Tuesday December 19, 2006

It's no secret I am stoked about the 700p. It has already helped consolidate my phone and my underutilized Palm. Can it replace my iPod as well? Read on ...

First, I haven't upgraded to an iPod video. I'm stuck in Palm Year 2004 (generation 4). No video, no pictures. Next, it syncs with the iMac at home. Not good when travelling. Last, it's another device to carry around.

Along with the Treo I carry around a couple of SD cards and a small spare battery. On the software side, I have installed QuickNews (trial)  Kinoma 4, TCPMP, Pocket Tunes 4 (trial) and MMPlayer (trial).With the combination of QuickNews and Pocket Tunes, I can quickly peruse podcast feeds and then listen to them in the background. Streaming podcast downloads is a huge advantage for the Treo, although the setup does have issues. The SD card(s) can be used to cache content when connectivity is an issue (in-flight for example). I also stream live content from my favorite talk radio shows quite often, something else the iPod can't do.

There is no doubt that the simplicity of the iPod has value, including iTunes. However, the flexibility of the Treo (700p) has a lot going for it. At this point I'm not yet ready to give up the iPod, but it wouldn't take much in software improvements - and education on my part - to get there.