Palm Treo 800w

Not long ago Palm devices defined the standards by which Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) were judged. After a bit of an absence from the top of the heap, Palm is once again in contention with the Palm Treo 800w. It’s a serious business tool but still offers a suite of multimedia capabilities that will be adequate for most users.

Standout Features

• Touch screen
• Windows Mobile 6.1 OS
• Wi-Fi connectivity

Features

The Treo 800w combines the benefits of a touch screen and a keyboard in a rather compact, attractive package. Making selections on the enhanced 2.5-inch, 320x320 resolution screen then typing entries on the keyboard is remarkably handy.

The Windows Mobile 6.1 operating system is at the heart of the many built-in applications including mobile iterations of MS Office, Outlook, and Internet Explorer. Integration with Microsoft Exchange is key for business users allowing access to pushed corporate email as well as calendar, address book, and task lists. Switching to personal email is a quick one touch process. HTML email is supported providing for a computer-like email environment with access to font and format controls and embedded charts and images. Word and Excel documents can be viewed, edited, or created. PowerPoint, PDF, and like documents can only be viewed. Synchronization with your computer requires using Windows XP or Vista.

The Treo 800w features Wi-Fi connectivity at the touch of a button giving quick access to web and corporate information. Though we’re used to faster data access when using Wi-Fi, is notable that the Sprint EV-DO Rev A network, where available, is so fast that Wi-Fi is less likely to be necessary. GPS is also built-in and the device features a wide array of location based services. Among the most useful is based on the GPS tie to the phone’s address book. You can get turn-by-turn directions to an address book location from your current location with a simple tap.

The multimedia player provides support for most popular audio and video formats and the screen quality is adequate for most viewing. The device has 256MB of memory which can be expanded with up to an 8GB microSD card. It’s disappointing that the only connection for a wired headset is through the USB port but requiring use of the included headset or an adapter. On a positive note, Bluetooth wireless stereo headphones are supported.

A fairly basic 2.0 megapixel, 2x zoom camera is included that gives a choice of five resolutions and takes good pictures. The device has video recording capability but the results are lackluster at best.

Talk time for the Palm Treo 800w is estimated at 270 minutes and standby time at 200 hours.