The Gadgets Page

I love to have a docking cradle for my PDA. I don’t know if it’s because I’m an old-school Palm Pilot fan or if I am just lazy, but I prefer to have a spot to place my phone easily. Fussing with cords is a pain in the butt for me. Half the time, the cord would fall behind the desk when I removed it from my phone and when I finally got a cord manager to prevent losing the cord, it made it difficult to have the phone facing the right direction.

A cradle stores my phone face up and angled perfectly for me to see while it’s charging or syncing. This particular cradle is a little nicer than the one I had for my Zodiac. There is an extra compartment to charge an additional battery and the sync button is a real one, not just a mechanical work around that indirectly presses the sync button on the original sync cable.

Another additional feature is that you have a choice whether it will be a charging station or a syncing station for you. If you want a cradle where you charge your phone, but prefer to sync at the computer with your original cable, you can do that. The same is true if you want to sync with the cradle and charge elsewhere. You don’t need to have both cords connected for it to work.

I don’t know why they don’t include cradles with the Palms anymore. Maybe there are some people who didn’t really like them. Now, there are several cradles from different peripheral providers to choose from, but this one works like a dream.

Palm’s Treo Docking Cradle is $39 for the version linked here, which includes the AC power adapter and USB data connector. A cheaper version, which includes only the cradle and works with your existing cables, is also available.