I was lucky enough to just spend 10 full days in Puerto Vallarta. Sorry I didn’t write… However, now that I’m back and well rested, I thought I’d share some travel tips…

Call your cellular company before you leave to get on a “no roaming charges” plan. If you don’t like the answer you get, try hanging up and calling back. Cingular and Verizon both have free calling plans that you can get on in Puerto Vallarta, and most of the resort cities, but I was the first hand recipient of wrong information, and it would have cost me nearly $300 in roaming and long distance charges.

After being told in December by Verizon “No, Mr Hendison, I’m sorry, but the best you can do is 69 cents a minute”. When it comes to vacations, I have to have a phone, or I can’t go, so I figured I’d just pay. Then I casually griped about it to someone, anticipating an outrageous charge for the 10 days.

She told me she had just gotten back from Puerto Vallarta, and she DID change her “plan” for that 10 days and got free calls all day long. So…I called back Verizon, and sure enough, they had a plan for me to change to.

Then, while in PV, I met someone else with Verizon who found that she got no signal. I suspect that she just forgot to update her roaming with *228 before leaving town. (Either that or her phone was so old that her model wouldn’t work )

As far as service goes, I only had voice, and no data on my phone, so email was out. There were no reception problems though, on my Treo 650.

Also, be aware that on most phones, it is possible to program in the US country code (001) as a prefix so you can still use the address book. If I were making a lot of calls, that would be a must do, so call your phone company before going…

For good info on cel phone specifics in and around other parts of Mexico, I found TomZap.com to be real helpful. Tom even emailed me back! Thanks Tom.

For internet access, there are web cafes and bars everywhere in Pueto Vallarta for as little as $6 an hour. Most of the decent hotels also offer a computer room with one or more pc’s that they rent by the 1/4 hour.

The downside to depending on the hotel computer room is the limited hours of operation, and others using or waiting to use it. I saw the four PC’s at my hotel full every time I walked by!

My own hotel had wireless access for $70 a week with my laptop. It only worked in and around the lobby, and that’s about all anyone offers at this point. There is no cellular digital service, so my Verizon EVDO card didn’t work.

If you have no wireless card, and want t obuy dialup access while you’re there, you should be able to find a provider here, but why bother?

Brad Franklin, who used to be the store manager of Cyber Exchange and MPH Computing in Portland is now living in Boise Idaho. He helps people get their PDA/s Palm Treos, Blackberry devices etc. to call, synch with Outlook, stream internet, check email etc. Save yourself the frustration. If you need help in Boise with a PDA or cell phone, Brad can figure out your problem, and let you get back to work. Visit his site now

Today, I synched my Palm treo 650 phone and left home. On the road, I tried to make a call, and all of my contacts were blank, gone, missing, etc. The appointments were there, but all the contacts were gone. To further frustrate and confuse me, the categories for the contacts were all still there! WTF is that all about?

Here’s how I fixed it, after being quite relieved to find my contacts still in Outlook. First I backed up Outlook with the Free Microsoft Outlook backup program. Then I went to my palm icon in the tray and right clicked, choosing custom. I told it that “desktop overwrites handheld” (but did not make that the default). One long synch later, all was well. Yikes! What a frustrating day w/ no contacts. Nice phone though. It’s sure durable too!

Complete step by step instructions to hard reset, soft reset, or warm reset your Palm Treo 650 are here on the Palm website .

After being unable to find directions on Google, I searched at the Palm site, which is quite good. This is the best forum I’ve found for specific Treo questions, Treo Central.

I’ve had this phone a month or so, and it’s okay. It’s no faster than my Samsung I730 was, but at least it’s usable. I hear they’re updated the software for that phone now. I should have followed my own advice, and never ever bought something with brand new version 1.0 software!

I’m about to get ANOTHER replacement treo. This one reboots every time I press a letter key to forward an e-mail or address a new one. what a weird pain in the neck. I can reply just fine, but if I try to forward, and manually enter the address, forget it – reboot. I can use my contacts list to forward or send new mail just fine, but it’s the act of pressing the letter button that causes a reboot!

***resolution***
Hard reset, losing all data. But it was backed up.
How to reboot or reset Palm Treo

Well, three days with the Palm Treo 650, and this morning on the road, 20 minutes from home on a 2 hour drive, the phone started rebooting randomly.

I might have lived with it for the day, but with this phone, every time it powers on, the phone is turned off by default, (How dumb is that?) So, therefore my phone was always off. Soft reboot didn’t fix, so I went to a Verizion store, where I had to return/exchange it.

Of course, the Verizon store had no cable to move the calendar and phone book, and Palm won’t apparently allow beaming the whole address book and calendar, so I spent the day without my contacts and calendar, until I got home to sync.

I tried to get them again to turn on my Kyocera 7135, and they refused, saying they’re not ALLOWED t oby the government since it has no GPS. What a crock!

15 days came yesterday, and I just couldn’t stand it anymore and returned it.

I got the newest Treo 650 (with camera and movie function) and have returned the buggy, non-cooperative monster. There are just too many little things wrong that all add up to a frustrating experience.

So far, (an hour) the Treo sounds better and clearer to my callers, and that’s the most important thing. The rest will just have to wait.

If you’re determined to make the Samsung i730 work, there’s no better forum than this one…

http://pdaphonehome.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=169

I was having a lot of trouble placing the phone in the cradle. It just didn’t seem to want to go, and I was afraid of bending pins etc. I thought this was going to be a dealbreaker, but now I’ve figured out that it’s not actually a difficult procedure after all.

Try as I might, I could not easily slide the phone down on the charger. Well, apparently, if you place the bottom of the phone into the charger first, then you ca neasily lean the phone back into the cradle where it snaps into place.

Incoming call waiting calls are not easily answered by a tap on the earpiece, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out. Also, there appears to be no way to mute yourself from the ear piece either. That’s kind of irritating.

I got some family photos easily transferred into the device, and they look great on the brilliant color screen.

The volume button is an up-down option on the left side of the pda. It inadvertently gets touched, toggling the ringer on – off – and vibrate. there doesn’t seem to be a way to disable it or change the functions.

7pm now – what a long day! – I WILL print the manual. there. Now it’s printing.

The slide out keypad light goes out, too quickly, and you can’t see the keys to type. This forum is great. Within 10 minutes of posting I had an answer for the keyboard lights.

the voice recognition stinks. same forum recommends getting something called Microsoft Voice Commander ($40) instead of using the crappy Voice signal that comes with it. There IS voice prompting, but it works erratically.

Well after narrowing my search down to two “close to perfect” phones I had settled on the Palm Treo 650. The other choice was the Audiovox 6600. I’ve had two months to look, since my contract was coming up with Verizon, so I’d done my research.

I have Verizon and any reception feedback or phone issues I ever mention may vary with your service.

The worst thing I heard about the Treo 650 was that when not using a headset, the sound was going to be faint. The volume doesn’t go high enough. Well, I suppose that was fine, and thought I was committed. Plus, I had been a Palm user since 1996 too, and I didn’t relish the idea of Windows on my phone. However, there were tons of things I would like to try, so I wasn’t opposed to it.

My needs were precise. I needed the ability to send and receive email through wireless broadband, and a good quality phone/pda. I did not want a “smart phone”, because I needed a stylus for e-mail’s and notes. Then those notes can sync with my Outlook.

July 7th, the Samsung I730 was actually available. My contract came up for renewal the 21st, and I bought it yesterday.

Where? Verizon Wireless Store on Sunnyside in Clackamas, Or.

How much? I walked out for $525 on my card, with a $30 reduction in my monthly bill. Not back for the most state of the art Star Trek phone in the world!

Brief day 1:
Manual comes on CD. How nice. So, I’ve posted the manual for free here. Hey Samsung, many people cannot deal with this. They need printed material, and either don’t want to print it out or know how. For

I got home, and got the Motorola 850 Bluetooth headset charged and synced easily. I read the paper manual step by step, then guessed, poked and prodded my way through Microsoft Pocket PC until I found the “Bluetooth area”. (Start > settings> connections tab.)

First call from cel to home, my wife said it sounded like I was on a speakerphone. How nice. Well, then she called me, and I called her, from upstairs and downstairs, and she wasn’t impressed with the sound. I was fine, but I’ll have to check later with a corded headset. Besides, it sounds fine to me, and it sure will be cool to tap my ear when the phone rings!

The batteries were dying, because they came poorly charged, so I got the cradle going and charged it, not installing any software until morning.

Morning -
Today started at 6am when we all (my wife Tara and my boys Mikkel, 8, and Matthew, 5) left the house to go to the OMSI Observatory to watch the Space Shuttle launch. (It was fun, and we even got on the local news)

Leaving the launch site, what do you know, my $100 cordless headset had fallen off my shirt button? See, I figured it was secure with the ear hook and the folding boom clamped, but no such luck. Someone found it, and as I sit, it’s on my ear safely. Motorola provided a small loop on it for attaching a neck lanyard, but they didn’t include a lanyard. Nice touch.

Okay, now I’ve synced my “old phone” for the last time, then installed the Microsoft Active Sync 3.7 software, AND THEN plugged in the phone, found new hardware etc. And “Voila!” It synced perfectly with my new phone with my current Outlook, and all the appointment notes from yesterday’s Palm Pilot. I’m impressed.

If this doesn’t work for you, then you’ve likely got a problem. Don’t call for help yet. Do a spyware scan. Then without restarting your computer, use msconfig (Google it) to remove all your startup junk. Then restart your computer and try again.

Okay, a few phone calls have come and gone. I’m told that I sound like I’m on a speaker phone. Hmmm. This isn’t good. But I’ll worry about it later. It was a little confusing, but I got it figured out. After one morning, I did manage to find out the exact range of Bluetooth… Not quite far enough. Stay in the room, or right outside the door.

This is supposed to be a Blog about the Samsung I730 and all the cool stuff it will do.

First, Internet explorer is there, EVDO works, fast and sure is cool. My own website loads my logo and customer login box. Putting in the address is a joke though, and I’ll have to figure out how to import some bookmarks. I know the Palm Graffiti writing. This supports graffiti, but also “Letter Recognizer” which seems similar, and “Transcriber”, which lets you write anywhere on the screen. That seems the most promising, but I can’t get it to save data that way. I’ll figure it out. (Maybe I’ll fire up the manual)

Of course there’s the slide out thumb keyboard, which I’ll get better with I’m sure. If I learn to use that I can answer email from anywhere, without a laptop, and that’s what I’m after.

I also want to use it as a Dictaphone. Whether recording customer meetings or writing articles while driving, I’m assuming these files can be converted to text fairly accurately.

Voice command – Wow, guess what? I can tap my ear and say “call Charlie” and it will call Charlie. Right out of my synced Outlook. Wow. If they can do that, they can certainly convert my text, right?

Oh, here’s a downside. The plastic holster wisely holds the screen face in. This is great. Until you realize that if Charlie has multiple phone numbers, it will ask you which one. Not verbally, but on the screen. Therefore, while driving, you can only call those who have unique names and one phone number without looking at it. How hard would it be to get some speech synthesis here? Maybe there’s a demo I can try…

*** My “old phone” is a Palm based Kyocera 7135. This was the best phone I’ve had since the Star-Tac. But the old girl can’t get broadband internet though Verizons EDVO service. I’ve had to maintain a separate account for that for my laptop. Well with this new phone, I’m not supposed to need a laptop. We’ll see…