Moving from the Treo 650 to the iPhone 3G

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Guest post by Chris Nichols who can be found at his Web site Nichols Law Firm and his great blog North Carolina Trial Law Blog I was thrilled when Chris agreed to give me his account of moving from the Treo to the iPhone. What you see below is that post. Thanks Chris!!!

Recruited

So this is how the story goes: I posted a comment on Grant’s blog, and low and behold he asked me to guest blog about the experience of transitioning from my Treo 650 to the new iPhone 3G . That’s good blogating (blog + delegating), or is that deleblogging? Which ever it is, Grant somehow thought that the lawyer with the world’s ugliest blog might have something to offer. We’ll see.

My Operating System

A little about me and my set up, which will give you context to my thoughts. I am the principle of my own law firm, Nichols Law Firm and I am PC based. I use my Treo 650 as my primary phone, more or less. I say more or less, because I use eVoice Receptionist for my 800 phone number. Evoice is a web based program which allows me to have my 800 calls routed to multiple phone lines, either in series (three rings on one then switching to the next) or concurrently (ringing up to five phones at once). Since I’m often on the go, I’m often picking up my calls on the Treo. And by the way, when you answer your phone with eVoiceReceptionist, the system says “This is eVoiceReceptionist with a call for Chris Nichols, press 1 to accept or 3 to send to voice mail.” If you send a caller to voice mail, eReceptionist then creates an audio file of the message and sends it to your email. It is very handy. And it works with caller ID. And did I mention is costs only $29.95 a month?

I do not use Outlook, nor do I use Office. I use OpenOffice and I use Gmail (and iGoogle) as my “everything” manager. I have not broken down yet and purchased a case management software, but have created my own using some data base management and tools on the PC. My legal work is generally personal injury litigation referred from other attorneys. I don’t do much billing at all.

My Shredded Treo 650

I use my Treo a LOT. I’ve liked it, but things were starting to go wrong. First, the ear speaker broke (twice) and I could only listen to calls on speaker. Then the case cracked a bit and the phone would power off if you applied the right pressure (like answering the phone). And finally, the #9 on the key pad only worked in random intervals. Not such a good thing when you live in area code 919.

I could NEVER get the Verizon push mail to work well with Gmail, so I just accessed my mail via the web browser, which worked, but had some limitations due to screen size and of course, data flow throughput (speed).

I needed a new phone about two months ago, but I held out for the iPhone. I was not very impressed by the Blackberry clones, I refused to use a Windows mobile system, and the newest Treos just didn’t impress me as being all that better than their ancestors.

Surviving the Line

My 19 year old nephew is living with us this summer and his deepest desire was to have an iPhone. So much so that he convinced me to wait in the line at 7 am on the release date which coincided with my birthday. We gamed the system and tried to go to the most hidden away AT&T store, but we missed the mark by about 10 people and were sent home iPhoneless. I took it better than my nephew did. We regrouped the next day at 6:45 am at the Apple Store in the mall and walked away with two new iPhone 3G’s. An 8 gig model for me and a 16 gig for him. His iPod already had 12 gigs of data, so the 16 gig model made sense for him. I’m a little lame in the music department, so I went with the 8G model.

The Transition

Well, my first priority was getting my contacts from my Treo 650 to the iPhone. I really like to know who I’m talking with before I answer. Of course, there is no direct route to do this for Treo users but several “work arounds”. I’ll go through those and let you know what happened:

First, according to Apple, some folks have it easy. If you use Outlook, you can export to the iPhone. If you use Yahoo to store contacts or even Google to store contacts, there is a direct “import” into the iPhone. I was out of luck.
So here is what I did:

1. Export from Treo desktop to .csv file:

So this gets your contacts into “comma separated values” (i.e. spread sheet form). The problem I found later on is that the “columns” from one system (Treo) would be different from the next system I would use (Yahoo).

2. Import .csv file to Yahoo contacts:

I didn’t want to run the risk of having duplicate contacts or garbage data on my Google contacts, so I just opened a free and new Yahoo email. I then imported the .csv Addresses from the Treo export. Things got a little strange. Yahoo wants you to choose the labels for the columns and I didn’t really pay enough attention to get them all aligned. For example, Treo saves last name first. I think Yahoo saves first name first. If you go this route, study your columns first so you get them right on the import.

3. Import Yahoo contacts to the iPhone.

This is by far the easiest part of the process. The iPhone uses iTunes as the software platform on your PC. In the “settings” tabs, you will find a setting for importing emails and contacts. Also, your iPhone will prompt you to do this on initial set up. You enter your import account info (your screen name and pass word) and the iPhone will go get your stuff.

User Failure

Ok, so things did not go so well for me. I botched up the export from the Palm desktop because I didn’t pay enough attention to the column headings. So when things got into Yahoo they looked ugly. I really didn’t want to import a bunch of garbage, so I formulated a new plan.

I knew that I could import my Gmail contacts straight to the iPhone. I felt pretty sure that everyone I have ever called I’ve probably emailed. So I imported my Gmail contacts.

BIG MISTAKE. Gmail considers every person you have emailed or who has emailed you as a contact. My iPhone is now full of addresses I might have sent or received to once. On top of that, I don’t use the Gmail contacts for phone numbers, so all I have is a really long list of emails. Now I have 600+ contact emails in my iPhone. I probably had 200 in the Treo.

I Have a Good Excuse

I was just about to go back, clear out the iPhone contacts and start again with Yahoo (paying attention to the columns this time) when my laptop stopped working. I’ve had this Toshiba Satellite A-105 for a year and a half and it has been a good machine, but it just crapped out on me. (I have my suspicions that my iPhone wanted it dead, but that’s just the paranoid ranting of a man deprived of his laptop).

So I was able to pull my HDD out and recover all my data, which tells me that XP is somehow corrupted. I’ll leave that fun to my IT guy. But here is my real problem: my Treo desktop was on there, along with the driver software. And of course, my treo now refuses to sync with anything. I think one of the connecting pins broke.

The Old Fashioned Way

Yep, that’s me, the techno lawyer punching in phone numbers, one at a time, into his new iPhone. I know I don’t have to do it this way, but I’m tired of my computer right now. So when I unwind at the end of the day and the “bad TV” is on, I clean out my contacts and update. There is something organic about the process that is somehow appealing to me at the moment. I started by programming in all of the “hot clients” so I know when they are calling. I’m sure by next week I’ll have my wife’s great aunt on board.

But Really, the iPhone is Great

Aside from the fact that my iPhone is owned by a somewhat technically challenged guy, the phone itself is great. I get great reception in places where my Verizon Treo didn’t. I’m in a city so the 3G network is rocking 24/7. My iPhone can find every wifi pickup point around for even faster service. And a warning: it is really fun to watch all of your neighbors and local business wifi networks pop up on your iPhone, but not so safe while driving.

I’ll save a complete review of the iPhone for another post, but suffice it to say that even after my wild adventure with my contacts, I still really like the phone. My Gmail is automatically integrated. I can have it update every 15 minutes, but typically I just have it updated on demand. Of course, for you push freaks, there are many options to turn your iPhone into a crackberry. I just don’t want to be that connected. If I can’t go 15 minutes between emails, I’ve got some problems I need to address in therapy.

Don’t freak out about the on-screen keyboard. It takes a few days to adjust, then you’ll be fine. It’s admittedly harder to text while driving (not that I would ever do that.)

iGoogle Users Will Love the iPhone 3G

If you use iGoogle features like Gmail, you will really love the iPhone compared to the Treo 650. The iPhone was designed to integrate with Google products and the Linux based programming just works so well, and so quickly. I find that checking emails on my iPhone is almost as fast as checking them on the PC, possibly faster. Every Gmail change you make on the iPhone immediately changes in your Gmail account. No messy sync issues.

Web browsing is a pleasure on the iPhone compared to the Treo. You have up to 8 “pages” available at all time on the iPhone, so no lengthy waits for pages to refresh like on the Treo. Let’s face it, to me, the Treo was “survival Internet.” You could access a page if you really needed to but it was almost never fun or easy. The iPhone is fun and easy. Web browsing, while not exactly like a desk top, is about as perfect as i could imagine it to be on a hand held screen.

Also, I should mention that after the PC crash, I was at the Apple Store today looking at a MacBook Pro . I realize that if I completely switch my office over to Mac simply because I bought an iPhone, that’s like buying a really cool tie and then getting 4 suits to match it. But you know what, sometimes a tie really is that cool.

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