Clever Treo Tricks
With the right software, your Palm smart phone can pull off some surprising things.
Think your Palm Treo is just a simple little smart phone/camera/camcorder/music player/video player? Au contraire. With the right software, your Palm OS or Windows Mobile Treo can do lots more. Here are just five clever tricks your Treo can do.
Several applications let you record calls on your Treo. (But keep in mind that it's illegal to do this in some states without the other party's permission.)
I tried the $20 Palm OS CallRec, and it worked well. The audio quality of the recordings I made was good, and the program's controls were easy to use. You can record with various quality settings, and your recordings are automatically stored onto a Secure Digital card. You can also record voice memos.
Atkins dieters can keep a running tally of all the steak they're eating with Atkins Diet Carb Counter. The carb counter database includes chain-restaurant food, a graphical charting of your carb intake, a journal, and other tools. This $40 utility comes in Palm OS and Windows Mobile versions.
Since you're dieting, you're also exercising, right? Next time you go for a jog, power walk, or bike ride, use your Treo as a sports watch.
For Treos running on the Palm OS, there's the $15 MegaClock. You could also try IntelliTimer ($30), a more feature-laden Palm OS utility.
For the Treo 700w and other Windows Mobile devices, try Timekeeper ($10).
You're waiting for the bus. You've already checked e-mail and voice mail. Now what? Play a game on your Treo, of course. Vintage video games, such as the classics Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man, are finding a new life on handhelds. We've got free trials of Palm OS and Windows versions for each game; they're $15 to keep. Here are the links:
PalmRevolt ($15) is a cool little utility that makes the Palm OS interface look like the Mac OS or Windows XP interface.
Of course, there are just five out of thousands of cool, fun, and useful Palm and Windows Mobile apps. Do you have a favorite? Tell me about it.
Hewlett-Packard recently introduced the HP Compaq nx6325 ($1049), a notebook designed for small businesses. The nx6325 features an optional 11-hour battery, a choice of Advanced Micro Devices processors (the dual-core Turion 64 X2 or the single-core Sempron), a 7-in-1 media card reader, and an optional docking station with its own 160GB hard drive for backup.
Toshiba's Qosmio G35-AV600 landed in the number 15 spot in our annual "100 Best Products of the Year." The Qosmio is the premier multimedia entertainment desktop replacement notebook and earned a rating of 84 (very good) in our tests.
Should your next Windows notebook be a Mac? After reading Editor-in-Chief Harry McCracken's review of the new MacBook, you may be asking yourself that question. The snazzy, attractively priced MacBook earned a rating of 88 (very good) when running Windows applications via Boot Camp, Apple's software that lets you run Windows on an Intel-based Mac.
Is there a particularly cool mobile computing product or service I've missed? Got a spare story idea in your back pocket? Tell me about it. However, I regret that I'm unable to respond to tech-support questions, due to the volume of e-mail I receive.
James A. Martin
