The Q Review.

I finally decided to make the plunge and get a smart phone. After plenty of research, I ended up getting the Motorola Q. Actually, this wasn't my first PDA/phone, I had the Blackberry 8703 for about 2 days. Realizing how poor that device really was, I promptly took it back and exchanged it for a Moto Razr. The Razr is an excellent phone by the way.

In my humble opinion, the Blackberry pales in comparison to the Q.

Right out of the box I noticed the Q's slim design and easy to see screen. One of the most important features for me is the Q's ability to have mail pushed from our exchange server. I get my email as it hits our server. The wireless functionality of the Q is absolutely outstanding.

You get MSN Messenger, Windows Media Player, voice dialing and a host of other extremely useful tools. You can even connect with your Q via Bluetooth dongle or hard line and use it as a modem for a laptop.

The phone works great! Although I sometimes have problems dialing with the wee-little buttons on the QWERTY keyboard, the reception is great. I read an article a couple of weeks ago about how the Q was designed as a phone first and a PDA second. The Q was fortunate enough to have inherited the RAZR's excellent antenna. This is probably the reason that I have yet to drop a call.

One thing to be aware of if you are venturing into the smart phone arena. You need to make sure your Outlook housekeeping has been done. On your first sync, you will get everything dumped to your Q. I have over 800 contacts in my database and it took me over 2 hours to go through and clean out the old names and numbers.

The Q has a couple of irritating little quirks. Some can be remedied if you are willing to hack the registry. One of the big issues for me is that you CAN NOT save attachments to the storage card. I get a lot of big attachments and it eats up the device memory fast. I am constantly going in and deleting the temporary Internet files. The other quirk that bothers me pertains to the web browser. The web browser does not go to your home page every time you load it. It loads the previously visited page. Not a big deal, I just find it less than optimal.

The Q does not have Wifi (802.11) capabilities. However, it isn't really necessary with Verizon's EVDO broadband access. Another negative is the lack of Pocket Word and Pocket Excel. My Dell Axim x50v had these programs and it was nice to be able to edit Word and Excel documents. The Q simply allows you to view the files. Other than these small inconveniences, my overall impression of the Q is outstanding.

As a closing point of interest, I found a couple of great websites that are entirely dedicated to the Q. http://www.everythingq.com/ and http://www.qusers.com/

Bottom Line? The Motorola Q is a great PDA/phone and I would recommend it to anyone.