With new devices, nobody needs to know where you really are

Wynn Washle used to think he wanted to “check out” when he was on vacation. No voice mail. No cell phone. E-mail only occasionally, accessed from a hotel or library.

But checking out turned out to be too stressful for Washle, a real estate agent with The Group Inc. in Fort Collins. He had hundreds of e-mails to sort through when he returned home. His customers also wondered why he wasn’t available.

A few months ago, Washle bought a Treo 650, one of the latest gadgets that enables him to check e-mail, surf the Internet, talk on the phone and organize his calendar all with one device. That’s good for Washle while he’s working as well as when he’s on vacation.

“I just got back from a two-week trip to Washington D.C. with my family,” Washle said. “I could get up early in the morning, spend 20 minutes checking my e-mail, and I felt so much better staying connected that way. I didn’t have a thousand e-mails to return when I got back.”

All-in-one devices get smaller

Canada-based Research In Motion was the first to create the combination cell phone, e-mail, Internet and calendar/organizer device, called the BlackBerry. Other devices, including the Treo 650 manufactured by palmOne, are on the market now.

They cost anywhere from $200-$2,000 and are available online or at cell phone dealers such as T-Mobile and Cingular. Monthly service costs $20-$50 on top of a monthly cell-phone service plan.

The T-Mobile store on Harmony Road and College Avenue in Fort Collins has been selling about 100 BlackBerrys per month, said Thomas Spickard, senior sales representative for T-Mobile.

“They are immensely popular,” Spickard said. “A lot of people are buying them for work, but we also see 15- and 16-year-olds buying them for the instant messaging.”

Some people find the BlackBerry so addictive, its nickname is the “crackberry.” Washle said he checks e-mail on his Treo 650 15 times a day. Spickard has four e-mail accounts forwarded to his BlackBerry, but he said he uses it mostly to surf the Internet.

There are plenty of e-mail-on-the-go devices to choose from. In addition to a high-resolution color screen to check e-mail and browse the Web, the Treo 650 includes a camera and has Bluetooth wireless technology. The down side is that the brighter screen and wireless connection tend to drain the battery in fewer than 12 hours.

There’s also the Sidekick II, whose best feature is instant messaging. The OQO is a Windows XP computer with built-in Wi-Fi and a full QWERTY keyboard, albeit a tiny one. Also on the market are devices used only for data, not as phones. But some users consider them too large to carry everywhere.

When BlackBerrys first came out, they were too bulky to be used as phones, Spickard said. But technology has improved to make the devices a bit smaller.

Blurring the line between work and play

Jim Herlihy, vice president of communications for Swift and Co. in Greeley, got a BlackBerry a year ago and uses it almost exclusively for e-mail. He used to have to find an Internet connection for his laptop computer when he was out of the office. Now he can check e-mail from almost anywhere.

“You can’t really use a laptop when you’re taking the kids to the zoo or sitting at a ballgame,” Herlihy said.

The BlackBerry has blurred the line between work and play for Herlihy, but he said the technology enables him to spend more time with his family on weekends and holidays. It’s better to spend five minutes here and there answering e-mails than to go into the office for a couple of hours, he said.

Before the Treo 650, Washle used a cell phone and a Palm Pilot. When he was out of town, he’d have to find a library or use a hotel business center to check e-mail.

“In many cases now, unless I tell them, my customers wouldn’t know I was out of town,” he said. “The old way was so inconvenient. It’s so much better to check in 15 minutes here, 15 minutes there.”

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