I found a cell phone antenna that works - helps in the mtns.

[Sinecure]

I drive from the to the mountains every winter weekend. Plus I drive around home a fair amount (25K mi/yr). Last year I replaced my old Kyocera Palm Phone with a Treo 650. The radio/antenna on the Treo must really suck because it gets no reception or drops calls where my old phone would have had marginal reception or given some static but not dropped the call.

The most vexing of locations is our ski house. Its in a cellular black hole. There's service 200yds down the road, and I used to get marginal reception out in the driveway, but inside the house the Treo doesn't have any reception and the old phone would get a signal and ring, but you couldn't carry on a conversation.

Last week I bought an ARC Freedom Antenna from wpsantennas.com plus the appropriate adaptor cable for the Treo. NOTE: not all phones can accept antennas - look on the site to see if yours is there. If your phone takes an antenna, it probably has a little rubber plug in a hole near the antenna on the back of the phone - look at the pic on the above link. The whole thing cost around $60, including the adaptor cable and shipping.

It works! There's a spot near my house that I avoid if I'm on an important call. Calls usually drop there, but at a minimum reception gets really bad for a brief period. Now I can maintain the call and the conversation all the way down the hill. In the ski house I now get one bar of reception, but its reliable and I can make and receive calls. It also held onto a signal in a bunch of typical dead spots along the freeway. Generally it seems to add one bar to whatever reception I had. Obviously its not going to get me reception where there's no signal at all, but its a huge improvement.

There's my product endorsement for the week.

Oh, it works with both GSM and CDMA carriers.

[Rob Stevens]

This lame Bleakberry of mine may be able to benefit from this technology.

I can't afford the dropped calls as a Realtor...