I am wondering if I should purchase the 7135. I have a tungsten T2 that has basically taken a dump on me and I am interested in buying a Treo, however, I am poor and worse still I have verizon. They want 300 dollars for the phone that's if I sign a new contract. Ebay average for the treo 600 is about the same. My friend had a 7135 and it seemed to work rather nicely. I am worried about the Palm OS and upgrade possibilities. In general I would like to know if people like their phone and find it versitile. I need to be able to run medical programs and have things like Documents to go and other applications. Can anyone let me know if these style of applications are able to be used on the 7135? Any pros or cons are GREATLY appreciated. Thanks.

The most recent PalmOS you can get on the 7135 is the 4.1.2 version. That comes with the MZ 1.0.44 and SZ 1.0.29 firmware update. At this time, it cannot be updated beyond that. I have had my 7135 for nearly two years now, and it has served me very well.

You should be able to run the applications that you listed. The main "con" to the 7135 would be the slow processor. It's a 33 MHz Dragonball, which by today's standards is a dinosaur. You can overclock it (I recommend AfterBurner 3.20) to speed things up. I also recommend getting as large an SD memory card that you can afford to store applications and data on it.

__________________
Michael

Also, beware of e-Bay mass sellers of 7135's on eBay. After dealing with a eight or so 7135's, I've come to the conclusion that while the 7135's are decent units and most of them are solid, there are quite a few flaky ones that seem to be filtering down to the secondary market. The three that we got from private sellers simply selling their used phones were fine. The ones we got from sellers dumping large numbers of them weren't.

Chip Stewart
Hagerstown, MD

I'm replying to your post as I, too, am in medicine (NP). The 7135 will run virtually everything you might want (Epocrates, Tarascon, readers, everything I've tried from HandHeldMed, HandyBase, Docs2Go, Word files, e-mail, AvantGo). I've been on the Palm platform for about 5 years and had the Kyo for 2. Broke the first one, replaced it, sent that used one back and got a new one last month. I wish it had Bluetooth and was a little smaller, but everything else is great!

How do you update the OS? Is there a site or downloads available from somewhere?

Got to a Verizon store and they should do it for you. However, I would strongly suggest calling them first and making sure. Not all Verizon stores (at least in my area) work on Smartphones.

__________________
Gloria in excelsis Deo.

this phone is fun and classy. get one.

I got 7135 because it is more phone-like with PDA capabilities. Competing units are more PDA-like with phone capabilities. This was a strong determinant for me. I don't want to have to baby a unit and not freak out if it drops to the ground once in a while. Bummer about the slow processor - it does blow. but I tried a Treo 650 under Sprint service and came running back to my 7135 under Verizon.