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Blackberry Or Treo....


EricsBrat

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I am doing research for my Christmas present. :unsure:

 

I currently do not have a PDA and have seen posts such as "I received a message that a new cache was located down the street from my work so I headed out with my PDA (for log descriptions and waypoints) and GPS and was FTF."

 

I want to be able to do that, but I don't want a cell phone, a GPS, and a PDA. I want at least the PDA and Cell phone to be one.

 

My question is, is there such a product and if so, what do you recommend? Any suggestions, good and bad, would be appreciated.

 

Thanks,

EricsBrat -- San Jose, CA

:laughing:

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I use a Treo 650 as my cell phone and PDA. I have Cachemate loaded on the Treo, so I can take cache info with me everywhere. If there is cell service, the Treo allows you to access the Internet (but only at about twice dial-up speed). Since the screen is pretty small, I sometimes just go to the Geocaching WAP site to get live data for the cache. Its a pretty slick phone/pda. I use a Garmin 60C for my GPSr.

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I have a Blackberry, mostly for work purposes (email fowarding/sending behind the firewall, etc.). But I've been known to log a cache or two via the wap browser, or to visit the "real" site with images and everything. Works pretty well overall. No Palm capabilities, so no Cachemate on it. It's also a Nextel-model blackberry, and I use it's radio quite a bit to chat with work, friends and family.

 

For caching, I have an old Palm i705 that I use. It's rugged & cheap. 8MB RAM base, holds 1000 caches with 20 logs each; no reason for adding an SD card.

 

Treo's are cool because of integrated Palm OS. If I didn't have the BB, I'd get a Treo.. That said, you can have my Blackberry when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers. :laughing:

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OK I will admit I work for Nextel... Well Sprint now... So my perspective may be a little... Well bias... But this is what I do... I use my blackberry 7520 and I have a program called Trimble Outdoors (trimbleoutdoors.com) this has a compas and tracking as well as the ablility to load maps or area pix of the cache site. I have found it very helpful It only adds about $7 a mont to my bill... But the Data package is where they get you it is $45 a month on top of the cell phone rate plan... just as a side note you can get trimble outdoors on any of the NEXTEL phones that have a color screen... Except for the i95cl that is not GPS enabled...

 

Bottom line I like the features of my 7520... I wish the Treo 650 were GPS enabled... I my jump to that since it is Palm... I was going to wait for the next Treo but now it is slated to be Windows and I hate Microsoft.... But hey we all got to use it...

 

if you have more questions I promise I won't sell you anything I will give you real answers...

 

oh almost forgot... SPOT is another software for the BB7520 it is cool you can get maps while you are out and about... I run both... Trimble to me is better but if I am just in need of killing time and did not plan to cache then I look at the site and put the coords in Spot and go...

 

Trimble has a desktop application that is required to send the maps/pix to your phone.. it is still done OTA (over the air) but you need to program your day first...

Edited by howeler
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I have the bosses old Blackberry, she just bought the Treo. Personally, I would wait a month of so as the prices of the Treo are dropping rapidly and that can only mean a newer version of a PDA/Phone is around the corner. I read on this thread, the 'Palm OS's' run is ending. I don't like the Blackberry because there is no stylus, everything is done with a thumb wheel, yuk. The Treo does have a stylus.

 

Personally, I cache with a Garmin 60cs and a Palm Tungsten E, and they work just fine. I know what you mean about being able to go get those new caches but those urges will wear off before the cost of subscribing to a web service seams reasonable. Good luck.

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I've used the Palm OS for probably 8 or so years. I currently have a Garmin 3600 that I use for work. Work just gave us Blackberry 7290's and after messing with it for about two months now I can honestly say that the Blackberry is a jack of all trades, master of none! Overall, it is a pretty neat device and does indeed handle email pretty well but as far as everything else I think it's pretty weak. The PDA side of it doesn't come close to Palm's software and the phone is OK as long as there isn't much background noise. I wish we could have tried the Treo, I think it is probably the better choice based on the OS.

 

Just my 2 cents.

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Thanks for the link, CTD. I had heard that Palm and PalmSource were getting a divorce. I just checked another forum I somtimes lurk in and find that the Windows operating system is old news there. Sorry about the bum steer.

 

If you get a 650, you'll love everything except the volume on the phone. Palm keeps it low, apparently to avoid some feedback issues. You need to get VolumeCare, which gives you total control over speaker and mic volume. Yes, you need to spend $15 bucks to make your $400 phone actually work in noisy settings.

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Thanks for the link, CTD. I had heard that Palm and PalmSource were getting a divorce. I just checked another forum I somtimes lurk in and find that the Windows operating system is old news there. Sorry about the bum steer.

 

If you get a 650, you'll love everything except the volume on the phone. Palm keeps it low, apparently to avoid some feedback issues. You need to get VolumeCare, which gives you total control over speaker and mic volume. Yes, you need to spend $15 bucks to make your $400 phone actually work in noisy settings.

No problem! :laughing:

 

Thanks for the link to volumecare! I will try it because that is a problem that I have with it.

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I spend 4-12 hours a day on my Treo 650 working or caching. I dont know how I did without it.

 

My Treo Page

My Geocaching page

 

I cant stand caching with a normal GPS. I like having turn by turn mapping, with Tomtom hold the loc of every cache from Maine to DC, no matter where I am I can click an icon of a cache and head right there. I love having high speed (160-170kbps) internet access no matter where I am to log caches, or look up stuff on google (especially good for those puzzle or virtuals that need ore info). Wheil caching, I can stream MP3s. And cachemate or cetus gps. to hold my caches and connect to my Bluetooth GPS!

 

Best of all.. if anything at work goes haywire.. I can fix it in while caching. :rolleyes:

 

Does Blackberry have TomTom maps?

Does Blackberry have Cachemate or Cetus GPS?

 

Just have to slant your bias more =)

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PhotoDuck,

 

Where do you put the bluetooth receiver when you are caching? I would assume putting it in your pocket would kill reception.

 

The reason I ask is a friend has a Treo 650 and is looking for a GPS. He is also interested in getting into Geocaching. I figured a bluetooth receiver would be a pain outside the car.

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I have a BlackBerry for work that I take along when geocaching as a safety precaution if I need to make a call. I was excited when the Groundspeak folks said I could use eBooks and the Mobipocket reader to store full text cache descriptions. However, after downloading their sample

caches I haven't found
and the Mobi reader... I can't figure out how I actually download my own
caches I haven't found
. Has any of the BlackBerry users in this topic figured it out?
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