BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : NOVEMBER 13, 2000 ISSUE
TECH BUYING GUIDE ONLINE EXTRA: Part PDA, Part Phone, and Pretty Tricky At this point, a new breed of wireless devices that double as personal organizers are more hassle than they're worth I'm doing 50 mph down Chicago's Lake Shore Drive when I start wondering where the movie Dancer in the Dark is playing. What I do next is not recommended for accident-free driving: I flip open my new Sprint TP3000 mobile phone, get on the Web with a few one-handed jabs of the stylus that comes with it, and quickly discover a showing near my home in suburban Evanston. I go to the phone's address book, have it dial a friend, and leave her a voice mail about going to the movies. This is the brave new world of wireless communications -- when it works right. I spent several days testing two new PDA phones, which resemble Palm personal digital assistants morphed into mobile phones. In the process, I got a good look at the coming battle between phone companies and PDA makers for dominance in this new market. EXASPERATING. Sprint's $399 TP3000 is a lot like a big cell phone with a touch-sensitive screen that's slightly smaller than a business card. The second, the VisorPhone, is an attachment that clips onto the back of the Handspring Visor, a rival of Palm's. It costs only $299 -- but you also need the PDA (priced between $149 and $449) to use it. I have to say upfront that I found trying to use these devices a lot like dealing with an HMO -- exasperating and time-consuming. I spent hours asking for advice, flipping through instruction manuals, and dealing with equipment glitches. I couldn't get phone reception anywhere in Chicago on the Visor except around the main business district, though the company promised the problem would be fixed by the time the device is released commercially later this year. I had no reception problems with the TP3000, but I sometimes couldn't log onto the Net. And I never did master some features, notably the voice-commanded address book that would make it safer to use while driving. That's partly because I lack patience and partly because Sprint's Web site was always overloaded when I tried. That said, the TP3000 is pretty cool when it works. It's not particularly bulky and has all the functions of an advanced mobile phone, such as voice mail and speed dial, combined with the to-do and contact lists of a personal organizer. The phone's 620KB of internal memory allows plenty of space for phone numbers, and street and e-mail addresses, and it's quite easy to find a number in your contact list and dial automatically. INTERNET ANYWHERE. What I like best is the phone's ready Net access. True, at Sprint at least, surfing the Net costs the same per minute as making a cell-phone call. But you can get an incredible amount of information quickly by clicking on a menu of content providers, including America Online, Yahoo!, Fidelity, and Charles Schwab. In a minute or less, I was able to look up stock prices, find a movie listing, or read quick-hit stories on major news sites. In theory, you can also surf any Web site by entering its URL, but the ones I tried aren't accessible to wireless devices yet. I also easily scrolled through my e-mail at Yahoo! and AOL. It's cumbersome to actually read e-mail on such a small screen, but checking e-mail headings is a breeze. You can even use AOL's instant-messaging system to converse with friends online. The trouble comes when you try to type. It's almost impossible to hit the tiny letters on the touch screen in exactly the right place. On mine, you had to hit slightly to the right of center of each letter -- which made letters like P on the right side really hard to hit. Typos quickly proliferate. Here's my first e-mail, which was to the department chief at the University of Illinois-Chicago, where I teach a class: "hey steve hankjs for comingtto class and helping out,thane." That took several minutes of laborious tapping with the stylus. I got better at it, but not much. The VisorPhone's larger, 3-inch by 2 3/8-inch screen, makes writing a lot easier. The device also has a text-messaging capability (called SMS) that allows users to swap short missives with friends with an e-mail address or an SMS-enabled cell phone. TALKING TO YOUR PDA. And Visor users probably already have long contact lists stored in their machines. Snap on the phone attachment, and you can dial anyone on that list or enter your highest-priority contacts in a one-touch speed-dial list. You can hear conversations pretty well using a little earpiece that comes with the phone. But everyone I called said the sound was hollow and hard to understand. Also, the Visor phone isn't set up with the instant Net access that the TP3000 has. You have to download software from AOL and other providers to get it. Handspring says reception is better in most cities than Chicago and that VoiceStream, its service provider in Chicago, is adding capacity rapidly. But I wouldn't buy a Visor phone without testing reception in your area carefully. For me, that's the watchword on these devices. This stuff is brand new, and it shows. By Thane Peterson in Chicago _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP					RELATED ITEMS The New Wireless Wonders Desktops What If It Breaks? 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