Treo 750 = the shit

The Treo 750 showed up at the door yesterday and I dug into it quickly. My initial impressions were positive, it looked cleaner (no external antenna), felt lighter and smaller in my hand. I threw it on the charger first as advised to get the battery up to full strength. You can see a comparison of the 650 versus the 750 below. (750 has no antenna)  Then I tried to activate it using the instructions included with the phone.  Of course they didn’t work although I didn’t really expect them to since I was porting Ali’s number from Verizon.

So I called up the activation line and was met by confusion.  they didn’t have the phone number in their system.  I was all ready for yet another customer service cluster F.  However I was pleasantly surprised.  I got transferred to a guy that was able to fix everything on the fly.  He was very polite and in about 10 to 15 minutes it was all worked out and the new phone was up and running.  Kudos to ATT/Cingular phone reps.

Once I was live on the air I started working on getting the device configured with my home Exchange 2003 environment.  It was easy to do.  That was one of the biggest pain’s with the Palm OS, getting it to sync properly with Outlook.  All the time sync attempts would fail or produce unexpected results such as duplicating events in the calendar and/or people in your contacts.  It was very annoying.

With Windows Mobile 5 this process is a dream in comparison.  Updating your Exchange back end is nearly instant with constant pushing and pulling going on.  Instead of a manual sync of mail that happened once an hour with the 650, all calendar updates and outgoing and incoming email happen as soon as they occur.  It works great. The Windows Mobile Internet Explorer also did a better job of displaying web pages than the odd Blazer browser that is used by the Palm OS. 

I spent a few hours digging through the OS, I never used Windows Mobile.  I have been a Palm user since the Palm III.  Even though I appreciated the Palm OS and was very familiar with it, I prefer the Palm version of Windows Mobile.  It just seems easier, more intuitive and more visually appealing.  At least so far, I am a fan.  Supposedly there will be a free upgrade to Windows Mobile 6 offered soon which will pile on even more features into the OS, adding to it’s appeal.  I look forward to it.  Playing with the 750 makes me want to check into the contract on my phone to see when it is up, I’m jealous.

Last night Ali got home late, she was at the hairdresser forever.  I have been bugging her forever to change up her hairstyle.  For awhile I was pressing her to get a perm.  She had one perm years ago and I really liked it.  However she kept putting me off and eventually the idea was ditched because supposedly it would be too severe on her hair.  Then I have been bugging her to cut it.  When I met her, her hair was about shoulder length and I liked it that way.  She has fought that as well.  She said that others have told her they like her hair long.  It annoyed me that she was less concerned with the opinion of her husband when it comes to her appearance.  

Anyway she finally caved and let her hairdresser cut it yesterday.  She pulled into the garage looking totally different.  Her hair lost 8 or 9 inches in length at least, was colored dark, much darker than I ever saw and was cut in a way that looked really good.  The color at first threw me for a loop as I typically like lighter hair but after a bit I adjusted to it and liked that as well.  Ali who was petrified to get it cut beforehand was thrilled with the end result.  I reasoned with her that a shorter hair cut is just better for her because her hair is thin, thin long hair just doesn’t hold up.  The rest of the night she was prancing around, she was so pleased with the outcome.  I guess I WAS right. 🙂

I realized this morning I forgot to update my 300 spreadsheet after Friday’s workout.  Luckily I remembered the numbers and did it this morning.  I missed out on doing it yesterday and the gym totally for that matter because I somehow forgot to pack shorts.

I caught episode two of Heroes last night.  It was still great.  The biggest disappointment was the “limited commercial interruptions” that we enjoyed during week one was replaced with UNLIMITED commercial interruptions.  It was f’ing insane, I didn’t count but I am pretty sure there were at least 10 commercial breaks.  That is such a turn off.

Speaking of TV, we are getting majorly backed up with stuff we can watch.  The stupid Dancing with the Stars triple header each week eats up way too much time.  I may bow out of the show already and just let Ali watch it if she wants. On the DVR we have episodes of Biggest Loser, Kitchen Nightmare’s, DWTS and probably an episode or two of ER.  On top of the Tivo programming I have a TON of movies at home to watch like Ocean’s 13, 1408, FF4 Rise of the Silver Surfer, Hitched, Die Hard 4 and Epic Movie, sheesh.

I plan on trying to update my blog software to the latest and greatest version so the blog could be unavailable during the day.

The blog has been updated without a hitch.  I love it when a plan comes together.