However, this entry is not about me airing my grievances against the Palm Treo 700p again. Instead, I’m pretty excited about getting a new mobile device this Wednesday when my new BlackBerry Tour 9630 is delivered! Verizon Wireless has been sending me special offers in the mail every couple of months for about a year or so. I went to the bricks and mortar store and asked them about one of the offers that seemed to be in contrast to my current contract with the wireless company. I was sent an offer for an early upgrade discount even though my “New Every Two” promotion doesn’t come due until March 2010. The guy at the brick and mortar store told me that when customers have excellent payment history, they are sometimes given special offers such as additional minutes that they can activate during a certain time period or the ability to upgrade their phones before their contracts expire.

I pay my Verizon Wireless bill as soon as it hits my inbox, so I guess I fall into the category of an excellent payer. Frankly, after paying my bill a few weeks early each billing period for the last few years it’s nice to have my service provider honor that commitment.

The early upgrade offer (which I could only use via the telephone sales department – couldn’t use it at the brick and mortar store) allowed me to pick up a BlackBerry Tour 9630 for the two year contract price of $149.99. For arguably the best BlackBerry device on the market, that’s a pretty decent price point. I’m going to spend the next few days reading the fan sites for BlackBerry users (one of my roommates says that CrackBerry.com is a good one). It’s pretty exciting to get a new device and to get one that is highly rated by most, if not all, of its users.

Once I get the new BlackBerry and use it for a little while, I’ll let you all know how it works!

However, the writer makes an interesting point:

E-mails and text messages and BlackBerrys and all their digital cousins may have given us the illusion of freedom — we tell ourselves that we are unfettered by traditional offices, that we can go anywhere we please — yet in the end they have created a nation of Robert Hylands. We’re never off the clock; that cell phone may ring at dinnertime, that allegedly urgent e-mail may arrive at 11 p.m., that instant message from the regional manager may pop onto the screen when we’re on vacation with our families.

Like almost everyone else who works in a professional setting these days, I have a way of accessing my e-mails from my “home office” (which consists of a desk in the corner of my bedroom and two bookshelves on the side of the desk). And the truth is that when I get home from work, aside from my Yahoo and Gmail e-mail accounts, I also open up my work e-mail account. On a typical day, there are two or three e-mails delivered to my work inbox during the hour long commute home. Sometimes those e-mails are urgent, but most of the time they aren’t pressing at all. Yet, I still have to look.

It’s the ease of the access that’s the problem; the fact that you can access this information in the blink of an eye and that, generally, the information contained in the e-mail can be processed quickly. That’s the problem. That’s why I check my work e-mail as soon as I get home and frequently while I’m at home.

The next big problem is the integration of BlackBerry phones and other smart phones into the work day. One of the reasons that I initially purchased my Treo 700p (the “p” stands for “piece of garbage”) was so that I could access my work e-mail from anywhere. However, once I realized that this meant I would always be connected to the office and once I realized that I essentially didn’t need a smart phone because I was never so far away from a computer that I couldn’t check my e-mail, I turned off the internet on my phone. Turning off the internet turns off the ability to be constantly connected.

However, I do find it interesting that with all of the advances in smart phone technology that I’m already planning for my next phone to be a BlackBerry. I’m on the Verizon Wireless network, but I refuse to pay Verizon Wireless for access to the internet when I already pay my cable company for access and when my office has wi-fi access. So I’m waiting for a wi-fi enabled BlackBerry phone to be available on the Verizon Wireless network before I get a new phone. In essence, I’m preparing to be constantly connected to the office when I really don’t want to be. But I digress…

Most of my co-workers are wrapped up into this “always connected” thing, too. It’s not uncommon for an e-mail to be sent after 5:00pm and for a response to come back around 8:30pm. Frankly, I think that it’s nice that some of the lagging issues that we deal with at the office can come to a conclusion after hours – after we’ve all had some time to process different solutions. However, I think we’ve all subconsciously begun to cut back on the amount of after hours work that we’re performing for the company.

And, honestly, cutting back on after hours work is probably the best thing for today’s worker. When you consider all of the stresses that are wrapped into simply having a job there is little reason to want to bring any of that back to your home with you. The home should and can be the refuge – if we let it.

It’s a joke. This phone is a damned joke.

So I called Verizon Wireless a little while ago and to make a long story short, there’s nothing they can do to help me with this phone. After some discussion with two folks who, by the way, were very pleasant I asked this question: “I have a phone that I can’t use, I can’t replace, I can’t return, and I can’t fix. So are you telling me that I have a $500 paperweight here?” And God bless the Supervisor I was talking to because without actually saying, “Yes,” she said, “Yes.” That’s skill right there!

She made a point about what other business allows you to return a device months, even years, after you bought it? A clever ploy on her part which I’m sure confounds many people, but I came back with the fact that there are lemon laws in place where if your purchase is faulty you can return it. After reminded her that this would be the FOURTH replacement for this phone in an 18 month time frame, she dropped that argument. But she still saved Verizon Wireless some money because in the end – and without actually saying so – she suggested that I dump this device in the garbage. And there you have it, folks. I have a $500 paperweight sitting on my desk. If you’re interested, I’ll let it go for a mere $400…

At this point, I’m not sure whether or not I’ll stay with Verizon. It’s extremely insulting to have them come back at me with, “There’s nothing we can do. Sorry.” I’ve been a loyal customer who pays his bill EARLY for almost a decade and these bums can’t do anything for me? That’s not right. It used to be that the customer was always right – within reason. I believe that I am far within reason on this issue and that Verizon is trying to save themselves from having to give back a few bucks (or even from replacing this phone) from the consumer. It’s a shame, really.

Apparently my business isn’t worth much to this company. But of course, everyone I know has Verizon so if I go to a different carrier my bill will undoubtedly go up due to the fact that I’m on a new network.

I’m incarcerated by my mobile company!

And now I put this out to you folks – what do I do with my phone? Do I bag it up and demolish it with a hammer? Do I box it up and send it over Verizon Wireless and tell them to keep it? Do I donate it to some group when I know that it doesn’t work? Let me know what you think!

I’m being held hostage by Verizon Wireless.

The problem this time around is that my touchscreen seems to work on all parts of the screen, except the middle. So this means that any time I put the stylus on the center of the page, the phone doesn’t recognize it. And what’s so bad about that? Well, the obvious – I can’t get this thing to work the right way and I spent over $600 on the package when I purchased it.

But through some no-good online help, I’ve managed to reset my phone and gotten it stalled out where it asks me to “Use stylus to tape center of target one last time.” And where does this target appear? That’s right – the exact middle of the touchscreen!

So I have a stalled out, piece of garbage phone. Not only is this the worst phone that I’ve ever purchased, but I am going out of my way to dissuade other people from buying this piece of shit. I’ve already gotten two people to stay away from this phone (and the now-tarnished Palm brand) – here’s hoping that this post gets more people to stay away from this brand.

The latest on my Treo 700p is that the new, replacement device that I recently had activated will now not log on to the internet. Tech support was no help because the woman could barely speak English. No, she wasn’t someone sitting in India – she was someone who spoke horrible ebonics and couldn’t complete a word or thought without sounding like an uneducated dunce.

So here I am with the latest, greatest smartphone on the market and the best part about it is anything other than the phone! Palm made a great PDA with this machine…they made a HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE phone with it.

I repeat – stay away from the Treo 700p!

Why denote the first 15 days? Well, with Verizon you can return any item purchased and receive a 100% refund within the first 15 days of purchase. Great deal, right? Right.

Except when your new, expensive smartphone becomes a glitch-ridden, buggy machine on day 16…

When I first got the phone, I spent a lot of time just getting used to it. The weak battery life was annoying and I’ve looked into getting the extended battery (I’m waiting for the price to drop a little bit). The remarkably low volume on the machine was and is still annoying, though I’ve managed to get a software program that boosts the volume to an almost obnoxious level. There is also this weird white screen lag that just pops up randomly. For Windows users, think the Blue Screen of Death – but only for a few seconds and a white screen. And the phone almost completely stalls after sending a text message – very bad.

On the bright side, this thing is an absolutely phenomenal Personal Digital Assistant. I don’t think that any smartphone/PDA out there could even compete with it in terms of getting “the job done.” I can (and I have) read Word documents, download e-mail, surf the web, manage my calendar, sync with my laptop computer, take pictures & videos, use MP3’s as ringtones (after installing free software), and do so much more with this machine. It’s really impressive in the breadth of possible uses that it has for the busy lifestyled, somewhat-of-a-business-oriented kind of guy.

Oh – and it has great game playing abilities so I can download and play Scrabble, Bejeweled, and Monopoly (all sweet games). I’ve also enjoyed the SD card reading abilities which allow me to take some of my favorite pics from the laptop and bring them with me on my phone. That’s a pretty sweet feature – and one that I didn’t think I would ever be making use of, yet I use it almost daily.

The phone DOES work, too…but when it wants to work. That white screen glitch and stalling effect sort of makes the phone aspect of the 700p a hassle to use because when you’re hanging up the phone using the touchscreen or even the red “end” button, you ultimately wind up with the screen freezing and then accidentally pushing another option (usually making a second call).

Another bright note is that the text message and video messaging features are all fully-functioning (when you look beyond the stalling out). Also, Palm lets you store these messages as an IM conversation – so it looks VERY similar to your AOL Instant Messenger conversations on the computer.

I also have to mention that I’m on my second actual phone. The first one had this weird technical glitch where whenever you plugged something into the port at the bottom of the phone (charger, headset, sync wire) and then unplugged it, the phone would seem to think that it still had something plugged into it. For example, I would plug in the wired headset and 1) the people couldn’t hear me talking into the microphone and 2) when I unplugged it, the speaker and microphone on the actual phone itself wouldn’t work.

Yes, I use a wired headset because no one could hear me when I was using the bluetooth device. When I returned the obscenely expensive Bluetooth headset to the Verizon Store, the guy behind the counter was surprised. He wanted to know where I was using the headset. Obviously, I told him that I was using it in the car while driving. His response? “Oh, well that’s why the people can’t hear you. There’s probably a lot of wind noise and car noise in the car.”

I almost punched the guy right in the face. Where exactly would I be using a wireless headset besides my car? Would I be one of those status-seekers who feel the need to walk around the mall or their offices with a little device hanging out of their ear? Hell no!

The bottom line on this device is that it could be a GREAT PDA if it didn’t have the white screen lag, but as far as usability is concerned, I find it lacking. Yes, I can use it to read Word documents and I can use it to manage a calendar and coordinate my schedule, etc, but with the technical glitches that haven’t been fixed by Palm yet, the device is just a pain in the ass sometimes. Once Palm releases some new firmware to upgrade the phone’s internal software, this will be THE Palm device to own!

Until then, look at the much cheaper, similarly styled Motorola Q.