connie, the Treos are Palm phones. I actually got my first Treo because I was tired of carrying around my Palm Tungsten C and my cell phone. Although it has its critics, I've found the Treo has been excellent at combining the phone and pda functions that I normally use plus a lot more stuff that I don't use so much. In other words, why not dump the Palm completely and just get a Treo?

Blackberry's totally not where I'd go for text files. Palms, Windows CE, and Symbian phones will let you read text files, and Word and Acrobat to a degree.

I've heard good things about the Palm Centro, which is like a Treo but cheaper and supposedly works better.

Thank you, fonts of wisdom!

Maybe Centro's my next stop. I basically stop looking at phones until a few months before contract renewal so I don't make myself sad with all the functionality I don't have and can't afford.

I think I'm going to stay with my Palm and find a bare bones phone, because I have very limited requirements from my technology. I am the despair of technology designers everywhere.

Them: "It lets you surf the Net! It communicates with Wherethehellitstan! It launches the space shuttle!"
Me: "I just want to call home once or twice a week."

I'd agree, Connie, based on your phone needs -- go with a prepaid service instead of a contract, and get the cheapest phone they have. These days, the cheapest phone often does have a camera and such, but you won't find the kind of reading quality you want from a Palm upgrade without a much more elaborate/expensive setup. Which sucks.

Prepaid is good, but some plans let you get on a family plan without a contract. (In my view, signing a contract for anything less than the really expensive phones is not worth it.) So if your husband already has a cell phone, for about $10 a month you can share his minutes and probably call him and anyone else on your carrier for free.

You can also find barebone phones for cheap on ebay or craigslist, just make sure they work with your carrier.

Prepaid for me worked out to less than $10 a month. I went with T Mobile prepaid, and bought the phone (a workhorse) with the pre-pay set up package (about $50 or so at the time).

Served me for years. Only upgraded because the iPhone was a gift.

Which I rarely use as a phone, but use ALL THE TIME as a browser.

Do you still get WiFi on the bus to work?