After using the Treo [treotoiphone, treoinhawaii, treoweekone, treofirstimpressions] for a week, I can't imagine not having it. I still miss the elegance and big screen of the Zodiac [zodiacend, zodiacreset], as well as the invisible light weight and no-look usability of the Sony T637, but the Treo is (currently) in a class by itself. Here are some notes after a week's worth of usage:
I bought some eGrips non-slip stickers. They make a custom set for the Treo, but my local CompUSA had a generic set on sale. I slapped a few shapes on the back and along the sides where I hold the unit. These things work great - I haven't dropped it or slid it off of me desk yet.
The Palm-brand screen protector for the Treo is excellent. It gives the screen a slight "sparkly" look that you get with some anti-glare coatings, but it has zero bubbles, no fingerprints, and no glare. And it adheres via static cling instead of stick-um. At $15, it's pretty pricey, but well worth it.
The TCPMP media player works well, but it isn't integrated with the Treo buttons or background playback. For now, I have it installed for videos, and use the RealPlayer for MP3s.
VersaMail seems a bit clunky. I'm using SnapperMail instead, which is much easier to use and read. Unfortunately, the IMAP-capable version of Snapper is a whopping $59, so I may eval some other mail apps.
XpressMail from Cingular (actually Seven) is utterly amazing. It basically installs a tray app on your Windows machine which relays corporate email (MS Exchange), calender events, and even desktop documents via a real-time tunnel to a custom app on your Treo. This software deserves a whole blog post to itself, which I'll write later this week.
It looks like Blazer is actually a custom version of the respectable NetFront browser. I like it quite a bit, but Xiino [xiino3.4, xiinodead, xiinooffline] is still faster, by about 2X when testing the same pages. And speed is all that counts on a mobile web browsing device.
Obfuscate is a cool little freeware app that hides ROM-based programs from the Launcher. Very handy to hide the Quick Tour, Welcome, and VersaMail apps.
LEDOff is another freeware app that disables the LED for various states. I only disable the annoying blinking green state.
NinerPaint looks really damned cool. I wonder if I'll figure out how to use it before the demo expires.
pssh works very well with the Treo keyboard, though everyone seems to like TuSSH better. Guess I should try it.
I installed MergicPing before realizing that there is a built-in terminal app in the Network Preferences app. Ah well, Mergic is more convenient and tiny enough.
FileZ is as useful as ever for figuring out which apps are hogging the most memory.
PalmRevolt is a sweet app that let's you "skin" the default Palm UI and common controls. I can't believe it works so well and is so stable. I have my Treo skinned to look like Mac OSX. This app alone makes the Treo feel as polished as a Symbian phone. Well worth the $14.95 reg fee.
My trusty Fonts4OS5 app makes everything on the Treo look great with a Sans Serif 22 point font, and is a nice compliment to PalmRevolt. However, Fonts4OS5 seems a bit more balky on the Treo than on my Zodiac. I've had one reset apparently caused by Fonts4OS5, and it seems that Xiino keeps forgetting that it should use a custom font size. This didn't happen on the Zod, so maybe I need to look at a new font manager app.
DayNotez supports recorded audio notes on the Treo. Neat!
I sent my favorite ringtone from my Sony T637 to the Treo via IR and it worked perfectly. I wonder if I can extract the message alert tones from the Sony somehow?
The LJP game emulator works pretty well. It's not LJZ (the Zodiac version), but NES games are very playable. The menu UI can be unresponsive at times, however.
