Watch - out Bill -- I'm wireless now too.
After a few months of watching and waiting, I did finally get a treo 600. It is a useful tool that combines the cellphone and PDA. It doesn't have any true paging technology (like Motorola's FLEX protocol) so it can't (yet) replace a pager. It should. Palm and Motorola had this idea five years ago .. I wonder why it didn't move into these devices.
While I do find the device useful as a PDA (it's got all of the old standbys installed: epocrates, 5mcc, shots) ... and of course a phone ... the best thing about this device is something that I thought was just a toy beforehand: Instant Messaging.
Huh? (you say) ..
For physicians who are not always in the office, this device can significantly improve your life. Since I work at the Miracle Center 1/2 time ... and I'm at the office 1/2 time, I'm often getting pages from one when I'm at the other. I can't leave a meeting, or interrupt a patient visit to make a phone call, but I CAN respond to an IM quickly and without too much distraction.
Nurse Kathy and I had several little conversations last week with IM. It saved me four or five phone calls ... and got her immediate answers to her patient care questions .. so patients got better service.
I'm using chatter - which is a wonderful little program .. and she's using yahoo. Yeh .. not very secure. So no PHI. I've looked into Jabber -- and we'll probably use that once I can figure out how to install a jabber server.