Palm treo 680 and Curve applications

Who knows, you might be inspired by my glowing praise of the Curve enough to contemplate making the move from a palm treo. Even if you're not, it won't stop me doing this post which is a short comparison of the situation, apps wise, between the two.
On my treo at the moment I am mainly using the following applications: DocsToGo, Resco Neews RSS, Blazer, Resco Pic Viewer (how anybody still uses SplashPhoto I'll never know), PocketTunes, RMR Fuel, ListPro 5, TCPMP for watching films as CorePlayer is still too unstable for me, 4cast for weather updates, Snappermail for email obviously, an ebook reader and iSilo. I do of course have other apps installed but these are the ones I use most frequently and which I consider my core software.

How does Blackberry software stack up in comparison then? As I've mentioned several times before, things are not so hot on the software front in this department. The choice, compared to palm, is slim and you may find yourself struggling to find one or two things to replicate exactly what your treo does...c'est la vie.

Doing things in order then....DocsToGo is not yet available for Blackberry but is seemingly on the way. In the meantime I have been using GridMagic which is a standalone excel app and it is good. It syncs via the desktop manager and retains formatting very well. My use here is pretty basic. I just transfer docs to the Curve and do a small bit of editing on it and then sync them back. It all works very well. My trial of this app ends soonish and if DocsToGo is not out by then I will probably just buy it. No doubt, about 5 minutes after I hit that "checkout" button Dataviz will announce their Blackberry version.

As for RSS well, Viigo is a good alternative and is free. It is not nearly so fully featured but it is much quicker at downloading news than Neews and oes the job very nicely. Next up....the Curve version of Blazer and there is a clear winner here...Curve. The built in web browser is vastly superior and is completely crash free.

As for viewing pics and stuff and music listening I find the built in media apps more than sufficient but again my needs are basic. The music player suffers by not allowing you to make up playlists on the device but the bundled desktop software does let you do this and syncing them to the Curve is easy. Audiophiles however will more than likely be struggling. I also find the movie player enough too and I don't mind not having TCPMP available. Resco Pic Veiwer is way better but....the Blackberry application does a decent enough job and pics display very well, nice and bright. I've also benefited here by not having to splash out on 3rd party replacements, some are available including SplashPhoto but I don't feel I need them.

RMR Fuel: I found CarBuddy which is not bad at all, it provides what I was looking for in that it can provide graphs of economy and track more than one car. It's actually way better than RMR Fuel so that is a bonus. As for ListPro 5 well, there is nothing that comes close to this application for me full stop so finding something even remotely close would be hard. PDA Lists is the pick of a poor bunch by quite some way. It has no desktop companion unfortunately but is quite well featured and is an acceptable alternative. I may however go with TrackIT instead as it has a nice interface, can import existing excel spreadsheets in and can be used  as a List type application quite easily.

4cast has been replaced by the free BBWeather which only seems to want to show one days weather at a time for some reason. As it is again free though it does the job. I still don't think there is a better mobile email client than Snappermail on the go and I miss something of its quality even on the Curve with its' push email system. If I could have Snapper on the Curve I would forego the instant email facility quite willingly. Nevertheless, the Blackberry as you would expect and hope, handles email rather well.

That just leaves iSilo. I haven't missed this nearly as much as I thought as I can convert most documents using MobiPocket reader and can then view them just as well on the Curve. Mobipocket is also a decent ebook reader so that area is well covered off. It is one of the few apps though available for both palm and Blackberry.

I am still at the stage where I am getting used to a different mobile operating system and as everyone knows this can take time both to get used to the o/s and the different apps. At first, the latter can feel both strange and a little uncomfortable and I do miss the sort of comfort zone I was in with both palm and Win Mob. However, I find myself getting more and more used to things and missing certain apps less but this could be partly due to knowing that I still have my 680 to fall back on in a worst case scenario.

Basically, I've almost adequately replicated my palm and win mob apps and useage on the Curve. I just need DataViz to get their Blackberry Docstogo out and that would be enough for me to feel very comfortable about using the Curve as my numero uno device.