I love my job - Jasjam vs Treo750

Wednesday, May 9th, 2007 | Doyle Reviews, Geeking, Work

As part of my job as IT Manager, I get to play with some cool toys.

Like many companies, we have several road-warriors in our company that rarely see their desk from day to day. These cowboys are rarely tech-savvy, so that’s where I need to step in and tell them what’s what.

Today, I need to compare and contrast the joys and frustrations of an iMate Jasjam vs a Palm Treo 750.

Now, both of these little devices run Windows Mobile 5.0, and have GPRS and 3G. This means that they can be configured to run Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync with DirectPush. The Good Mobile service can also be configured to run on both devices, however we currently prefer to stick with the standard Microsoft platform. Additionally, both have touch-screens and a full qwerty keypad.

We’ve got a few of the iMate Jasjams in our fleet already (Listen to me! Mobile Fleet! Yessir, Wing Commander!) - to begin with, we had nothing but problems. We’ve had busted batteries, busted microphones, busted antenna’s and synchronisation issues all the time - overall, the initial build quality was really rather poor.

iMate and Telstra put their heads together and came up with a firmware update that solved most of the problems. After we returned the faulty battery (which was covered with iMate’s fantastic 2 year hardware warrenty) we’ve had fair weather sailing all the way. I have to commend iMate for their great product support.

In fact, the only issue we’ve had with the device is a few cases of mobile phone envy - “Can I have a Jasjam, too??”

Now there’s a new kid on the block in terms of WM5.0 and DirectPush technology. I’ve been told by a reliable source that the Treo 750 is the business. Actually, I was told that this was the device that would leave the Jasjam for dust. Wonderfully, Palm has given us a 14 day trial of the new 750, so that we can have a look at how this new gadget ticks.

My initial impressions were something along the lines of

“Ooooh… it feels so nice in my hand. Like my hand was designed to hold the 750…”

And it does feel nice to hold. My impression of the Treo is that it has far superior build quality when compared to the Jasjam, but that could be in part to the fact that the Jasjam has the slidey keypad bit that gives slightly.

Now, the iMate’s screen is 45×60mm in size, wherease the 750’s screen looks marginally smaller at 47×47mm. Of course, the resolution on the iMate is higher, but both devices have the option to increase/decrease the font size to suit the eyesight of the user.

Now, one other distiguishing feature of the 750 is the front facing qwerty keyboard. This is much like the blackberry style of data entry, however I find that the buttons are way to small for my blunt club-like fingers to push. The iMate, however, has a nifty slide-out keypad with keys that are large enough for any man-ape to use. What’s more, as soon as you slide the iMate’s keypad out, the screen flicks to landscape mode, so that you’re not trying to type all wonky.