Treo Woes
The Palm Treo is a decent device, but it costs twice what it should and it hasn’t been significantly upgraded in years. Unfortunately, I need one. I need one because I dearly depend upon my Pleco Chinese-English dictionary, which I use several times a day. I also need one because my Treo 650 suddenly died on me a few weeks ago. I could use a Windows Mobile device, but the idea of my cell phone crashing on me twice a day isn’t very appealing. But here’s the thing - buying a new Treo in Taiwan would cost me over $500! That’s more than an iPhone, and nobody’s going tell me that a Treo is worth as much as an iPhone, even if the iPhone doesn’t have a Chinese dictionary.
So what am I to do? I did the same thing I did when I bought my Treo 650 two years ago - I bought a used one on eBay. It costs less than one third the price of a new one in Taiwan, even with shipping.
There’s only one catch. It turns out that you can’t ship cell phones to Taiwan. Nobody will stop you if you come in by plane, but if its in a box forget about it. Not only do you have to spend hundreds of dollars to get it cleared through customs, but the paperwork alone is a huge pain in the ass. Turns out I can’t return it to the US either. Returning it to the US would have cost more than I paid for the item.
So Taiwanese customs will dispose of my Treo …
But guess what! All of a sudden, and just as inexplicably as it started, my Treo started working again.
Maybe it will stay working long enough till I can get an Jesusphone in Taiwan … or at least a Centro. (Unfortunately, the same day the Treo came back alive, Shashwati’s cell phone which I was using as a backup died. Who knows?)
UPDATE: Maybe I jinxed myself by writing this post. My Treo died again immediately upon posting …
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
I think as long as it doesn’t have wireless or bluetooth capabilities it should be easier to get in the country. However, it is pretty important for me not to have yet another device to recharge, maintain, sync, and carry around with me all day. I did have a palm + cell phone for a while back in the US and after owning a single device I can’t imagine going back to that. In fact, my biggest gripe with the Treo is that the camera is so bad, because I also have to charge, lug around, and sync my digital camera on a regular basis. (That and the Treo’s lack of WiFi.)
Sorry to harp on the iPhone solutions which won’t help much in Taiwan without some hacking, but I just came across this:
An anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, 
Kerim,
Is it cell phones that are blocked in Taiwan, or electronics altogether? Could you get a Palm — a Zire 72 would be ideal, and they’re pretty cheap on eBay these days — to run your PalmOS software on, and use a local cell phone?