Update: See “Persistence Pays Off: Treo and Mac Get Along — Mostly.”

Talk about life on the bleeding edge. I recently got a new MacBook Pro laptop for work, which kind of triggered a chain reaction of other purchases.

I have a two-year old Samsung Palm phone hosted by Sprint , which by itself was working just fine and could have continued to serve me well for a a while to come. Unfortunately, the one thing the Samsung phone couldn’t help me do was connect my laptop to the Internet. In 2004, Sprint wasn’t offering data services at all, so I went across the street to Verizon and got a PC5220 cellular modem. After only a little bit of digging, I found that Apple and Verizon had collaborated to create a driver for the PC5220. Installed it … worked great. If you are considering that solution and you have a PCMCIA-capable laptop, I highly recommend it.

But that was 2004. This is 2006 and I have this new MacBook Pro. No PCMCIA slot, so no more Internet.

It being that magical 2-year interval since the purchase of my previous phone, I decided to go looking for a new one. After chatting with a coworker and reading another encouraging blog, I decided to go straight for the gusto and get a Palm Treo 700p (link). Having been generally happy with my Sprint voice service, I decided to buy my phone there.

Little did I know the pain I would be creating for myself. Here’s how my experience has gone so far:

Thursday, June 15: Buy the phone. Explain carefully to the sales representative that I need the phone in part to connect my laptop to the Internet. “Yes, yes, you can do that. Should be no problem.” That means I need the PowerVision plan for an additional $25/month over the $39.95/month voice plan that I’ve selected.

Friday, June 16, evening: Try to connect phone to laptop via Bluetooth. All kinds of near-misses, but no joy. Call Sprint via #2 or their 800 number (from the land-line at my house). Get disconnected every time approximately 1 minute into the call. (Being especially persistent, I probably did this more than a dozen times.) Some of the near-misses appear to be password mismatches. Since it’s been a while since I’ve used the Sprint account, go to Sprint web site and attempt to change password. Site is down.

Saturday, June 17: Try again to connect via Bluetooth. Try again to call Sprint. No dice.

Sunday, June 18: Fly to Minnesota for a business trip.

Monday, June 19: Call Sprint. Ask for technical support. Hold for 15+ minutes with no indication of where I am in the queue. Have to go to meeting. Hang up. Try again a couple hours later. Hold again for 15+ minutes and have to leave.

Tuesday, June 20: Call Sprint again. Hold for 45 minutes (!) and finally get through to a semi-clueful live human. Discover that I need the Phone-As-Modem plan; PowerVision doesn’t include laptop data services. That’s another $39.95/month. Ouch. Agree to have that service added to my account.

Wednesday, June 21, afternoon: Fly home from Minnesota. Arrive at the ferry terminal at rush hour, so I have an hour to sit in my car before I get on the ferry. Now that I have the PAM service on my account and it’s had the requisite 12 to 24 hours to actually kick in, this is the perfect time to try reconnecting again, right? Wrong. Yet again, no connection. Call Sprint from my phone again. Hold for 45 minutes again. By the time I get through, I’ve actually boarded the ferry, but I get through to somebody who seems very clueful — and who gives me the wonderful news that mister “semi-clueful” didn’t in fact manage to add the PAM service to my account. Argh. Agree to have the service added to my account again, but … just as we pass West Seattle, signal strength takes a dive and the call drops. Of course, only seconds after the call drops, I have a full-strength signal again. Double argh.

Thursday, June 22: Drive to Sprint office in Silverdale, where I bought the phone, and ask what does it really take to get connected. Learn two things: (1) I still don’t have PAM on my account. Getting it done this time takes about 10 minutes, and it actually does stick. (2) Bluetooth/modem is not supported for this phone. You gotta use the cable. Sheesh. That would have been nice to know earlier.

Friday, June 23 (at home): Get the cable, tether laptop to computer, and try again. Hmmm. The Mac doesn’t know anything about the phone. Doesn’t see it. Nothing resembling any way to connect to the internet via the cabled phone. Go Googling for various permutations of “treo 700p mac sprint” and find Gabriel’s blog “How to use your Treo 700p as a USB modem…” (no longer available online). Ahhh… you need new software to make this work. Go download the MobileStream USB Modem software. Fiddle with this for a while, and (FINALLY) get a connection! Woo hoo!

Sunday, June 25: Work a shift at the Kingston Art Gallery. Bring the laptop and try to get connected. Not nearly so happy as Friday’s experience. Today’s experience is a constant stream of disconnects, “the communication device could not be found” errors, and general frustration. After much fiddling, I learn a couple of things:

• The cable is very loose at the phone end. A very slight bump is all it takes to dislodge the cable, causing you to drop your internet connection.
• The USB Modem software takes over the USB connection, replacing the “Palm Treo 700p Handheld” device with a “Treo 700p Modem” entry. (The name may be slightly different — I’m doing this from memory.) It’s very helpful to have the USB Prober application running when you’re attempting to connect. This will tell you if you actually have a modem there to connect to.
• Signal quality in this particular location is atrocious. With the Verizon card in my old laptop, I could connect once at the start of my shift and stay on the internet for hours on end. With Sprint, I was lucky to stay on for 30 minutes at a time.

I still have three days left in my 14-day, no-questions-asked return period, and I’m seriously considering doing it.

Verizon carries the same phone, although the monthly cost is higher ($95/month+tax for the same combination of services that I’m now getting from Sprint for about $82/month). Or maybe a different phone makes more sense.

Stay tuned … and suggestions?

Update, June 26, afternoon: My phone rang just a few minutes ago with an 866 number. It was a randomly-selected customer-service quality survey regarding my call on June 21. When they asked “how satisfied were you with the length of time you were on hold?”, I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. In fairness, I think the person who I spoke to on that day was knowledgeable and probably could have helped me. Unfortunately, the goofs on the previous day and the momentary loss of signal quality made that impossible.

Update, June 28, morning: Nearing the end of my 14-day return period, I decided to bail out. Returned the Palm phone yesterday morning and went across the street to Verizon and got a Motorola E815 instead. I’ll comment on that phone once I’ve had a few more days to experiment with it, but it’s off to a much better start. (This update is coming to you via that phone.)