If you’re an owner of the Treo 700w, did you notice the email message from Palm this morning? Palm sent out an email notifying owners that there was a software update available for the Treo 700w. Here’s a snippet of the email message:

Treo(TM) 700w smartphone users with Verizon Wireless service:

An important new update for your Treo 700w smartphone is now available.
This update offers Palm and Microsoft enhancements as well as
Microsoft’s latest feature pack, including:

Microsoft(R)’s Messaging and Security Feature Pack (MSFP)

- Direct Push Technology for automatic wireless synchronization of
email, calendar, contacts, and now, tasks*
- Wireless access to your company’s Global Address List*
- Enhanced business security features

Memory modifications
- Updated memory management

Email enhancements
- More support for push email solutions, such as WirelessSync and
GoodLink(TM)
- Enhanced email synchronization capabilities, such as the ability to
maintain an “always on” data connection after POP or IMAP email
synchronization and the ability to auto-synchronize all email accounts
based on user settings*

And More
- Latest version of the Picsel PDF viewer, now available for download at
http://www.palm.com/us/support/downloads/picsel/index.html
- Wireless Manager provides updated interface for turning wireless radios
on or off
- Updates to the Pictures and Videos application

Being the curious cat that I am, I went ahead and attempted to download the update. Be aware that you need to have your phone’s serial number in order to get the update. You can find the serial number beneath the battery inside the phone.

Once the serial number was provided to Palm, I was able to instantly download the update. The update is basically a zip file with all the software files needed to perform the update. Here’s a shot of the update unzipped into a directory.

To update your Treo, do the following:
1. Run the setup.exe program in the update. This will install the Treo 700w update software onto your Windows PC. The update software will place an icon on your Windows desktop that looks like this:

2. The update software installation program will look as follows:

3. Once the software has been installed onto your PC, connect your Treo 700w to your Windows PC. Make sure your power is also connected to the phone AND make sure that ActiveSync has finished syncing with your phone BEFORE you do anything else
4. Once ActiveSync is finished synchronizing data, go ahead and launch the Treo 700w updater executable via the shortcut on your Windows desktop. The Treo 700w update will display the following screen.

5. The update is in three phases – copying files, executing the update, and completing the update. The total time estimated for the update is around 30 minutes (which seems rather high to me)

6. During the execution of the update, the phone will perform a soft reset and you will see screens like this (excuse the dirtiness of the touch screen on my Treo 700w).

7. Once the update has been finished, you should reset the phone and also remove all the zero byte temp files in the Windows/Temp folder on your smartphone.

That’s it! The update took about 21 minutes to finish on my Treo 700w but your mileage may vary. I haven’t seen anything noticeable as of yet in terms of performance but I’ll keep people posted.

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