[davburns]

Originally posted by silverado

Well, the patch is only officially released for Australia, New Zealand and Roger's in Canada. Curiously, all of these places have relatively very small populations (~19M Australia, 4M New Zealand and Canada as a whole has something like ~32M).

Ooops. I think you mean Singapore instead of Australia... no official release in Oz (yet). Regardless - your point is still valid (population of Singapore is 4M).

dB

[coreygl]

If we all call t-mobile and tell them as much as we love their service, we are switching to sprint because we could then use gprs.... that might be the kick in the **** these people need.

[Insp_Gadget]

Originally posted by coreygl
If we all call t-mobile and tell them as much as we love their service, we are switching to sprint because we could then use gprs.... that might be the kick in the **** these people need.

The only problem with that is that the Treo 300 was designed for the Sprint network. I'm not sure our Treo 180s and 270s would work on it.

Plus, the coverage for Sprint isn't as good as T-Mobile's in my area. Also, Sprint's network only works in the U.S. To my knowledge, they have no International support. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[KRamsauer]

Originally posted by Insp_Gadget


The only problem with that is that the Treo 300 was designed for the Sprint network. I'm not sure our Treo 180s and 270s would work on it.

Plus, the coverage for Sprint isn't as good as T-Mobile's in my area. Also, Sprint's network only works in the U.S. To my knowledge, they have no International support. Correct me if I'm wrong.

'
True. A GSM phone (like the 180 and 270) will not work on Sprint's network.

[ixtab]

Sprint's CDMA will not work with the 180 or 270, but you can always tell them you will switch to Cingular or AT&T Wireless (both GSM).

[NYMaestro]

There are some nutty responses going on here....

GPRS works on T-Mobile (you need to apply the Asian patch). Also, I have found that their customer and technical support is far better than Sprint and AT&T. Perhaps you need to employ a different approach.

With every cell carrier, the first level of support will not be technical, they are reading things off of an on-line knowledgebase. If you are calling about real technical issues, such as GPRS, they will not know how to deal with this. When I called them for support, the person transfered me to "Wireless Applications Support". The person on the line from that department was very knowledgable. Of course, I had to hide the fact that I was using a Treo because they are not supposed to support it, but that didn't matter.

I have used every US carrier throughly. I used T-Mobile back when it was Omnipoint. Remember that? Talk about bad support...! That was insane. T-Mobile has come a LONG way since then.

Verizon is the best cell carrier, and until recently, had the best support too. Now T-Mobile's customer support is better, though Verizon has the best cell service.

Oh yes, and the GPRS upgrade is not yet official in the US on T-Mobile. Is this a Handspring issue, or a T-Mobile issue? Either way, it is a business decision that involves marketing, revenue and profitability. It is likely that T-Mobile would like to hold on to the exclusivity of its GPRS/PDA on WindowsCE for a while before it allows the market to get more cluttered. OK, fine. I wanted GPRS, so I upgraded using the Asian upgrade. It works fine for now.

Don't be too hard on t-mobile. It is a good company.

[Insp_Gadget]

Originally posted by NYMaestro

Oh yes, and the GPRS upgrade is not yet official in the US on T-Mobile. Is this a Handspring issue, or a T-Mobile issue? Either way, it is a business decision that involves marketing, revenue and profitability. It is likely that T-Mobile would like to hold on to the exclusivity of its GPRS/PDA on WindowsCE for a while before it allows the market to get more cluttered. OK, fine. I wanted GPRS, so I upgraded using the Asian upgrade. It works fine for now.

Don't be too hard on t-mobile. It is a good company.

You're right, it is NOT yet official. That was my point. It's all well and good that people can get the Asian update to work, but the point was that a U.S. SUPPORTED solution is not yet available. I was speculating that T-Mobile could be purposely delaying the release in favor of their collaboration with Microsoft.

I like T-Mobile. Their service has been fine, but I'm not thrilled with the delay in the release of the patch because I'm hearing of working solutions in other markets...suggesting that there is no technical reason for the delay.

It has been suggested that it hasn't been released in the U.S. market due to capacity issues with Handspring's proxy infrastructure and Blazer. I'm not sure I buy that as an excuse, but I'm willing to consider it.

Both Handspring and T-Mobile are tight-lipped about it. If the patch is ready, why doesn't Handspring say so, and publicly acknowledge that T-Mobile is the hold-up? One has to call and complain before a tech (who may or may not know what he is talking about) says "Yeah, we're waiting for T-Mobile to approve it."

Or, if Handspring DOES need more time to properly support the U.S. market, why not say so? A public statement concerning the status of the patch would seem to be in order.

[silverado]

Originally posted by NYMaestro

...
I wanted GPRS, so I upgraded using the Asian upgrade. It works fine for now.

Don't be too hard on t-mobile. It is a good company.

GPRS works on T-Mobile, but I'm REALLY getting sick and tired of the proxy issues with Blazer. I have a supposedly always on connection, but I have to keep having to fiddle with proxy settings, changing it between three different ways to access the web everytime! I keep switching between proxy.pocketdev.org, my own proxy at home and using EudoraWeb to refresh getmorespeed.tmobile.com then going to Blazer and use it without a proxy. Each approach only works some of the time.

Has anyone figured out a consistent way that always works??

I agree that T-Mobile is a good company. I started with them in March with a Treo 180 and I have seen customer service improve over this period of time. In fact I'm often impressed by their service.

[bostonguy]

Has anyone figured out a consistent way that always works??

Sure. Use your home proxy and use Xiino for when you need graphics/Java script and EudoraWeb for when speedy browsing is the goal.

Xiino even makes a pretty quick text browser and with a quick menu command all graphics can be displayed when needed.

I haven't used Blazer for weeks and don't miss it a bit. Aslo haven't been to getmorespeed since then either.

[ixtab]

What do you mean by "Use your home proxy" ?

[silverado]

Originally posted by bostonguy


Sure. Use your home proxy and use Xiino for when you need graphics/Java script and EudoraWeb for when speedy browsing is the goal.

Xiino even makes a pretty quick text browser and with a quick menu command all graphics can be displayed when needed.

I haven't used Blazer for weeks and don't miss it a bit. Aslo haven't been to getmorespeed since then either.

I tried Xiino but I have many problems with it. For starters, it costs $24.95 and Blazer is free . Beyond that, some buggy behavior... it gives me garbled characters when I go to google and all the search results I get from google. I also don't like how it breaks words between lines and how the images it displays are shrunk too small. Less importantly, I also have general problems with its UI compared to Blazer, for example the way you access bookmarks.

However, if you have a fix for the first few problems, I'll quit trying to make Blazer work for now

[MrMagooAZ]

Originally posted by NYMaestro
Oh yes, and the GPRS upgrade is not yet official in the US on T-Mobile. Is this a Handspring issue, or a T-Mobile issue? Either way, it is a business decision that involves marketing, revenue and profitability. It is likely that T-Mobile would like to hold on to the exclusivity of its GPRS/PDA on WindowsCE for a while before it allows the market to get more cluttered.

I could be wrong, but I don't think that any of the cellular companies give a rat's hind-end about what device consumers use to utilize their service. They already practically give away nice phones to get you signed up. It's the monthly fees they they make their money on. The sooner they can get everyone on GPRS and start billing them $5 per MB for usage, the better for them.

So the question still remains, what's the hold-up? I suggest that it's a bandwidth thing. There are already times when I'll get a "system busy" message when trying to make a phone call. Usually it clears up in a few minutes, but it still happens. Consider that GPRS is an "always on" connection, and you start to see the potential for a real bottleneck in service usage.

Now, before all you techno-weenies who admittedly know a lot more about cellular and GPRS technology start jumping all over me about how voice and data are two separate channels or whatever, I know that. I'm NOT saying that the two problems will compound each other. I'm saying that the current issues experienced with voice "overusage" will happen more easily with data usage. Sure, I make calls, but I don't call to check on sports scores, movie times, stock quotes, reading the news, or other data things that I do with my "illegally" upgraded Treo 270.

[KRamsauer]

Originally posted by MrMagooAZ

Now, before all you techno-weenies who admittedly know a lot more about cellular and GPRS technology start jumping all over me about how voice and data are two separate channels or whatever, I know that. I'm NOT saying that the two problems will compound each other. I'm saying that the current issues experienced with voice "overusage" will happen more easily with data usage. Sure, I make calls, but I don't call to check on sports scores, movie times, stock quotes, reading the news, or other data things that I do with my "illegally" upgraded Treo 270.

I read that in times of heavy traffic, GPRS takes a back-seat to voice.