The Dilemma

I have a real bad habit.

When it comes to new technology, I tend to be in the group of early adopters -- people who buy a product as soon as it is introduced.

Now, I'm not your typical technology lemming. For example, I don't have an iPod and have a very limited desire to own one.

But when it comes to technology that I have a real interest or use for, I go in, gung-ho, on day 1.

The Yamaha WX7 is a good example. I plunked down a 50% deposit on that puppy the day that the product was announced -- a full six months before it would be available for purchase. In that case, I was fortunate: the product was well-developed and has served me faithfully for over 18 years.

More germane to where I'm going with this, in 1996, I bought one of the first US Robotics Pilot 1000 handheld computers. In a matter of hours, it had replaced the leather-bound Dayrunner that I'd been carrying around for years. All of my contacts and appointments were immediately accessible in a unit that I could carry in my pocket. And -- bonus -- you could play games on it as well.


3Com bought US Robotics and created the Palm division to continue the Pilot line. Soon after the acquisition, they delivered a set of sleeker, sexier, more powerful handhelds. My Pilot 1000 was beginning to seriously show its age at that point. (It was nicknamed "Ziggy", after the computer in Quantum Leap, whose hand-held unit needed a good slap every once in a while to get it working.)

When the Palm Pilot 5x was introduced, I bought one, transferring all of my precious data from the aging Pilot 1000.

This was about the same time that the PCS cell phone was becoming affordable, and for some time I was carrying around a cell phone and the Palm 5x. I soon began wondering when a hybrid device would become available, combining the Palm OS with a cell phone.

Within a week of the death of my cell phone, Samsung introduced the SPH-i300, a Palm driven device integrated into a cell phone. Early adopter that I am, I immediately bought the SPH-i300. I put my Palm 5x into retirement and moved everything to the Samsung, in a technophilic rapture of having my PDA and phone integrated. All was well for a couple of years as I gleefully ignored the hybrid PDA market.


Until THE DROP.

One day, two years ago, as I was getting out of my car, the SPH-i300 fell out of my shirt pocket and onto the asphalt. The impact was a bad one that shattered the liquid crystals inside the LCD screen.

Suddenly, I was once again in the market for a hybrid device.

As fate would have it, that very week HandSpring (soon to be purchased by Palm) was releasing the Trēo 600 for Sprint's network. As a Sprint subscriber, I was desperate to become an early technology adopter once again. After canvassing no less than six Sprint stores across Southern California, I finally found one. (Apparently, I'm not alone in this early adopter mind-set. For almost two months following my purchase, stores could not keep Trēo 600s in stock.)

My 600 looked just like that picture to the right, until it too experienced a DROP. Fortunately, this time the unit was under warranty and palmOne was happy to trade my broken 600 for a refurbished unit. The new phone now sports a palmOne logo in place of the HandSpring somersaulting man icon.

Now, the 600 has a lot of great features: a fairly fast processor, a bright screen, upgradeable Palm 5 O/S, PCS Vision support, a keyboard that even my large thumbs can operate easily, a VGA camera and a host of other nice features.

But it lacks one thing that keeps me itching: Bluetooth. That little wireless technology that allows you to easily create short-distance communication channels between various devices. In my case, the device I want to connect is a Jabra FreeSpeak headset. I have one that I use with my Trēo 600, but I have to hang this clunky Bluetooth receiver off the bottom of my phone and, frankly, it takes all the fun out of having a wireless headset.

And so now I have the dilemma: the Trēo 650.

This update to the 600 came out several months ago and it features a faster processor, a high resolution screen (4 times the resolution of the 600), an easier to use keyboard and built-in Bluetooth.

The technophile in me has been screaming lately to trade in my 600 for a 650, but the economist (who was obviously repressed last Wednesday) keeps telling me that I'm only going to get $100 for the trade-in and I really won't get any real value out of the $400+ that it would cost to upgrade.

So far, sanity and economy are winning valiantly in this struggle.

But there's an evil little thought that keeps popping in, hoping for yet another DROP.

Oops!