Product Review: Palm Treo 700p and essential accessories

After two years with a Palm 600, I now have a Palm Treo 700p Smartphone.

The phone has all the good things we have come to expect from Palm: a high resolution color screen, exceptional battery life, and of course the Palm OS.

What hasn't changed is the weight and thickness of the Palm 700p. This phone is a brick! Couple that with the Seidio Crystal Case that I'm using, and it definitely is a phone that you know is in your pocket. (The case protects it from biffs when it's dropped, absorbing the impact and popping off. Dropping not recommended for long life though).

Given how slim the Motorola Q Phone and the Blackberry 8700 are, why hasn't Palm been more aggressive with slimming the phone down?

OK, that's my only gripe. The Palm 700p is easy to use, and with a memory card, capable of holding a selection of images from iPhoto, four translations of the Bible, several books and some tunes if you wish.

I highly recommend the following accessories:

• Seidio Junior Desktop Cradle for syncing and charging
  
• Seidio Crystal Case
• Plantronics Bluetooth Headset 640 (This headset is small, discrete, and with the earbud sits in your ear comfortably, and does not fall off -- even when shaking your head or moving quickly. Not recommended for wearing while riding roller coasters though.
• Missing Sync (for Mac OSX, sorry Windows users!) This amazing piece of software lets me use my Treo 700p with Microsoft Entourage for Macintosh, automatically transfer photos from iPhoto and iTunes. A must-have.