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I broke down this weekend and finally bought another cell phone. I’ve gone almost 2 years without one, but as time goes on, I find myself in more situations where having a phone would save me a lot of hassle with work.

I went to a Rogers kiosk with cheap phone in mind. I didn’t want a bottom of the line phone, mind you. I was looking for a few things:

1. Can I use a wireless headset with it? (for long days on the road)
2. Is it possible to send/recieve email on this phone?
3. Bonus: Does it play nice with my iMac?

After some light research online, I figured some variant of the Razr would more than likely do the job. This particular kiosk, however, was having some form of promotion involving the Treo 650. If I were to sign up for a 3 year plan (as was my intent), I could walk away with a Treo 650 in hand, with no money down. Needless to say, I now own a Treo 650.

Upon my inital review, the phone did everything I wanted, and a good deal more. It handled headsets and email wonderfully. It had a funtional web browser. It had a (crappy) camera. It was even supposed to sync with my Mac, without any trouble. All of this was true, minus the “without any trouble” portion.
I was expecting to turn on bluetooth on the phone, open up isync and be rolling in a matter of minutes. This lead me to the discovery that I would have to use the phone’s “Hot Sync” software. No problem, right? I visit http://www.palm.com/ and grab the latest version of the software for Mac OS, install it, and i’m syncing in no time.

Problem: This sync software is syncing to “Palm Desktop”, which is in no way linked to Address Book, iCal, or any other of the various i-apps that help make my life a little more organized. Needless to say, this lead to much google fun, until I found out how to properly sync my phone. Here is a vague reference to using isync with a treo650.

• Install Hot Sync Manager
• Connect your sync cable to your phone, and your mac
• Open iSync
• Devices -> Enable Palm OS Syncing
• Hit continue a few times, until a new conduit is installed.
• Open Hot Sync Manager
• HotSync -> Conduit Settings
• Select “iSync Conduit” from the list, and press the “Conduit Settings” button
• Select “Enable iSync for this device
• Sync in iSync
• Hit the HotSync button on the Treo

For bonus points, you can enable bluetooth-pda-sync in bluetooth preferences on your mac, configure it to work as RS-232 instead of a modem, enable that method in the conduit manager, and sync via bluetooth, instead of with your docking cable. Hope that helps!