5105 miles

Let me take a few minutes to extol the virtues of my Hiptop Color Sidekick, the little device I’ve been checking in with as we traipsed about the country.

I’ve used it to instant message, check my email. check baseball scores, keep up with lj friends, quartz, look up phone nuimbers, and make a phone call or two.

It’s a remarkable little device that I heartily recommend to anyone who has or wants mobile connectivity. It does what it does fantastically and cheap. The phone was $30 after rebates and costs an extra $20 each month above your normal cell phone bill.

The biggest drawback is that it’s a really lousy cell phone. The reception is horrible and it takes two hands to use for the most part. And this is probably a function of GPRS, the underlying technology, but there are annoying coverage holes where there shouldn’t be, like in a basement. Something’s wrong if I can use it from the middle of Utah but not my desk at work.

Probably the biggest piece of missing functionality is lack of syncing to any other tools.

There are many little useability things that are a nice surprise. The biggest is the keyboard which is really a great size for typing on. And a lot of though went into the layout of additonal symbol keys. Most punctuation is addressed through an alt-letter combo, but period comma and at are floating on there own. Overall it’s a pretty natural and comfortable typing experience.