7.19.2006

Treo No Longer Sings

Long time readers will remember that this forum has served as a place to eulogize a number of electronic devices. In the last few years, I have managed to:
  • Thrash two Nokia 3650's
  • Wear out one (nearly two) iBooks in twenty four months (having typed the keyboard completely off of one of them)
  • Have a near-death-to-the-phone experience with a Nokia 6600.
  • Konked a Treo 180 in a tragic downhill sledding accident at Avila College.
It should be noted that Jackson kept the 6600 working for months after I was ready to throw it out the window, even when it was sending random bluetooth messages to people (causing him, at one point, to rename the device "Lenny LaGuardi's Treo" to confuse people when the messages arrived on their computer or phone screen).

All that to say....here we go again.

I purchased a Treo 600 on eBay a few weeks ago and instantly declared it to be the best thing since the invention of boneless ice cream. The only snag was...once in a while, the phone portion of the unit would quietly shut itself off. Of course, because your phone is silent most of the time anyway, I wouldn't notice it. Eventually I'd go to make a call and realize "Hey, phone's off, dude!", turn it on and have six voicemails waiting, four of which where Kelsey saying "I do not like this new phone of yours.....".

Thinking I was going to help the situation (dillusion runs deep, you know), I installed the updater software from the Palm website. It seemed to install correctly, but it locked me out of my SIM card, meaning now the phone didn't work at all. This was not the desired result.

After 2 1/2 hrs on the phone with Palm over the course of 2 days, they have declared my unit to be a brick. It is so thrashed that the electronic serial number now reads (and I am not kidding) 12345678910. I actually had a Palm tech tell me, "Wow. Your serial number starts with 1? It must be a really old one." NO! My serial number does NOT start with 1! Your update crashed my treo, dude!"

Fortunately, I still have my old phone laying around. I noticed it sure rings a lot more than that Treo did. I bigtime miss the Palm application integrated into the phone though....

Oh, and Palm is absolving itself of any culpability here, even though their updater did the deed. (the unit is far out of warranty). They say "We don't fix stuff like that unless we tell you over the phone to install the updater...". Huh. Thanks for the warning, guys.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

That little insight about the old phone and the random bluetoothing sheds light on a lot of unanswered questions.

That Palm Customer Service guy cracks me up. Some people just shouldn't be allowed to answer those phones.

Esther Irwin said...

iMate K-Jam, mate. Big screen, qwerty keyboard, PC WINDOWS!! sync's great (if you have a PC), put in your own ringtone. HEY! You could record Jackson's voice as your ring tone!!
Don't worry, I'm just advertising eggs.

Randy Bohlender said...

Esther - thanks, but you're too late. I just hot glued my Motorola Razr to my iPaq back-to-back, making the first dual-screen Pda DumbPhone. It synces with itself via bluetooth but you have to use the headset to use the PDA at the same time.

Anonymous said...

a friend of mine's husband had one of those things... in fact their entire company handed them out to all their employees... seems they had such bad luck with them they told them to all go out and get pocket PC's and never ever use a palm product again... the entire company! EEEK. I'm glad I found out before I bought one. oy.

Tom Mills said...

The trauma of losing your close friend must have gotten you out of your normal rhythm -- not one mention of rich organic coffee! Must be the effects of grief,

Anonymous said...

And I repeat.....Treo, Treo, smash it on a Tree.....OH!

I must say though, that a techy friend spent much time online and discovered an Australian dude who listed all he did to make his treo work well and mine has been humming ever since. It is my third??? or is it fourth one? I had the problem you mentioned, cycling off. they finally replaced it.
If only you hadn't bought it on ebay.

God have mercy. I feel for you, but once they work they are NICE!.