A PDA 'Perfect Storm'

(WARNING: This report is based entirely upon rumor, hearsay and wishful thinking.)

In the past two years, some incredible mobile phones and PDAs ever have emerged, tempting even the most tight-fisted gadget enthusiast (including Yours Truly).

For the past two years, I have been using a Treo 270, which was a cool PDA and cell phone when it first shipped but suffered the fatal flaw of working only with Cingular and Sprint networks.

I went with Cingular, and had a nice connection everywhere. Except my house. And my office. And most of California. I was forced to buy and use a separate cell phone. I paid for a second account with Cingular for the wireless data connection. Until I started getting $400 phone bills because of hidden charges and heretofore unmentioned data download restrictions I had no way of monitoring.

I was also irritated by the fact that when I called Cingular tech support, they had clearly never heard of the Treo 270.

I cancelled the Cingular service last year because their billing and customer service were so bad, and have been using my expensive 270 as a plain-old unconnected and second-rate Palm handheld. <Sniff!>

It turns out, my experience was not unique. A recent study revealed the following percentages of customers who say they're dissatisfied with their mobile carriers. The big losers were: T-Mobile (25%), Sprint (21.9%), AT&T Wireless (21.2%) and Cingular (17.9%). The winners were: Verizon Wireless (10.4%) and Nextel (8.8%).

Here's what will come as a surprise to no one: Some two-thirds of the reasons for unhappiness were related to billing problems.

Since my bad Treo-on-Cingular experience -- although repeatedly tempted -- I have been saving myself for a gadget that meets an unreasonable list of requirements:

* Must be both a mobile phone and a full-featured Palm or Pocket PC PDA, but look and feel like a phone, not a grilled cheese sandwich
* Must have a built-in speaker phone
* Must have removable storage, preferably SD
* Must have a usable, full QWERTY keyboard
* Must also attach to a full-size keyboard so I can sit at Peet's sipping tea while surfing the Internet and writing Mike's List at high speed
* Must have a camera built in
* Must enable Internet and e-mail access while simultaneously making calls
* Must support POP3 e-mail
* Must play MP3 files
* Must look pretty

Aha!, you say. The successor to my own Treo 270, the Treo 600, meets all these demands. True enough. Unfortunately, the Treo 600 supports only the top four losers on the "dissatisfaction list" above, and does not support the two winners, Verizon and Nextel. (Verizon has much better coverage than Nextel, so that leaves us with one acceptable carrier). My requirement list continues:

* Must work with Verizon Wireless

But wait! There's more! The Treo's screen is notoriously low-rez -- like something from the early years of color PDA screens. And Bluetooth headsets, laptop connectivity and other benefits are too good to pass up. Two more requirements:

* Must have a high-resolution color screen
* Must have built-in Bluetooth

In short, I want a device that does it all without compromises. That's not asking too much, is it?

Maybe not.

As you may recall, Mike's List reader Robert J. Varipapa posted a petition back in October to get Verizon to launch the 600. The petition got over 4,000 signatures. Verizon CEO Dennis Strigl sent an e-mail to Varipapa telling him that Verizon is "considering adding the Treo 600 to our lineup," and that the device was currently being tested by Verizon engineers.

On April 7 Verizon posted a cryptic note on its web site that said "Coming Soon: Treo 600 Smartphone." The note was linked to a dead page, and vanished soon thereafter.

The plot thickens.

A recent Dow Jones Newswire research note written by Detwiler Mitchell & Co, which was about palmOne's change in CDMA modem suppliers from Vancouver-based Sierra to Newbury Park, California-based G-Tran (which was recently acquired by Flextronics) casually mentioned the Treo 610, a device long shrouded in mystery and legend. The report said the supplier switch would happen on models that followed the Treo 610. The report even specifies that palmOne would launch the Treo 610 on Verizon Wireless during the second quarter of this year.

That sounds to me like an accidental NDA violation. Analysts and market researchers are awash in information and sign NDAs like it's a bodily function. It's easy to forget what's secret and what's public knowledge.

Now let me pause for a moment to explain why, if true, the reality of the Treo 610 is such big news. The Treo 610 is rumored to be, basically, the 600, but with a better screen, more memory and built in Bluetooth!

With the Verizon support, the addition of hi-rez screen and Bluetooth, my list is complete at last!

Put on your rain coats and grab your wallets. A PDA "perfect storm" may soon be passing this way.

Bad Robots

An international robot "Olympics" revealed that robots from various countries tend to excel at the same skills the people in those countries excel in, according to a report on BBC Online. "The Japanese robots reigned supreme when it came to sumo-wrestling, while the European teams showed off their skills on the football pitch... As for the American machines, they specialised in demolishing the living hell out of each other in one-on-one robot combat."

Don't Try This At Home

Case mod enthusiast Andy France built a Windows XP box using as a case -- drum roll, please! -- a Windows XP box!

Don't Waste Your Money!

Proof You Can Buy Anything on the Web

Just fire up your browser and all this can be yours:

A Nintendo controller air freshener

Real Soviet ICBM launch keys

and even a "soiled underwear" safe

Cell Phone Follies

The Shanghai Daily newspaper reported that a Chinese bidder has offered to pay $1.1 million on an auction service called EachNet for the following phone number: 135 8585 8585. Why so much? Apparently pronouncing that number in Chinese sounds just like "let me be rich be rich be rich be rich."

I told you in October about an LG Electronics mobile phone for Muslims with a built-in compass that points to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. (Muslims who pray do so facing Mecca, so the phone helps them figure out which way to pray.) Recently, the Dubai-based Ilkone announced a Muslim phone of their own, called the Ilkone i800, which not only points toward Mecca, but also contains a complete electronic copy of the Koran (along with a translation into English and a search engine). The phone will initially be released in Lebanon, Malaysia, Turkey and Indonesia. You can even use the phone to make calls. The phone is manufactured in Korea.

Someone stole a Siemens SX1 prototype cell phone from the Siemens booth at CeBIT in Hanover, Germany. Unfortunately for the thief, the phone's most interesting feature is built-in GPS tracking. Siemens engineers secretly queried the phone to determine its location, and told the Hanover police where to nab the thief.

NTT DoCoMo has invented a gadget that transforms its 3G FOMA handsets into remote-control units for home appliances. From anywhere in the world, NTT customers should be able to program the VCR to record shows -- AND WATCH THE SHOWS OVER THE PHONE -- turn on and off air conditioners, heaters and lights and view live video from the controller's built-in camera. That's it! I'm moving to Tokyo!

A new cell phone for dieters will be able to measure and track how much fat you have. By pressing the phone against your body, the phone uses electric current to gauge what percentage of your weight is excess fat, according to a report in The Korea Times. Developed through an alliance between LG Electronics and Healthpia, the fat phones are expected to make a big splash when they hit the market this summer.

Mike's List on the Radio

Craig Crossman's Computer America features Mike Elgan every Thursday night. The show runs from 7pm to 9pm SVT (Silicon Valley Time). Listen to Computer America on your local Business TalkRadio station or over the Internet every weeknight. Don't miss Computer America!

Gotta-Get-It Gadgets

The Japanese company Omron recently introduced bathroom scales that support an optional USB gadget which "docks" to the scale to retrieve data on how much you weigh (the gadget also serves as a pedometer) -- and how much of that weight is excess lard. When you connect it to your PC, the fat and weight data from the scale -- as well as info on how much you've been walking, from the pedometer -- is uploaded into a fitness application.

NEC has created a battery that can be recharged in 30 seconds, allowing 80 hours of use at the same level of power as nickel-hydrogen cells. NEC's organic radical battery technology will be built into future NEC mobile products, but the company won't say when. The concept will be discussed at the 12th International Meeting on Lithium Batteries in Nara, Japan on June 27.

Mike's List Merchandise

By popular demand, I now have a Mike's List online store. You can also buy a Mike's List bumper sticker at the Computer America web site!

Wacky Web Sites

Here's a symphony created entirely out of default Windows sound files.

Your mouse pointer. It's what's for dinner.

Animals Yawning must be a boring site, judging from the reaction of the animals pictured.

Who will be Lord of the Flies? Visit Harvard University's Fruit Fly Fight Club and find out.

There are bento boxes (traditional Japanese "to go" food) and then there are bento boxes!

Why would a parent accost dozens of celebrities and take their picture with his child? Why, for the Who's That With Jeremy web site, of course! (Warning: I suspect most or all these pictures may have been created with Photoshop.)

What could be more disgusting than a picture of someone opening his mouth to reveal the partially masticated food inside? How about an entire web site devoted to such pictures? The site is called: "Show Me What You're Eating".

Twisted Games

Axis of Evil

The Logo Game

Click And Clone

Bar Bowling

Mystery Pic o' the Week

What is it? Go here to send YOUR guess (be sure to say where you live). If you're first with the right answer, I'll print your name in the next issue of Mike's List!

LAST WEEK'S MYSTERY PIC: No, it's not "a PC case designed to look like the back end of a cow," "a prototype of the first Gateway computer," or even "a milking simulator used for advanced dairy farmer training," as suggested by some readers. In fact, it's a picture of the "Haptic Cow Simulator Project" for training veterinary students to "palpate the bovine reproductive tract in order to perform pregnancy diagnosis and fertility examination." Instead of sticking their arms into real cows, students can put their hand in this thing and watch a computer screen as they manipulate the virtual innards of a simulated cow interior. A hearty Mike's List congratulations to Cathy Kwon of Irvine, California, for being first with the right answer.

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