Friday, October 29, 2004
Thumbthing For Everyone
Thumbthing For Everyone
The three hottest new handhelds: Which one is right for your mobile messaging needs?
Thumbs. For centuries, they have conveyed the simplest of messages. Up/down, good/bad, salvation/lion chow. But look at the folks in the elevators, the checkout lines, even crawling along in traffic jams. They're tapping madly with thumbs on the tiny keyboards of wireless gizmos. The other eight digits -- who needs 'em? For digital nomads, this trend promises to lighten the load. It just might be time to leave the laptop at home and to trust in a pocket-size smart phone and a pair of typing thumbs.
The options have never been richer. For the past three years, the Treo, the RIM (RIMM ) Blackberry, and a youth-oriented gadget called the Sidekick have sparked much of the mobile messaging excitement in the U.S. market. All three are now launching enhanced models. While other options continue to pop up, most shoppers are likely to end up weighing these three alternatives. So how about an old-fashioned bake-off? We've picked up these three, banged out some messages, tried some wireless Web surfing, even made a few old-fashioned phone calls. Now it's just a matter of picking a winner.
It doesn't take long to spot the turf each of these machines is staking out. PalmOne's (PLMO ) new Treo 650 is for mobile digerati who want just about everything. It has a snazzy camera and a touchscreen. Plug in a memory card and you have an MP3 player that can hold some 300 songs. The slimmer Blackberry 7100T feels much more like a normal phone than the other two -- but one with a highly innovative and peculiar keyboard. And T-Mobile's Sidekick II, far less geared toward corporate use, is suited to a generation that lives on instant chat and wants to do it everywhere.
The three hottest new handhelds: Which one is right for your mobile messaging needs?
Thumbs. For centuries, they have conveyed the simplest of messages. Up/down, good/bad, salvation/lion chow. But look at the folks in the elevators, the checkout lines, even crawling along in traffic jams. They're tapping madly with thumbs on the tiny keyboards of wireless gizmos. The other eight digits -- who needs 'em? For digital nomads, this trend promises to lighten the load. It just might be time to leave the laptop at home and to trust in a pocket-size smart phone and a pair of typing thumbs.
The options have never been richer. For the past three years, the Treo, the RIM (RIMM ) Blackberry, and a youth-oriented gadget called the Sidekick have sparked much of the mobile messaging excitement in the U.S. market. All three are now launching enhanced models. While other options continue to pop up, most shoppers are likely to end up weighing these three alternatives. So how about an old-fashioned bake-off? We've picked up these three, banged out some messages, tried some wireless Web surfing, even made a few old-fashioned phone calls. Now it's just a matter of picking a winner.
It doesn't take long to spot the turf each of these machines is staking out. PalmOne's (PLMO ) new Treo 650 is for mobile digerati who want just about everything. It has a snazzy camera and a touchscreen. Plug in a memory card and you have an MP3 player that can hold some 300 songs. The slimmer Blackberry 7100T feels much more like a normal phone than the other two -- but one with a highly innovative and peculiar keyboard. And T-Mobile's Sidekick II, far less geared toward corporate use, is suited to a generation that lives on instant chat and wants to do it everywhere.
# posted by Utahsaint @ 7:52 AM 
