Blackberry or Treo?

August 23, 2006 12:18 PM

I'd like to have mobile SSH capability, in addition to email and text messaging. Blackberry or Treo?

Palm Treo has TuSSH, and it looks like Blackberry has Idokorro. Are these equitable, and if so, what's the broader picture in terms of choosing a mobile communications solution?

posted by The Jesse Helms to Technology (14 answers total)

I would think screen size, depending on what you need to control with it. I didn't pop for Ido; I'm running midPssh on my 7100i, and it has the tradeoffs you'd expect for it being free. But it does work, if you're patient enough.

I understand Ido is better.

Can't speak to the Palm clients.

One catch can be that newer versions of sshd default not to accepting "password" auth in favor of "keyboard interactive", which looks the same, but is not.

If your client can't do k-a, you might have some troubles...
posted by baylink at 12:23 PM on August 23, 2006

pssh on a Palm Treo works, couldn't get any of the Blackberry clients to work on the Cingular network.
posted by vautrin at 12:36 PM on August 23, 2006

I've been rockin the pssh on the treo 650 for a few months, its invaluable to this DBA.
posted by neilkod at 12:38 PM on August 23, 2006

I'd agree with vautrin. SSH worked for me on my Palm, but I can't get it to work on my Blackberry (with Vodafone in the UK).
posted by athenian at 12:38 PM on August 23, 2006

Idokurro has always worked for me on my Cingular Blackberry. With a BES server I could even connect to 'internal' systems. Which may or may not be a good thing....

It's not a perfect client .. I've had it die when opening a mailbox in Mutt when the application counts up the size of the mailbox. But quick enough to get in and restart a service or somesuch.
posted by sohcahtoa at 12:42 PM on August 23, 2006 [1 favorite]

I got SSH to work on my older Blackberry, so I'm sure it'll work on the newer one my boss keeps promising me.

If you want to do stuff wiz-bang crazy, you can always use the VNC client for Blackberry as well. When I first showed some fellow techies the icons on my desktop floating on the LCD screen of my BB, they all had kittens, right there, on the carpet.
posted by thanotopsis at 12:48 PM on August 23, 2006

I can't speak to any of them, but you may expand your search to Sidekicks. I have had several friends do admin work over SSH from a Sidekick.
posted by poppo at 1:24 PM on August 23, 2006

You can get full-on Putty for the Nokia 9300/9500. I use it and it rocks awesomely hard. Also, the screen is 640 pixels wide so the client can display 80 characters. And the keyboard is better. And wifi is built-in. I used to use a Treo and this is just so much easier that I'd never go back.
posted by blag at 1:51 PM on August 23, 2006

In my experience: Treo (700p) = piece of shit (and I have no problem with PalmOS), Sidekick = mostly awesome. No experience with Blackberries.
posted by trevyn at 3:00 PM on August 23, 2006

Sidekick.
posted by autojack at 3:46 PM on August 23, 2006

I basically have a Blackberry because of Idokorro SSH. It works very well. The only big gotcha is screen size (40 columns or so max).
posted by mendel at 6:42 PM on August 23, 2006

I currently have a Treo 650, and am not really happy with pssh or TuSSH. The really big problem is that Palm OS isn't multitasking, so I can't switch from my SSH session to the web browser to look something up without the session being dropped. (At least, I think this is the OS's fault.)

The Sidekick's terminal program is the best handheld SSH client I've seen (though I haven't tried any Blackberry ones). In addition to seamlessly letting you switch to other SSH connections and even other applications, it has nice features like line entry mode, so you can type your whole line as fast as you want and then send it at once, rather than typing a letter and waiting for it to get all the way to the server and echo back before you see it. This makes a big difference if you make a typo.

I could also type pretty quickly on my Sidekick, which made SSHing from it pleasant. The Treo's keyboard is just too small. I miss my Sidekick, but I really like the Palm's ability to do things like connect to Bluetooth GPS receivers. If you're satisfied with the software that's available for the Sidekick, I'd recommend that.
posted by aneel at 8:02 PM on August 23, 2006

In addition to seamlessly letting you switch to other SSH connections and even other applications, it has nice features like line entry mode, so you can type your whole line as fast as you want and then send it at once, rather than typing a letter and waiting for it to get all the way to the server and echo back before you see it. This makes a big difference if you make a typo.

Ah, good point. For what it's worth, Idokorro has that as well (and yes, it would be very painful without it). It also lets you switch between using the scroll wheel to scroll, and using it as cursor keys (up/down, and left/right with ALT).
posted by mendel at 11:10 AM on August 24, 2006

I'd rather stab myself in the eye and wash the wound with hot sauce than own another Sidekick, personally. My experience was admittedly with the first one in the first year of its release, but getting any assistance from T-Mobile was impossible and the manufacturing quality was sub-standard - I went through three in that time. The system was locked down hard, too, making getting my data out to sync elsewhere a herculean effort.
posted by phearlez at 12:03 PM on August 24, 2006