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It’s impossible to post anything on the anniversary of 9/11 without even a slight note on this terrible day in history. Here we are, 6 years later. Osama hasn’t been captured. Niether has his second in command, Al-Zawahiri. Thankfully, the very volatile and dangerous Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been killed. The US and allies (thankfully Canada was not part of this but we did get a lot of backlash originally for not supporting it) have invaded Iraq and now dealing with a Pandora’s box (remember Vietnam?) of the unavoidable civil war that will eventually erupt. Afghanistan is still unstable and struggling to deal with the Taliban. There is stricter security at airports and everywhere causing major disruptions and delays.

Are we any better off now than we were before 9/11? All I can say is that we are somewhat *wiser* now that we have encountered the level of violence that we have been shielded from (or ignored) and we took for granted for so many years. When I think of 9/11, I think of the devastation and all the lives of innocent civilians who perished in this terrorist act. That will always sadden me. Please take a moment to reflect on these people who have lost their lives. I hope that they are in peace.

A BIG THANKS to Sammy of Palm Addicts and Sherman of SmartBox Design for mentioning and linking to Palm Discovery.

Those who have been reading my blog are probably aware that I purchased the Enfora Wi-Fi sled for the Treo 650 quite a while ago. This is one review that should have been done a long time ago but anyway, here it is, finally. Hopefully those who were looking for it are not disappointed. Again, this review will be another lengthy one so grab yourself a nice beverage.

At one point early on when the Treo 650 (remember when?) was released, we were given hints that there was a Wi-Fi solution coming. Most of us assumed that it would be in the form of a software driver that will enable the Treo 650 to use the Palm branded SD Wi-Fi card ( P10952U ) since that SD Wi-Fi card was supported on many other Palm device models such as the Tungsten T3, T5, E2, Zire 72, and Win Mobile Treo 700w/wx. But that driver never came. During the waiting, Palm hacker Shadowmite created a software driver that allowed some support for the Wi-Fi card but it was quite crude as you needed to do a soft reset to get out. But, it still worked, and was a bit buggy. Unfortunately, once Palm released firmware updates to the Treo 650, that hack or software driver no longer worked and again, Treo 650 users are out of luck.

Being how at one point that the Treo 650 was considered one of the high end smartphones out there (before everyone started getting into the space and even cellular phones became smarter), it seemed a no-brainer that the Treo 650 *should* have Wi-Fi support. So, what’s a Treo 650 owner to do?

The *only* solution, even now, unfortunately, is getting the Enfora Wi-Fi sled designed specficially for the Treo 650 device. There is a similarly designed Wi-Fi sled for the Treo 600 and remember that due to the differences in the connectors of the two Treo, they are not interchangeable. So, you can’t use the Treo 650 Wi-Fi sled on a Treo 600 and vice versa. You have to get the correct one. Enfora is no stranger to creating a Wi-Fi solution for Palm devices. Previously, they created various Wi-Fi portfolio cases for the Zire 71/Tungsten T series of devices with their universal connector as well as the mini-USB connectors for the Zire 72 and Tungsten E. Unfortunately, these portfolio cases have long been discontinued and you’d be hard pressed to find them anywhere except on Ebay or the odd liquidation places.

So, if you wanted to have internet access whether for internet browsing, email, radio or music streaming or whatever else and don’t want to pay for the hefty data charges that your cellular provider charges, Wi-Fi is pretty much the way to go. And the Enfora Wi-Fi sled is your only option.

For those who want to skip over all the detailed review and just want a summary, you can jump to the review summary

The sled itself isn’t terribly big in size if you look at it, but when you actually fit it on your Treo 650, you will definitely notice that your device has grown substantially in size. Not only has the entire package gotten longer, but also thicker. So, those who are quite conscious about the size you hold in your pocket may find that this is not something you want to have.

To give you an idea of the sled itself and how it looks with the Treo 650 fitted in, check out the following pictures.

Click on the thumbnail images for a bigger picture

Video of Enfora Wi-Fi sled

Video at YouTube

Details and Specs (taken from the box):

Presenting the Enfora Wi-Fi Adapter for Treo smartphones:

Part Numbers
WLN1501 - Wi-Fi Adapter for Treo 600
WLN1502 - Wi-Fi Adapter for Treo 650

The package as you can see in the pictures includes a charging cable, wall socket adapters, the Enfora Wi-Fi sled, installation setup CD. You are expected to install the software and do a hotsync so that your Treo will have the necessary software and drivers before you plug it into the sled and start using it. Before you start running it, you should charge up the sled first to ensure that it’s on full battery.

Unfortunately, the sled does not have a power level indicator. I think that you should be able to fully charge it in 2 hours. I have found that the best way to charge it is to turn on the sled when the cable is plugged into the wall. There is a button at the bottom right corner. Press and hold it until you see the power light indicator at starts flashing in yellow. This indicates that your sled is turned on. Leaving it off and then charging it doesn’t charge as quickly.

Before you start fitting the Treo into the sled, you have to first replace your Treo 650’s battery door with the one provided in the package. You will notice that the Enfora supplied battery door has extra attachment holes near the top to properly secure the Treo into the sled. Unfortunately the one supplied is in a lighter silver color and doesn’t match my Treo 650’s color. But whatever. I guess you can always paint it or drill your own attachment holes on your original Treo 650 battery door.

To fit the Treo into the Wi-Fi sled, you are best to try to fit or seat the Treo into the connector at the bottom. Give it a good push to make sure it’s properly seated into the connector because originally, I didn’t fit it well enough and couldn’t get the Wi-Fi software to connect. Then, press the lock release clip button located at the back while you push the Treo to the back, again making sure that it’s right against the back. Then, release the lock release clip button so that the attachment clips will clasp and clip securely and properly on the battery door. This ensures that your Treo doesn’t move or slide out and the physical connection of the connector is secured.

Again, you may find it frustrating to fit the Treo into the sled originally when you first use the sled (well, at least *I did*). You’ll likely figure it out as you get more comfortable with it.

To fit the Treo snugly into the sled so that it’s perfectly connected, hold the sled in your left hand and the Treo in the right. Insert the Treo somewhat at a slight right angle (~89 degrees)(you won’t be able to fit it directly from the top as the sled’s back clip gets in the way). Press the Treo down into the sled’s multi-connector attachment and make sure it is right in the attachment. Originally, I didn’t push it all the way down (for fear of breaking it). You will notice that the bottom row of the QWERTY keys will be quite close to the sled if you did it correctly. If there’s still quite a bit of space between the bottom keys and the sled, you may need to push it further down. Press down on the locking clip at the back of the sled so that it’s in its open position (clip is up). Push the Treo to the back of the sled and again, the Treo must be completely touching the sled all the way back. Release the locking clip button so that the clips will lock into the clip holes on the Treo battery door. You may also find that you may need to push the clip button up to make the clip grasp and clip to the clip holes. Again, this comes with time and experience after you’ve done it a few times. If done correctly, you will be able to launch the Enfora Wi-Fi manager and it will not kick you out of the program. Yay!

To remove the Treo from the sled, this is similar to a reverse of the insertion instructions. With the left hand, press down on the locking clip button at the back of the sled so that the clip has released its grip on the Treo and battery door. Pull the Treo outwards (~89 degrees) first and then pull it up so that it will be unseated from the bottom multi-connector attachment of the sled. That’s it.

Now comes the fun part. Depending on whether you have configured your internet connection and settings, you may have to do a bit of set up. Once everything is set up and configured, you can easily launch your browser (ie. Blazer), email or internet program and start using them. The fun part is being able to access the internet via Wi-Fi and doing a lot of different things that previously was not available to you. That would mean being able to surf the internet, receive and send emails, listen to online radio streams, view online video streams, ftp, etc. So, you can imagine how useful having internet access can be.

So, if you have never experienced the exciting world of internet, this could open up a world of exciting things. In this respect, the Enfora Wi-Fi sled is a great accessory that is well worth the investment. But before you start jumping for joy, here are a few things you should want to be aware of.

Enfora Wi-Fi sled works with Treo 680

I have also briefly tried the Enfora Wi-Fi sled with a loaner Treo 680 smartphone and can confirm that it works. With the slimmer Treo 680, keep in mind that there will be a gap between the sled and the back of the 680 and of course, since it wasn’t meant for the Treo 680 and there’s the gap at the back, you may have difficulty keeping the 680 secured on the sled as it will likely flop forwards or backwards. You will need to figure out a way to fill in the gap at the back so that the Treo 680 will fit the sled as well as keeping it securely on the attachment. You may be able to fit the higher capacity extended battery cover and drill some clip holes on it (I can’t confirm as I don’t own a Treo 680 nor the extended battery cover). If you are interested in learning more about using the Treo 680 with the Enfora wi-fi sled, check out this Treocentral thread.

Here are my observations: Keep in mind that the Enfora Wi-Fi sled can only support a very aging and extremely insecure wireless protocol: 802.11b. Athough it does support some security, the security protocol is extremely weak and highly and easily crackable: WEP (Wired Equivalency Privacy). The Enfora sled supports 40/64/128 bit WEP Encryption and even at 128 bit, it has been demonstrated that anyone with the wireless sniffing hacking software can break WEP in as little as few minutes. Do a search on WEP vulnerability and you should get some results. So, if you are using this sled whether at home or at a hotspot and someone nearby has the intention of sniffing your wireless connection transmission, you are very vulnerable. So, please take that into consideration.

The software program of the sled is very basic and minimal at best. You are first of all, limited to having a maximum number of 6 profiles (wi-fi settings) so if you tend to access wi-fi at various hotspots, you will be forced to delete them if you want to connect to a wi-fi if you already have 6 stored profiles in the software. Second, the wi-fi scanning utility is unbelievably crippled. I was quite astonished how horribly basic and useless the wi-fi scanning capability of the software was compared even to the Sandisk Wi-Fi card for my Zire 71. Sandisk Wi-Fi card for Zire 71 review. And I thought *that* was so basic. Well, to explain, there is hardly any information on the wireless access points that are available. You can only “see” the access point. There is no indication of whether it’s secured, the signal strength, etc. It is so unbelievably sad. Third, you cannot use DHCP in Ad Hoc mode with this sled. It only supports architecture mode. As well, there is no option to input DNS or Gateway IP addresses. These are major limitations that can frustrate a Treo 650 owner to get it set up and running with his home network.

As I’ve mentioned already, there is no battery level indicator on the sled itself. In order to get more information on the battery level, you’ll need to launch the Enfora Wi-Fi Manager application to view the number of bars it has. Or, if you are using the sled and surfing the internet, if the power light changes from green to orange and starts flashing, that indicates that the battery level is low. It seems a bit silly that the sled doesn’t have a power indicator. It’s almost a cryptic method of conveying information.

On a similar note, to turn on or off the power in the sled, you have to press and hold down the power button for 3 seconds. If turning on, the power light will turn on and will be orange. If turning off, the power light will start flashing much quicker and then the light turns off.

The sled, although is lightweight, does add quite a bit of bulk to the entire package. Once you have everything attached, you will find that you no longer can put the Treo with sled in your shirt pocket. It’s not so much as the length, but the thickness of the Treo with sled. If you find the Treo thick enough as it is, you will really be screaming with the sled attached.

The sled, originally for me, took a bit of getting used to in terms of fitting the Treo 650 snugly in. If the Treo isn’t properly fitted or seated in the sled’s connector, you will not be able to run the Enfora software as it will keep kicking you out. This does come with time and experience.

The Enfora sled tends to get warm, very warm (almost uncomfortably warm) after a while of use. And that doesn’t have to be too long. I think that even 20-30 minutes of use will get the sled to feel quite warm. As well, the battery doesn’t last too terribly long either. Enfora claims 5 days of standby time and 24 hours of typical data usage. I don’t think it can offer 5 days of standby time, more like 2 days at most and 3 hours max of data usage.

The design of the sled without a connector is a major sticking point with me. Having been a Zire 71 user who purchased a Palm Power To Go sled, it seems like it’s a no-brainer to have the Enfora sled also have the connector at the bottom so that it can be charged or connected to the cradle or charging cable so you can perform a hotsync while it’s in the sled or other tasks. The one good thing is that if the sled is plugged in and charging that it will charge both the Treo and the sled at the same time. But don’t expect that the sled will provide any source of power when it’s not though. So, unlike the Power To Go sled, you don’t get any extra juice from the sled when it’s not charging.

Alternatively, you can charge the Enfora sled by plugging in the charging cable. But, I have found that doing so will get the sled quite hot over time, especially if you are using the sled.

Now, this is one major problem that I personally find very annoying. Over time, as I’ve mentioned, the Enfora sled gets very warm and even hot (if you plug it into the wall via the charging cable) and using it. That isn’t as big of a deal until you encounter that the Treo 650’s backlight WILL turn off so you’re stuck with a Treo that you can’t see anything. The only solution I’ve found with respect to this is first remove the Treo from the sled. Do a soft reset and try to turn on the Palm a few times. Normally, the screen’s backlight will come back on. This behavior may be due to the Treo’s internal mechanism where it will turn off the backlight when it detects the device getting too warm (and possibly overheating). But it’s quite annoying.

One workaround I’ve found to this is to use a portable charger similar to a Proporta USB Mobile device charger (a LiOn battery specifically) and plug in a cable that will fit the sled’s adapter. This will allow me to still charge the sled while I’m accessing the internet. The Treo doesn’t get nearly as warm and I can surf for a while longer than I normally would if I were plugging it to the wall.

Another annoyance, and again, may not be due to the Enfora sled, but more related to the Treo instead is that the timeout period can be so short that while I’m downloading a file like a podcast, or surfing the internet that I find that I’ve lost my connection. You’re chugging along and then find that it’s taking a long time to load something or that nothing is happening. And then, you find that it’s timed out. The only way out of this I’ve found is to exit out of the application, disconnect (seems silly since I’m not connected anyway but it’s to instruct the Treo that it’s disconnected) and then try again. Normally, I’m back. Some people have mentioned that turning off the radio and turning it back on can get it working for them too, although I have not been able to get back online this way. Annoying yes.

The headphone hole in the sled, I personally found, wasn’t big enough to properly fit my Treo (right angle 90 degree) hybrid headphone jack into the Treo jack. Originally, I was having problems getting any sound (or just sound from one side) when plugging in my headphone. So, I decided to make the hole a slight bigger and now, I have no problems fitting in my headphone into the Treo jack.

I also had to somewhat make the supplied battery cover clip holes slightly a bit bigger so that I wouldn’t have to fight nearly as much as I originally did to fit the clips into the battery cover clip holes. You may not need to but if you are struggling with it, you may want to consider doing so as well. I simply just scraped a bit more away at the top of the square clip holes. That’s all that I needed to do.

Finally, keep in mind that the Enfora Wi-Fi sled has long been discontinued. It still shows up at the Palm US store and other Palm stores worldwide so you may be able to still pick one up from Palm. In terms of support and documentation, you have to pretty much rely on what’s available on the CD itself. A lot of the webpages are no longer available from Enfora’s website, especially in regards to drivers and updates. You can find some of the remaining documentation at this link I do believe that the WiFi Adapter Upgrade version 3.0.4 will fix some issues so you may need to get it if you are experiencing problems. You may want to contact Enfora if you have the Wi-Fi sled and see if they can provide you with the upgrade.

Review Summary

The Enfora Wi-Fi sled, although it provides the opportunity to open up the vast world of the internet to the Treo does come with a lot of annoyances and inconveniences. The fact that the sled can only support 802.11b with WEP even if at 128 bit encryption is, to many, enough of a deterance because who wants to surf if the connection isn’t even secure? The sled can also only operate at the architecture mode and doesn’t support DHCP in Ad Hoc mode nor does it allow inputting of DNS or Gateway IP addresses.

The sled can add a lot of bulk to the entire Treo package and it doesn’t allow you to connect it to your cradle for hotsync or charging, which seems quite silly. After a short period of use, the sled will get quite warm. When the sled gets quite hot, the backlight of the Treo will turn off, so you are navigating with a virtually pitch black screen. Removing the Treo and powering it on and off a few times will normally bring it back. The battery life of the sled isn’t the best and my experience is that after 3 hours of usage, it’s close to being drained. But mind you that I normally stream radio over the net so your usage may vary from mine.

Keep in mind that I still use mine a lot at home and do quite enjoy the convenience of having the internet in my hands. If only the Blazer weren’t so basic and totally lacking in features, my browsing could have been much more of an enjoyable experience. I have found that internet radio streaming using Kinoma Player 4 EX has been my main usage of the sled. After all the negative observations I’ve provided, I still think that if you can accept all the quirks and possible problems, this does offer some benefits. I would recommend this if you absolutely need internet access via Wi-Fi and can deal with the insecurities. Otherwise, I’d suggest getting yourself another smarthphone or PDA device that supports Wi-Fi with better security.

Hopefully, I’ve provided you with enough information to help you understand the advantages and disadvantages of the Enfora Wi-Fi sled as well as how it works. If you are interested, please check out the Enfora Wi-Fi sled WLN 1502 at the Palm US Store.

Disclosure: I am an affiliate of the Palm USA, Palm UK, Palm France, and Palm Germany Store. Purchases made with the affiliate links in this review plus throughout the website will help keep this website running as well as help contribute to a yearly donation to charity. Thanks very much for your continued support!

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Palm® Wi-Fi Card P10952U

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