was the Treo 600. Since my cell phone battery was pretty close to needing replacing (and they're nearly as pricey as a phone), it seemed like a reasonable time to hop on the convergence device bandwagon. So, now instead of carrying a small phone, and a medium-sized Palm, I just carry the medium-sized Palm. It fits in my pockets reasonably well and doesn't look absurd when I hold it up to my face (despite what some of my so-called friends say).

This baby lives up to the billing. It's a nice marriage of phone and organizer. The keyboard, although it's small, is much faster than using Graffiti. The screen has so-so resolution, and isn't terribly big for a PDA, but it gets the job done. I love the fact that the phone has a decent quality speakerphone. None of my previous cellphones had that.

So, what's wrong with this device? First, the camera SUCKS. Thankfully, I didn't buy it for the camera, but the pictures are truly abysmal. The colors are all off, so if you take pictures of humans (and we do loves the humans!) be prepared for them to look ghoulish, or at least near-death. They'll also look blurry and underlit due to the slow shutterspeed and lack of a flash. Here's a picture I took of my blog.


Hello blog! It's almost like I'm in an Escher painting. Spooooooky.

Also, the ringtones are not so pleasing to the ear. Being a fool, I browsed Sprint's ringtone selection and chose Black Dog by Led Zeppelin. Zep! Zep is cool, so if I put Black Dog on my cell phone, then I am cool too. It's the Associative property or something. See?

Regardless of the soundness of my argument, the ringtone sounds like crap. Take Black Dog and then play it on a $5 organ, then run that through a tinny speaker, then puke on that. That's my new ringtone. Hello! When your phone makes you long for the Muzak version of Black Dog, then you've made an unfortunate choice in phone sounds.

Overall, I give this device a rating of 293.1. Your mileage may vary.