With much excitement, the world found out with glee that Verizon and Palm had released an update to the Treo 700w last week. Version 1.10 was packed with a bunch of new features, according to Palm, with the most anticipated one being the Messaging & Security Feature Pack (MSFP). This long awaited feature takes on the Blackberry head on and pushes mail from an Exchange Server 2003 running the latest Service Pack directly to your Treo. No more Always Up To Date (AUTD) or better known as Drain My Battery Extremely Fast. Yeah!

Faithful reader Rob tells us that true indeed, MSFP works like a charm. However, getting that charm installed ain’t all that easy. In fact, Rob tells us, “If this is designed for non-technical users, it certainly falls short,” adding that there’s a lot of manual procedures to be done by you, the savvy smartphone user. Besides the fact that the download is a ZIP file which the user must unpack and then execute the upgrade them self, Rob also gasps when he found that he had to, “Manually remove the PC-side application when you’re done using Add/Remove Programs — as well as clean up all the temp files on the Treo using the PocketPC version of Windows Explorer.” Nice, Palm.

Oh, those slew of new features? Good luck finding them as there is no change log or a summary section in the manual. Now, there IS a manual and it does have the changes in it, but unless you are working in Tech Pubs by trade, you probably don’t have the trained eye to catch the differences between 1.10’s manual and 1.0’s. So just trust Sunnyvale’s finest and believe them when they say “there’s lots of changes”.

Beside the downfall of poor documentation of what the new features are or an easy double-click and install upgrade, Rob says it’s all good at the end of the day. Now his mail comes when it’s new and his Treo only responds to new mail instead of heaving and hoeing to get it itself when SMS use to come in and say, “Dude, you’ve got mail!” Life is better.

XV6700 users, not so fast. This update is for the Treo 700w only. To make sure you kiddies stay honest, Verizon requires you to enter your devices serial number prior to download to insure you are who you say you are. Don’t worry, the UTStarcom version is coming…it just takes time to dumb down the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth profiles. :)

Tags: e-mail, treo, blackberry, update, 700w, msfp, push, 1.10, messaging & security feature pack