Kyle Smith

COSI Alumni Reunion 2006

I’ve been talking to various alumni over the course of the last week about having a reunion in the Poughkeepsie area this summer since there will be so many COSI people here. I’ve already been looking into parks in the area where we could have food, drinks, and games and come up with a list to investigate in the next couple of weeks. Your mission, valued reader, is to send me an email if you’re interested in attending this event along with any weekends between mid-May and mid-August that you are not available. From that I’ll try and identify the weekends that work for most everyone and also fit with park availability.

Wanted

A portable, near-instant-on device with the following capabilities:

• Wi-Fi and possibly BlueTooth
• 802.1x support a huge plus
• Ability to sync with Lotus Notes a huge plus
• Decent, easy to use calendaring
• Task management (more than just a simple list)
• Full-featured address book
• Multimedia playback (primarily audio, but video would also be cool)
• A decent web browser (something more than just text would be nice)
• Needs to be able to sync from Linux
• Can be used without a stylus if necessary

So far I’ve looked at the various offerings from Palm, including the Treo 650, TX, and LifeDrive as well as the Nokia 770. I don’t particularly like the connectivity or phone app on the Treo, the TX is tempting (802.1x support for a $6 update), but I’ve always found Palm OS a little clunky, and the 770 sounds neat but I’ve heard it’s slow and don’t like the fact that you deal with software images instead of packages. Anyone know of any products that match those requirements?

And yes, for those that have not heard, I’m engaged.

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