Well I’ve had my Ogo now for about 72 hours and so far I have to say I love it. I mean it does have an issue or two but over all I gotta say…Get one. Here’s my review (for lack of a better word)

I went to the AT&T store in Exton on Thursday afternoon to take a look at the Ogo. Of course no one in the store knew about it and the Ogo on display would not boot up. I decided to ask one question that would make up my mind as to whether I should buy it or not… Can It be returned? The salesperson said yes that I had 30 days to bring it back for a refund. I figured what did I have to lose.

Now some of you may be asking what is an Ogo. An Ogo is a device that allows you to send and receive emails and to chat via AIM, Yahoo! or MSN from anywhere. It’s basically a phone (although AT&T disables the phone piece) with it’s own number so it can be also used for text messaging. I originally wanted a T-Mobile Sidekick II which is a mobile communicator as well as a phone, however I am in the beginning of my Cingular contract and the only thing they are offering that comes close to the Sidekick is the Motorola A603 and that’s not out yet and even when it does come out it’s going to cost me $349, the Ogo is 100 bucks and I don’t need to sign a new contract.

I got home about an hour later, very excited. I opened the box and truthfully they put WAY to much thought into making this product trendy but it mattered not to me as long as it worked. I put in the battery, plugged it in and sat down to activate the product. I figured this would take 20 to 30 minutes…I was wrong. First thing the Activation Wizard did was to ask me for my Personal Information and how I wanted to pay, when I hit the activation button however the Ogo informed me that Activation was beginning and it could possibly take SEVERAL hours. What? This should be something they tell you sooner than this. I was bummed, I wanted to play with my Ogo!!! But I patiently waited for 5 hours, continually checking to see if th e activation had completed, but alas it had not. I figured after 5 hrs something must be wrong. I went on to AT&T’s webpage and joined their Java support chat. They were very very helpful. Within 15 minutes “Charles” the AT&T support rep had me reset the Ogo and sent the activation acknowledgement and I was off and running.

Once that was done I’ve had nothing but a positive experience with my Ogo. The trick is this…you get ONE major service (AIM, Yahoo! or MSN) for your 17.99 a month, and if you want to add a second or third, it’s 3 bucks PER service. This does get you IM and Email. You can check your AOL mail, Yahoo Mail or Hotmail via the Ogo. I decided to add AIM and Yahoo. The best part however is…you can add as many POP3 emails as you like for free. This was a little advertised feature but exactly what I wanted.

Set up of each item is via a wizard which although is easy to follow and understand, I’d love to see an advanced settings choice where I could just fill in the information but it’s good because before you finally accept the settings it shows you what your costs will be so there is NO suprises. This is great because it seems that every company these days are always trying to trick you into paying for something.

I quickly got AIM and Yahoo set up and 4 email accounts. I signed into AIM and was chatting away. Here is however one f my complaints. AIM does take a while to get you signed in and via testing, your messages take a bit of time to get received on AIM. Basically, you hit the Sign on Key and enter your username hit enter two more times… and you get a Signing on to AIM screen. Next you get a message saying Retrieving your Buddies… well at this point you ARE signed on via AIM. People can see you on AIM but you can’t see anyone yet. Next you see your buddy list on the Ogo but everyone is offline. It can take up to 30 to 40 seconds after your buddy list appears for people to show up as Online. During this time however they can see you and send you messages but you can’t reply. You cannot send a message when the Ogo thinks your buddy is offline. This is worse in Yahoo but I’ll get to that. Finally your buddies are “online” and you can start chatting. Now please understand the lags are not that bad. And since everyone on AIM can see you’re on a Mobile device they seem to be understanding. Of course iChat does not show that u’re on a Mobile device and the Ogo does not support Available messages only Away messages. Once you’re on though it’s very easy to use and type and switch between chats the “Ogo Button” brings up a list of your current items and you just move down with the Navigation buttons and click Enter. You can totally change screen names as many times as you want and sign on to as many different AIM names as you want.

Yahoo is better and worse to be on. It is much quicker to get signed on to Yahoo and getting your buddies online but the functionality needs some work. You can be on Yahoo invisible and see your whole buddy list but again you cannot send a message when you’re invisible. Worse is that if someone sends you a message while you are invisible, you get the message but can’t reply! I am hoping this is a 1.0 issue and it will get better.

One lacking feature is no synching. It’s not the worse thing in the world but you have to enter your contacts by hand. It does drive me nuts that there is a Bluetooth chip inside and you can’t use it to synch with your Mac. I must be honest, E-mail and Text Messaging are amazing on it. I love to be able to get and send my email anytime anywhere. The email function gives you a combo inbox that shows you all your messages (SMS and Email) in one box. It leaves your mail on the server and you can choose to delete messages off the server right from your Ogo. This means junk mail is just a click to be deleted and you don’t have to deal with it again back on your PC/Mac. I also love texting because it’s so easy to type on the thumbboard.

Battery life is not bad at all and what’s neat is that it can be charged off a USB port (gotta get your own cable though and it does not use a normal cable but one with the trapezoidal adapter on one end). What’s even cooler for me is that the AC adapters that I have for my Palm Zire 71 work with the USB cable so I don’t have to bring ANOTHER charger on my trips.

I disagree with a lot of the issues David Pogue had with the Ogo, it’s just the right size, comfortable to use, fits nicely in your pocket. He said “…What’s really frustrating, though, is the way it turns off every 30 seconds, even if you’re in the middle of reading something. You restore the light by pressing any key, provided you can get past the uneasy feeling that your key press might do something unexpected in the dark. In any case, the Ogo is probably the only color palmtop that doesn’t let you specify how long the backlight stays on…”. I could not disagree more. It’s not a big deal any key you hit is ignored it just starts the screen up and it really helps keep the battery from dying.

He also said “…The software is also ludicrously insecure; whenever you make a choice or change a setting, the Ogo asks, ”Are you sure?” Clawing your way down to the Yes button requires still more cumbersome arrow-key navigation…”. Again I disagree. I like that it asks me because my big ass fingers have from time to time hit the wrong key and if it hadn’t been for the “insecure”-ness of the Ogo I’d have lost some messages.

Overall, it’s not a Blackberry or a Sidekick II but it also costs 1/3 to 1/5 the price of those and I don’t think it’s intended to be them. A calendar would be nice so would a phone and a to do list but then it’d be a Blackberry. Compare it to the Motorola IMFree. That’s a device that does ONLY AIM is black and white AND is bigger than my Ogo when it’s open. Now true it’s only 50 bucks but the Ogo is to me obviously targeting that product not Blackberry’s and Sidekicks.

It’s exactly what I needed. I love it. You gotta try it.

Zya

Music playing during post: Irish Blood, English Heart - Morrissey