Brand New Palm Treo 680 For $49.99 When Signing Up Or Upgrading With Cingular!

i seem to be required to have to buy either the pda max for 49.99 or the pda connect unlimited for 39.99 together with the plan??

Yea, me too. Why do I have to buy the pda max or pda connect unlimited together with the plan?

hey dan, would you happen to know if the premium amex car rental insurance is worth it?

https://www152.americanexpress.com/fsea/travel/car_rental/product.do

how do i only upgrade i see the conditions are for a new plan only?

Any idea how to cancel a Cingular plan and not pay the fee?

Dan, OD had a great deal on the Canon A540. Here they have it marked down from 199 to $159.99:
http://www.officedepot.com/textSearch.do?uniqueSearchFlag=true&Ntt=a540

To buy you must call in, cause their website is messed and doesnt except the codes. Now there are 2 codes and if you’ll get the right sales rep, then your in luck.

First ask them to apply 84957255 – ($20 of $100).
Then – 65736273 – 10% of ANY Order!

The last code they said that its only for web purchases, but I had a nice sales rep who accepted it (if you get a man, hang up and call again)…

Total w/o 10 percent: 151.71(Inc.$11.72 -Tax)

Enjoy,
Yossi

Update: The price keeps on chaging back to 199.99 like every 20 min., so just make sure that when u call, the website has the price when it’s right

-There is an option to upgrade your phone right on the treo 680 page.

-Personally i would spend the extra $40-$50 or so and get a nice 6MP canon elph from amazon or costco…

By the way, to all who aren’t familiar with the new treo 680… its a very basic feature set PDA phone, for those who aren’t sure why they would need a PDA-phone combo. In fact, some reviewers called it “The Smartphone for Soccer Moms”.
I’ll agree, this is a pretty good price, but if you’re going to spend the money and lug around a PDA phone, I’d recommend one with some more competitive features (decent amount of memory, WiFi, etc).
Just my 2 cents…

Its a shame that there still is no Palm OS high-end gsm phone…it’s like they want to force people off the Palm OS…

“Its a shame that there still is no Palm OS high-end gsm phone…it’s like they want to force people off the Palm OS…

LOL, that’s exactly what it is!
C’mon Dan, get with the program! Even Palm is admitting that their software is obscolete- at least as far as power users go.
Palm’s saving grace was that their OS was known to be more simple and therefore had an easier learning curve than windows mobile.

However, with less complixity, you also limit your features. I can give you a list of things that Palm OS won’t let me do that pocket PC’s from even a few years ago do with ease. So, from a marketing point of view, it would make sense for the higher-end treo’s to run Windows Mobile.

Still don’t buy it? Remember when 3rd party hardware manufacturers such as samsung used to make palm-OS based phones? Well, have you seen any lately?
That’s right, they all seem to have switched to Windows Mobile…
But this is a whole long discussion that probably neither you nor I have time to get into using comments here.
Until next time…

Oh Boy, here comes another Palm VS. Windows argument…

All I look for is a solid easy to use phone, with a solid set of features and phone as modem capabilities.

The 700p does all of that.

I have no need for wi-fi, if i am in a place that has wifi I have a laptop to use it with, if not i have ev-do anywhere else i am.

I have no need for Skype-after all futurecell lets you talk to the world for free these days!

The whole Samsung Palm OS saga is very interesting as I was personally involved in it.

What happened was that they came up with an amazing palm os phone, the samsung i550, of which i helped beta test for them, if fact i still have the 3 prototype i550’s.

The problem was every time the phones had a couple bugs in them and it would take months to come out with a new version of it.

By the time they worked out all of the kinks in it sprint had already moved on to EVDO, while the i550 in development for years was still running 1x.

At that point Sprint and Samsung decided to kill the phone as they werent about to release an expensive phone with top-notch features running yesterday’s 1x technology.

After the phone was killed for US release(it is available in mexico and other countries) Samsung decided to fire all of its’ Palm OS engineers, including my samsung source.

Here are some posts i made on the whole topic over at pdaphone.com:
Post On End Of Samsung Palm OS Phones
i500 features post
i550 faq post

Here’s how Walter Mossberg of the WSJ puts the palm vs. smartphone os when comparing the treo 680 to the dash and the Q,
http://ptech.wsj.com/ptech.html

“The treo uses the same Palm operating-system software, which is much easier and faster than the Windows Mobile software used by the Dash and the Q. As I have noted in the past, simple operations like deleting an email or displaying your calendar are usually one-click processes on the Palm OS devices, while they often take two or more clicks, or involve opening menus, on the Windows devices.

If you have always wanted a Treo, but couldn’t handle the price tag, the 680 may be for you. Just be prepared for its slower speed(Edge internet) and inferior camera. If you yearn for Wi-Fi in a slender smart phone, and can put up with a clumsy software interface, go with the Dash.”

I didn’t know that you beta tested Samsungs… that’s pretty cool. I remember the i550, or at least the news surrounding it since I never actually got to hold one. You should ebay those suckers while there are still some crazy fans who’ll pay top dollar!
Anyway, yeah, I’m familiar with the epic saga of failed Palm OS attempts, but samsung wasn’t the only one. I have a slightly different perspective on what happened however- while you may blame the developers for not coming through with bug-fixes in time, I blame the OS for not being able to keep up with what they wanted from it! Don’t you see they were writing custom software to handle the basic multitasking features of a phone- something that that the Palm OS was never designed to do, yet developers pushed it anyway- instead of embracing the multitasking features already existing in the core of Windows CE?

Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. The thing that suprised me the most about your post is the quote from Mr. Mossberg of the Journal… This is a man who is credited with being of the most influential in tech journalism. Yet, he compared totally different classes of hardware! The Q and the Dash are smartphone edition phones- to those that know WM, Smartphone means that its designed for one handed ease of use. In order to do that, everything is purposely driven by keystrokes (no touchscreen) so that you can easily navigate your phone using a pattern of presses without looking at the screen the way you would need to with a touchscreen (for example, to change my ringtone, I press start-9-4, then look at the screen I’m presented with). The Treo is supposed to be a full-fledged touchscreen-PDA (albeit a watered down one). How can he compare the interface, and especially point out the DELIBERATE keystrokes needed to use a WM smartphone? If you wanted to compare similar systems, why didn’t he pick a PPC phone like the 6700 or MDA? I’ve heard that this guy was a Palm fanboy before, but now I suppose I have my own new opinions about Mr. Mossberg…

*end of rant, and sorry to hijack this blog!*

is there any way to get the phone without buying the the pda max for 49.99 or the pda connect unlimited for 39.99 together with the plan.