I’ve been on the smartphone bandwagon for years now. I bought one of the first Palm’s to hit the stores, followed by the Tungsten, followed by various versions of the Treo and I’ve now been running on a Palm Treo 500v for over a year.  Over the years, my only non-palm phone has been the Sony Ericsson p990i, which wasn’t all that bad.

One of the reason’s I stuck to Palm was Palm OS, which ofcourse is now history. My biggest frustration with the Treo 500v has been it’s speed and functionality. It works like a clunky windows machine would work in the early days, which means it crashes or freezes and becomes extremely slow at times. The time to open an application is too much time for a mobile device, and of late my Palm has certainly been trying my patience.

I’m thinking about getting a replacement, but alas, there is much choice in the market and not enough experienced information out there to make a decision. The new Palm looks promising. Blackberry has always ruled the business world, but iPhone is fast catching up for both business and leisure.

As a hard-core business user, I need something that can handle all my email, wifi, web browsing and mapping needs without choking or slowing down the device. Blackberry is the unparalelled leader on the email side of things and over the years the one thing that always made me go for a Palm has been the QWERTY keyboard, which is something that Blackberry shares in common with Palm. This is possibly the only department the iPhone is lacking in.

So, the million dollar question (not quite, more like £200-£300) question is which is it, the Blackberry Curve or the iPhone 3G S. Well, both operating systems seem genuinely reliable. Blackberry is also fast developing its applet store to compete with the iPhone. The Blackberry OS also looks to work smoothly and looks great, although it’s not as flashy or as graceful as the Mac.  I’d personally prefer a Windows Mobile device, and I had given some serious thought to the Sony Xperia X1, but the lack of speed in windows devices simply turns me off.

With reviews floating around, it seems pretty clear that the iPhone is the device of choice when it comes to browsing the web or using maps, or getting other apps.  The only department the iPhone falls short in is the keyboard.

Here, however, is where the iPhone makes up for it.  As someone who has to frequently travel on London’s dismal but loved Underground, I very much like the idea of having to carry only ONE device for my music, video and phone needs. That’s a plus, provided the battery can survive me a comfortable 10-12 hours.

I’ve also considered Google Android phones, but their limitation to T-Mobile hasn’t done much for them.  The iPhone seems like it’s fast becoming the winner, but somehow that Qwerty keyboard attachment is hard to part with.

Suggestion or advice, anyone?

Here are the new download keys for hp QuickPlay.

Use the instructions provided on http://www.asifism.com/installing-hp-quickplay-on-your-laptopnotebook-vista-xp/ for installing QuickPlay Direct before posting questions and queries already answered. Please also visit the above link to see HOW TO get the latest QuickPlay Download keys if the keys on this post do not work.

To download QuickPlay, visit http://downloads.asifism.com and use one of the following appropriate keys provided below. Also, DO USE the download of Winrar provided to extract the zipped version of QuickPlay Direct (HPQPDP.rar), otherwise you may get errors while trying to extract it. Please note that keys are renewed every 10 days so if they are expired, be patient.

hp QuickPlay Direct 2.3 for Windows Vista & XP: d6d5ddbeeea1f3662a0839809b26fc41

To validate your download, please use the MD5 hashes on http://www.asifism.com/hp-quickplay-windows-vista/hp-quickplay-download-md5-hashes/

hp QuickPlay Direct 1.0 (runs on a linux partition)[NRG file, use Daemon Tools to mount]: 21726147fbf3d5c97c40f01c62278d99

hp QuickPlay for Windows Vista & XP: 7b5b3523272e25c34bda302be46b3bf9

hp QuickPlay TV Play: 5c5a0833163f46d9cc1c34460370d861

Winrar 3.6.2 (please use to extract hpqpdp.rar): 6dc46a4f7838851374aa0916971560fb

For those people who get the QuickPlay Enabled or QuickPlay authorized machine only error while installing, please try the following:

Using Notepad, make a file and save as .reg with the following:-

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\QPFlag]
“QPFlag”=dword:00000003
“@=”=””

Then add to the registry by double clicking this file afte you’ved saved it install QuickPlay.

If extraction for QuickPlay Direct fails claiming one of the files is corrupt, always try the file before and after the number that winrar tells you is corrupt. Both the data4.cab and data3.cab files are huge and span over different compressed pieces, winrar isn’t always accurate.

Any questions? Comment them.

Here are the new download keys for hp QuickPlay.

Use the instructions provided on http://www.asifism.com/installing-hp-quickplay-on-your-laptopnotebook-vista-xp/ for installing QuickPlay Direct before posting questions and queries already answered. Please also visit the above link to see HOW TO get the latest QuickPlay Download keys if the keys on this post do not work.

To download QuickPlay, visit http://downloads.asifism.com and use one of the following appropriate keys provided below. Also, DO USE the download of Winrar provided to extract the zipped version of QuickPlay Direct (HPQPDP.rar), otherwise you may get errors while trying to extract it. Please note that keys are renewed every 10 days so if they are expired, be patient.

hp QuickPlay Direct 2.3 for Windows Vista & XP: 39e9ad775f4ce7968f6106d96585c155

To validate your download, please use the MD5 hashes on http://www.asifism.com/hp-quickplay-windows-vista/hp-quickplay-download-md5-hashes/

hp QuickPlay Direct 1.0 (runs on a linux partition)[NRG file, use Daemon Tools to mount]: e53186eaee519361b5ea3f368f783aa3

hp QuickPlay for Windows Vista & XP: e3a6bd12d0b40cb3a066ee701915ec32

hp QuickPlay TV Play: 1ef0c4cd51ee8f1a1351c213fd0eaf06

Winrar 3.6.2 (please use to extract hpqpdp.rar): eeb42dad89702e1a87dff288e9946415

For those people who get the QuickPlay Enabled or QuickPlay authorized machine only error while installing, please try the following:

Using Notepad, make a file and save as .reg with the following:-

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\QPFlag]
“QPFlag”=dword:00000003
“@=”=””

Then add to the registry by double clicking this file afte you’ved saved it install QuickPlay.

If extraction for QuickPlay Direct fails claiming one of the files is corrupt, always try the file before and after the number that winrar tells you is corrupt. Both the data4.cab and data3.cab files are huge and span over different compressed pieces, winrar isn’t always accurate.

Any questions? Comment them.