So the background to this project is that I'm being placed back on the Corporate Paid Cellular Plan at work. Instead of submitting my monthly cell phone bills to work, I'm now going to get it paid for automatically.

One caveat to this, however, is that the corporate policy appears not to allow Blackberry devices, which is what I've been using for work, and, which is the account I just signed a new 2-year agreement with.

So, I had to get rid of the Blackberry. Too bad since I really liked my 7290 (see the review back in August). I decided to go Treo, and with a Treo 650 to be exact as these appear to be well-liked within the company (and the company actually issues them to the service engineers in the field). One problem....T-Mobile, my carrier, doesn't officially sell these devices. And a new unlocked one costs $549 (and the company won't pay for the new equipment). What to do?

So...I decided to turn this into a small project. I started with a used Cingular Treo 650. I purchased this unit from my friend at church for $150. Good deal for both of us - eBay average seems higher than that - no shipping, and I'm helping a buddy clean out his closet (I think he switched to Verizon because where he lives, the Cingular reception is very poor). My friend included the sync cable and charger. Phone is in pretty good shape - has a few nicks and scratches on the case. Clean. Used, but not abused -- the previous owner is a fellow Mac person who knows how to treat electronics right.

First thing I discovered - you can't charge the Treo off the USB port. I don't know why. I suspect because it draws more power than a USB port might safely supply. A little annoying....time to go out and get yet another iGo tip for my iGo Juice unit....

Went down to Walmart and paid $29 for a 512MB SD memory card + card reader (this was actually important - see later step).

Paid $24.95 for a MissingSync upgrade from my old version (old version was way old, but still got $15 discount for an upgrade). I last used it about 2 years ago when I still used my Sony CLIE unit.

All pieces together, the first thing I did was install MissingSync and sync over the unlock650.prc file from http://650unlock.com . This little utility extracts the necessary information from your Treo into a memo pad item to feed the phone unlocker and verifies your phone can be unlocked. Paid 650unlock.com $15 for an unlock credit.

Took the unlock code, went to 650unlock.com, fed it the information, my unlock code token, and got a code back. Inserted my T-Mobile SIM Chip, verified it didn't like the non-Cingular chip, followed the instructions on website, voila, phone now likes chip. Carrier restriction removed. At this point, I had a Cingular Treo 650 on the T-Mobile network with a T-Mobile SIM card. Half way there.

Next the unbranding so I could use T-Mobile's internet access properly. It seemed (to me, YMMV) that it would be easier just to whack all Cingularisms rather than try to figure out how to undo each Cingular inflicted branding issue as it came up. And, unbranding freed up 7MB in the ROM. More room for applications I really want....

Branded Treos don't want to accept unbranded firmware though. There's ROM settings that prevent that. Fortunately, folks out on the internet have figured a way around that. One person, in particular, apparently had a whole company's worth of Cingular Treo 650s to unbrand, so, he wrote a Palm equivalent of a script to do the ROM edits and flash the new firmware on to the phone. Downloaded the zip file referenced here, unzip'ed it, and then copied the files (per the instructions) directly on to the SD Card via the flash card reader.

Inserted flash card with this magic package into the Treo and reset the phone. Phone rebooted and spent 15 minutes loading, erasing, rebooting, loading, rebooting, etc. At the end of 15 minutes, voila, latest unbranded Treo 650 firmware and not a trace of anything Cingular anywhere except on the face of the phone. Unlocking and unbranding complete! Woo Hoo!

New internet settings appeared to get read off the SIM card (thank you T-Mobile for providing this). Did a little modifying of the default Blazer Web Browser settings to utilize the T-Mobile proxy cache and get me to T-Zones home (I actually like that launch page). Program up VersaMail with the configs for Work Email and Home email. Sync up contacts, calendars, to-do from the Mac. And away we go. I configured to sync via USB or Bluetooth.

Downloaded a few favorite apps I had been using on the Blackberry. Google Maps looks good. Google Mail required me to download a JVM from the Palm site to get it to work, but it seems to just fine. Downloaded the Adobe Acrobat Reader for Palm.

I then set about to get my Bluetooth headset to work. That new Nokia BH-900 I talked about in the last few days. This was a little harder than I thought it would be, but finally after about 20 minutes of fiddling got it to pair up properly. The Nokia headset I have has the capability of being able to remember 6 different pairings. So I already had it paired with the Nokia 6126 and the Blackberry 7290, and figured I would just add the Treo 650 as another pairing. Wrong. This Treo seems to have an ego (it rhymes). It wants to be the *first* paired device. So I had to erase all the pairings, pair the Treo first, and then the 6126. Seems fine now.

I've since loaded the DataViz doc translators, a good Klondike game I used to have, a few MIDI ringtones, and a few miscellaneous other little programs I used to use on my CLIE. I also, with some help from the nice customer service folks at T-Mobile, managed to adjust my plan to get off the Blackberry plan and get on to a regular phone plan with unlimited internet and HotSpot usage....

Issues I'm still working on:

Charging. Will probably go out and get yet another iGo tip for my Treo. That'll be another $10....I'm not crazy on getting one of these USB sync/charge cables because I think they will draw too much current from the USB. I might also go find myself another plain Treo charger...

Case. Need a case. Probably another $15 eBay purchase.

But the point is, it works. It can be done. It works well, and I've got a nice replacement unit at about half the cost.

And now that I've freed up my 7290, my wife can retire her 6230 and get a more modern Blackberry.