[danspalmone]

I'm new to smartphones, but have been using a Palm since the Palm Professional waaay back in the 90s. I currently have an m515 and a VZW cell phone. When I travel I use the cell phone as a 14.4 modem with my Palm and my laptop. Slow, but it works very well. I'm upgrading my setup and am considering two options. First, a Treo 650 with unlimited data. Second, a Tungsten T5 or LifeDrive with a bluetooth-enabled VZW phone with unlimited data. Here are my questions:

1) When browsing the web, will I notice a difference in speed between WiFi on the T5/LifeDrive and the VZW National Access plan on the Treo 650? Theoretically, the WiFI would be faster, but I'm thinking that 60kbps is plenty fast and the bottleneck for a handheld in rendering a webpage will be the CPU, not the data rate, right?

2) Do you think I will reliably be able to use DUN with the 650 and my laptop, either via bluetooth or a USB cable? I'd rather use the cable since it would draw less power than the BT. I'm so mad that VZW disabled this feature because when I travel I like to use my laptop in hotels, not my Palm, for email, web browsing, etc. I know there is the PDANet and Shadowmite software, but is there any sense as to whether these will work on VZW phones and how well will they work?

Thanks for any opinions.

[race]

i have vzw 650 and the web browsing works... but is definitely not as fast as wifi or evdo.

[adamstew]

1) The Treo is definately slower. It's data spead is around 120kbps. (twice that of a dial up modem). The bottleneck is definately not on the 650...it's in the data network. This would be especially noticeable when browsing on a laptop...however, when browsing on the palm, it's definately plenty of speed for most uses.

2) Shadowmite is just a hop skip and a jump away from BT DUN capability. PDANet should work on any treo, including verizons...but I can't say for sure.

[bennyb0y]

How are the Verizon speeds VRS sprint speeds for the 650?

I thought Cingular was supposed to be faster but every 650 i have used on sprint is very slow. Compaired to my Sprint 600. Any advice?

-b

[danspalmone]

1) The Treo is definately slower. It's data spead is around 120kbps. (twice that of a dial up modem). The bottleneck is definately not on the 650...it's in the data network. This would be especially noticeable when browsing on a laptop...however, when browsing on the palm, it's definately plenty of speed for most uses.

2) Shadowmite is just a hop skip and a jump away from BT DUN capability. PDANet should work on any treo, including verizons...but I can't say for sure.

I know that while browsing on the laptop it would be slower, but 50-70k (144k burst), which is what Verizon tells me I'll get, is acceptable. But like you said, on the Treo itself, that speed I would think, would be plenty fast. Any more opinions on that?

Regarding DUN, I am getting conflicting info from VZW (shocking, eh?). Some reps tell me that a Treo 650 can not do DUN at all. Others tell me it can be used on the National Access plan with a cable hooked up to my laptop for browsing, email, etc. (DUN) like any other data-enabled phone. So forgetting about BT for now, which is it, yea or nay for DUN on a 650?