Cool Tech Reviews

Verizon Wireless was the first to announce a $99.99 unlimited voice plan followed by AT&T and T-Mobile, and now Sprint aims to undercut them all:

Sprint Nextel upped the ante in the $99.99 all-you-can-eat rate plan battle Thursday by introducing a service that includes unlimited voice as well as unlimited data and slew of premium services.

Called “Simply Everything,” the plan will give customers unlimited voice as well as unlimited data, text, e-mail, Web-surfing, Sprint TV, Sprint Music, GPS Navigation, and push-to-talk service for $99.99 a month. The company made the announcement during its fourth-quarter earnings call, in which the company also announced heavy financial and customer losses.

The new pricing plan is available to existing and new customers on both Sprint’s CDMA network as well as its Nextel iDEN network starting on Friday. Current customers will not have to renew or extend their contract to switch to the service.

Family pricing is $5 off on the second Simply Everything line, $10 off on the third and so on up to five lines. So how does it stack up compared to the competition?

Clearly Sprint’s offering offers customers the most bang for the buck. But some analysts have warned that if Sprint significantly undercut or added more services to the bundle for the same price that they could start a price war in wireless.

That may be bad news for the carriers, but customers won’t be complaining. There’s more in Sprint’s press release, but one worry with all this low price goodness is that Sprint’s poor financial condition will be exacerbated by the price war and throw a real crimp into WiMax deployment.

The reviews continue to come in for the Palm Treo 700w, Palm’s first venture into the Windows Mobile arena:

mobilepipeline: Review: Palm’s Powerful, Easy Treo 700w

Business Week: Treo 650 or Treo 700w?

MoDaCo: Treo 700w: Could it sway you from your Smartphone?

treocentral: Treo 700w

USA Today: Palm Treo 700w, with Windows Mobile, is likable

Technically Speaking: Two Days With the Treo 700w

jkOnTheRun: Treo 700w video review

Frankly, while they are generally positive, some folks still prefer the Palm OS and/or the Treo 650 that ran it. There are also some related stories as well:

Windows Mobile News points to Verizon Prevents Treo Use As 3G Modem via crippling Bluetooth.

jkOnTheRun has Several tips for the Palm Treo 700w phone.

Also see Windows Mobile News who is all over the Windows Mobile arena.

One of the announcements that created the most buzz at the Consumer Electronic Show this week was the Palm Treo 700w smartphone which was launched in cooperation with Verizon Wireless for their high speed EV-DO wireless service. It’s the first Palm product using the Windows Mobile operating system from Microsoft which is a story in itself ([1], [2]). So how did they do? Frankly, it seems to be a mixed bag.

The Good:

Mobile Tech Review:

The Treo 700w will undoubtedly, like the Palm OS Treo 650, be one of the most popular smartphones on the market this year. It boasts the extremely popular Treo design and usability married to the power of Windows Mobile 5.0. If you’re a Pocket PC fan who always longed for that Treo look and feel, you may just find yourself in heaven. Palm and Verizon tell us that Verizon will be the only carrier to offer the Treo 700w for the first 6 months.

Sascha Segan at PC Magazine - Palm, Verizon Release Treo 700w :

The Treo 700w looks and feels like Palm’s previous, popular Treo 650 – but it runs Windows Mobile 5.0 with plenty of unique Palm extensions.

Yardena Arar at PC World - First Look at the Palm Treo 700w Smartphone:

The Treo 700w is almost guaranteed to please a growing number of mobile professionals who are tied to Microsoft Exchange Server, and the EvDO support is the icing on the cake. Palm may not have single-handedly solved all the problems of Windows Mobile–it’s still a convoluted operating system that frequently gets tangled up in itself–but the Treo 700w is a credible step in the right direction.

The Bad:

David Pogue at the NY Times - A Marriage Not Made in Heaven:

The first question, in Palm’s case, is: why? The answer is: corporate sales.

For years, Palm has stood by, gnashing its teeth and losing market share, as corporate tech buyers lived and breathed the credo, “Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft.” So maybe, thought Palm, it could join that party by offering its much-admired Treo phone with Microsoft inside.

The second question is: how?

From the beginning, Palm’s and Microsoft’s design philosophies were miles apart. Microsoft lived for long lists of features and 65 different ways to get at them, while Palm strove for simplicity and directness.
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How on earth can these two approaches be reconciled?

As it turns out, not very easily. The Treo 700W ($400 with a two-year Verizon commitment) is a Frankensteinian mishmash. Some of its features are so inspired and well executed, you can’t help grinning, while others are so clumsy, you smack your forehead.

Walter Mossberg at the Wall Street Journal - A New Palm Treo Uses Microsoft’s Software, But It Doesn’t Beat 650:

My verdict: Despite some nice new features, the Windows Mobile software is still inferior to the Palm software for one-handed use on the go. Its crucial email and phone functions are also weaker. And there’s a serious bug in its email software that affects individuals, though not corporate users. So the Treo 700w is neither as easy to use nor as powerful as the Treo 650. In addition, the screen on the 700w offers significantly lower resolution than the screen on the 650, and the new model costs twice as much — $400 versus $200.

Both:

Treonauts has a detailed review of what’s better and worse about the Treo 700w as compared to the Treo 650.

CNET notes both pluses and minuses as well for an overall rating of 7.6 out of 10.

Trying to sum up these rather different reviews, I’d say that hard core Palm OS fans are going to be disappointed, while Pocket PC and Windows corporate users are going to be enthusiastic.

Update 1/07: There’s another positive review from Wilson Rothman at Time Online:

Overall, the pairing seems to be a good one. Palm is bringing some of the warmth of the Palm OS to the coldly businesslike Windows Mobile platform, and getting a ride to the top of the corporate ladder in the process. My guess is that Palm will sell plenty of these, and that Microsoft will be happy about it.

I’ve previously mentioned a good review of the Lenovo Z60t Thinkpad and now Tim Supples at Laptop Logic provides a more detailed one and it’s positive as well:

With the launch of the Lenovo Thinkpad Z-Series, a lot of fears have been revealed as well. Many die hard Thinkpad-fanatics, current Thinkpad customers, and potential Thinkpad owners have all expressed concern about how Lenovo would handle the first launch of a new Thinkpad. And we are here to say, put your concerns away. This Thinkpad is definitely different, but still maintains a lot of the core principles that make up the traditional Thinkpad. There will be naysayers that think this is a completely Lenovo-designed notebook and thus inferior, but they are wrong on both counts. The Z-series has been in the works at IBM for a while before Lenovo entered the picture. While it is unclear what changes the Lenovo buyout may have had on the Z-series, none of them were a step in the wrong direction.

The Lenovo Thinkpad Z60t is a stark departure from the standard Thinkpad hierarchy, shaking things up with rounded corners, optional display covers, and a Start key. Our model came with the optional titanium display cover, and it is stylish looking. A long-time criticization of Thinkpads was their plain black stylish, with only a splash of color from logo’s. The titanium cover adds a sexy coat to the machine, making it look more like a hip accessory than a powerful business tool. Despite being a very portable 14″ widescreen under 5lbs, the Z60t is not lacking in performance. A selection of Celeron M and Pentium M chips are available, with a speedy Pentium M 780 (2.0GHz) in our test model. Hard drives are available up to 100GB 5400RPM and DVDRW drives are optional, both of which are on our Z60t. The only lacking part performance-wise is the graphics, Intel’s GMA900 integrated GPU is the only option here.

Much more by following the link. And as in the previous review, the integrated EV-DO is viewed as a big advantage.

Over at PC Magazine, Sascha Segan thinks it’s pretty neat:

Verizon’s answer to the T-Mobile Sidekick, the LG VX9800, is a top-notch phone with an unusual style and features that will appeal primarily to hard-core SMS addicts. It will appeal less to corporate types, because Verizon fails to provide a high-quality corporate e-mail solution, but for consumers looking for a good-sounding phone for text messaging and gaming, the LG VX9800 hits the mark.

At first glance, it appears to be merely a chubby, businesslike, candy bar-style phone (4.6 by 2 by 1 inches, 5.2 oz), with well-spaced keys and a very sharp 160-by-128 pixel color screen, but the VX9800 is something of a quick-change artist. Flip it open horizontally and you see a very usable thumb keyboard and dual stereo speakers flanking a downright gorgeous 320-by-256 pixel color internal screen. With its wide range of movement, the phone’s hinge allows the two halves of the device to lie flat for the best possible two-handed messaging, or into a laptop-like position for sitting on a desk.

Hit the link for a picture of the “clamshell” case, which is interesting, as is the fact that it can be used as an EV-DO modem for a laptop:

This is the first instance that a Verizon non-PDA phone has been equipped with Bluetooth for laptop connectivity with the intention of using the phone as a modem. Yes, other phones can be hacked to work as modems, but you’re violating Verizon’s terms of service to do so. Lest you Verizon subscribers find yourself getting overly excited, it takes some knowledge to get your laptop online with the VX9800—inexplicably, Verizon provides no instructions. Nonetheless, we were successful in getting our Dell and IBM laptops connected to the VX9800’s Dial-Up Networking profile. That was as far as we got, though, because at press time Verizon wouldn’t tell us when the dial-up networking service would become available or how much it would cost.

Which brings us to exactly what it can be used for and the phrase above, “non-PDA phone,” provides the clue that this isn’t the normal smartphone. Cut to Scott Moritz at TheStreet.com:

While some phones are made for work, the VX9800 is clearly made for play. This is no smartphone, which means it has no PDA or PC operating system. So don’t expect to find a Word program, an Excel spreadsheet or any kind of task organizer.

So what does it have? Well, there is the phone (digital only), of course, and it has a camera, Bluetooth, a web browser of sorts, an IM client, and an email/contacts application service for $20 extra per month (there are other options). And there are videos and games:

But then come the demerits for the skimpy display screen. For whatever reason, the LG/Verizon braintrust decided to put a 2.25-inch screen in a 3-inch opening. It’s an odd move for a flagship 3G video and gaming phone.
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And at the moment, Verizon’s media download setup, called VCast, is a tad light on compelling offerings. Unless, of course, you feel like watching TV previews, a Chianti wine tasting or, for a mere $4 extra, a Shakira video.

You can certainly see where Verizon is going with this. Think Japan or South Korea, where media feeds to cell phones are a popular feature. However, given the VCast programs available today, a lot is going to be left to your imagination.

One group of users is probably going to like this phone a lot: gamers. My 7-year-old son’s discovery of the trove of preloaded games opened my eyes to a big market for this phone. You get a few games included, and of course you can also download games from a menu including Evel Knievel for $2.50, Tetris for $3 or unlimited Tetris for $7.50.

Sorry, but that won’t have me picking up the phone, particularly at its current price:

And even with the puny screen, don’t expect to see a bargain basement price. The VX9800 is in the same bracket as rival devices like the new Palm Treo and the Sony PSP. The VX9800 goes for $300 with rebate and two-year contract. And in addition to your calling plan, you will pay another $25 a month for unlimited messaging and access to the games and media offerings.

After sinking hundreds of millions of dollars into a fast evolution data-only, or EV-DO, upgrade to its network, Verizon Wireless’ desire to sell lots of videos and music is understandable. But if you promise the kids thrill rides, you better deliver an amusement park.

Hit both reviews to get the full picture, but it doesn’t seem to me that this one is fully baked yet.

Michael Gartenberg says it’s a delight for road warriors. Aside from the usual goodies,

While there’s a lot to love in this unit, including a/b/g WiFi (so I can stream content off my MediaCenter PC), Bluetooth, three US ports, a 1394 port and an SD reader, what really sets this machine apart is integrated EV-DO. No more looking for a Starbucks, just click and connect. Unlike other WAN integration efforts from Sony using EDGE and Cingular, which is nice, EDGE capability just doesn’t compare in terms of performance to EV-DO.

If you aren’t familiar with EV-DO, Wikipedia has the details. The key is:

Compared to 1xRTT networks currently being used by operators, or the GPRS and EDGE networks employed by their GSM competitors, 1xEV-DO is significantly faster, providing access terminals with download speeds of up to 2.4 Mbit/s. Only terminals with 1xEV-DO chipsets can take advantage of the higher speeds.

And of course “the dual announcement of Verizon and Sprint’s deployment of 1xEV-DO in 2004, and similar announcements by smaller operators in 2005″ doesn’t hurt the technology story.

Back to the Thinkpad, it’s nice to see that Lenovo’s takeover of the old IBM PC Company hasn’t caused a cheapening of features, but there are some differences:

Even more shocking, my unit isn’t standard ThinkPad black but actually a shiny Titanium (in fact, the lid is actually made of Titanium).

All in all, a thumbs up review.