[UFO Chicago] treo vs blackberry?

[d.w. harks]

With carefully-arranged electrons, Brian Sobolak wrote:
> 
> I know this is annoyingly broad, but can anyone speak about the relative
> merits of a Treo vs a Blackberry?
> 
> Are there other devices I should consider if I want email in my pocket?
> 
> Can any of them run a shell and ssh?
> 
> brian
> 

I have both -- if you want 'push' email, and don't mind paying extra for
the blackberry service, then the blackberry is the device. Email on the
blackberry is excellent, but nearly everything else is clunky, IMNSHO.
There IS an ssh client, but depending on how you get your blackberry
service, it may be non-trivial to get all the supporting software set
up. There is a Java SDK available, so if you have the desire to write
your own tools, you could potentially code your way through the lack of
good freeware out there.

On top of all that, I know of no open-source sync software -- though
there is some free-as-in-beer sync software for Mac which works well.

If you want Open-Source goodies and lots of flexibility, get the Treo.
On my 600, I've got Lua, a C compiler, OpenChess, a free blog client,
Plucker, a nice MP3/Ogg player, SSH client and so on. There's tons of Open-Source
tools for syncing and programming for Palm. Also, if you get one with
EDGE service, the performance for Internet tasks is excellent.

Unfortunately for me, I can only get my work email through the BB, so
I'm stuck with it. If I could, I'd switch back to the Treo.

d

-- 
David W. Harks <dave at psys.org>