Now you can have what I call the moldy green donut on your Treo 750, that new Microsoft symbol, which replaces the waving flag in the WM6 operating system. Upgrade your Treo 750 Windows Mobile 5 system to Windows Mobile 6. Long promised and finally available as a free download at [http://www.palm.com/us/support/downloads/treo750update/att.html]. It’s actually been around since December 2007, but I missed it and thought some of you would appreciate knowing. Or you can just buy a new Treo 750 with WM6 pre-installed.

What are some of the advantages of upgrading?

There are many improvements over WM5, and there are many articles detailing the strengths of WM 6. A good start if you want to learn about WM6 features is Rich Hall’s article in Smartphone and Pocket PC magazine: [http://www.pocketpcmag.com/_archives/jun07/wmsix.aspx]. But let me skip over some of the highlights to give you some incentive.

• Use your 750 as a modem for your laptop.

• There are several email enhancements that allow HTML emails to receive tables, colored text, bullets, etc.

• An intelligent filter allows contact searches on exchange servers.

• Send an out of office message from your 750.

• Email hotkeys let you press R to reply, A to reply all, and M to move an email to a folder.

• Access a company Sharepoint for document retrieval via HTML email links.

• Downloading is faster and great for large attachments, streaming, etc.

• Updated system sounds bug.

• Enjoy a more secure environment to make IT administrators happy.

• The calendar has been improved with a new top line bar in the agenda view that shows when you are free/busy or have conflicts. Show meeting attendees, contact information, acceptances, answer or forward meeting inquiries.

• Issue voice commands via Bluetooth in English, French or German.

• Enjoy USB cable charging for the first time.

• Mute or put calls on speakerphone with a single touch from the active call screen.

• Experience streaming video within 3G coverage areas.

You can be sure that almost all of your old Windows Mobile 5 applications will still work with WM6. But it’s probably also a good time to take advantage of new functionality as developers release updates to WM6. The same Palm enhancements to the Windows Mobile platform remain intact.

Supposedly, WM6 will quickly sync with Vista’s new Sync Center. Frankly, I’ve found that it almost never works, and Sync Center is really useless, at least on all my Vista computers. This is a project I want to explore, but haven’t had time to do so yet. I’ll share my results when I dig into it.
Please note that only one update is allowed per customer and is only available until October 31, 2008. Be careful not to interrupt your download or run other applications once the update begins or you may experience some difficulties.

I’ve noticed on the forums that some people have experienced problems making the transition, but fear not, there’s plenty of help out there. I encourage you to convert and get a moldy green spinning donut in your machine. I did, and I love it.

I also want to take this opportunity to congratulate Palm and express my appreciation for being among the few manufacturers to offer an upgrade to WM6. Most want you to buy a brand new machine. I appreciate it even more because it’s free. Thanks Palma.