- There's audio and video playback courtesy of the Windows Media Player bundled with the operating system. It's just fine, especially if you invest in an adapter for the 2.5mm headset jack and attach a pair of real headphones, or use a Bluetooth stereo headset. (The media-file library on the Treo can sync with Windows Media on your PC, something like iTunes and an iPod, but that's the hard way. Just stick some MP3 files on an SD card and plug it into the Treo's SD socket.) The sound quality through the unit's small speaker is awful, but it's not as bad as you'd expect.

- The Treo provides viewers for Office documents and PDF files that come as e-mail attachments or are loaded onto the device. Functionality is wonderful: You can edit Word documents and zoom into PDF files, but how much of that do you really want to do on a screen the size of four stamps?

This list could go on, but these aren't the important points about the 700wx. Did I say it's a cell phone? And a good one. It's actually stylishly petite, which isn't something you can say of the older BlackBerries, and it works well one-handed -- you can find or key in a number without having to devote both hands and the stylus to the task. Its speakerphone function works OK in a quiet setting. Some small UI changes have apparently been made, because "Hold" and "Mute" screen buttons now appear when your call connects. Early users of the 700w complained that those were buried in menus.

Even better than its cell phone functionality, the Treo 700wx is an e-mail tiger. It's easy to set it up for a variety of e-mail services -- Exchange mail, naturally, is almost automatic. MSN or Hotmail accounts are supported in the Treo UI, rather than logging into them in a Web browser. POP and SMTP accounts -- up to five of them -- are almost as easy. All I needed to know to set up a Gmail account was the username and password. For an ISP account, I had to provide the server names, but even that seemed easier than on similar devices.

Receiving e-mail, thanks to the EV-DO data link, is a breeze. Good-bye Wi-Fi hot spots; hello e-mail anywhere. But creating e-mail isn't quite as breezy. The keys on the Treo thumbboard are spaced more closely than on the standard BlackBerries -- a small difference, but I was acutely aware of it. (On the other hand, I'm glad to have a full alphanumeric key layout after reading reviews of the new BlackBerry Pearl, with its SureType keypad.)