So blackberry users, help convince me. I think i’m ready to take the plunge into your world. I’m moving up from a “traditional” cell, and the guy at Altell is recommending the BB 8703. Q-Moto, Palm, etc available too. Thoughts? How much do you use it? It just seems like it would be much easier for me to keep in touch with emails, office stuff, keep me organized and going in the right direction. Plus, the availability of using it as my laptop internet connection seems like a big plus.
I am a recent (6 months) convert. The firm did a survey of the clients and found overwhelming support for the idea of having access by BlackBerry. So they have said, so we have done. I would say get the 8800 if possible. It is the latest version. As I am told better in all respects; longer battery, better resolution, better form (not quite as boxy as 8700) Also, it gets rid of the track wheel and has a virtual track ball on the front. From thems that have them, they like it better. Check if your office supports Blackberry. This will allow you to get work email (and personal accounts) automatically.
The biggest advantage of a BB is when your organization has a BB exchange server. All your contact-related applications get pushed to your handheld (contacts, calendar, email). The big downside to BB is that currently their client / server model is for everything to be server-based, so there isn’t much local functionality on the handset. Editing documents, for example, is implemented a couple of ways and none of them are very good. Documents To Go is supposed to be available soon and that works well on other platforms, so hopefully it will be good on BB when it comes out.
Doctors tend to like Palm because there are a number of medical widgets available for that platform. Q is windows based but until they move them up to Win Mobile 6 you’re looking at fairly stale technology. Also, the BB 8703 is aging. The 8830 is the current standard for CDMA / EVDO.
Which one to choose really depends on what you want to do with it. If you want to run software on the handset don’t get a BB. There are better ways to do that. If you have access to a BB server and just want your email and calendar, BB is tough to beat.
I just got rid of mine when I moved from the law firm to an in-house position.
Funny, as in-house counsel, I’m not considered important enough to warrant a BB. I should re-phrase… A BB is not considered essential for my job. Thus, I don’t have one. I must say that I had no idea how much I hated my BB. It was cool, yeah, but now, when I’m not at work, I’m pretty much inaccessible. I used to get dozens (if not hundreds) of emails daily on my BB when I was at home or on the weekends. I don’t miss that thing at all.
i have one and didn’t realize you were referring to a blackberry. perhaps that means i really don’t love it. sure, it’s convinient, but i view it more as a necessary evil. an evil that i just happen to misplace half the time.
honestly, it’s just a phone, nothing more nothing less. it’s not something to wrap your life around. as far as the excitement that it brings to my life.
I’ve never really understood the draw of having all this functionality on a device that small. I personally don’t want to have to try to read a document or website on a screen that small, no matter how good the resolution is. I would certainly not want to try to edit or write one on such a small screen or small keypad. Like so many other things, I guess I ask how we possibly did business before all these gadgets. Maybe it’s just because my job doesn’t really support or need that kind of technology, I don’t see the need for anything that does much more than make phone calls.
For what it’s worth, I have a Blackberry Pearl that was given to me as a gift, and I don’t really use any of it except the phone features, and occasionally, the camera.
I had one at my old job, and I don’t have one in my new job. Frankly I don’t want one, and wouldn’t unless my job required extensive travel. With the blackberry, I found myself trading emails at all hours, and would check it constantly. Without it, emails wait until I login.
You may like or love it…your family will not be so enthralled…
i hear you. basically, i just need to do what i need to do for work as efficiently as possible.
i don’t call my friends and announce i’m getting an iphone or the recent version of mac. i don’t care, it’s not exciting…gadgets are not life. they do not breath, or think, they do not make or break my days.
so many people walk around with plugs in their ears, or their heads bowed down into a screen with thumbs flailing all over a thimble sized keyboard. that is their life, it’s what they do and who they are…their identity’s all wrapped up in a 500 dollar gadget.
my question is: does it ring? will it break when it falls out of my cycling jersey? does it work and can i afford it? yes to those things, great. if not, who cares. i’ve got more important things to think about.
I have one of the old model ones that my company gave me for work. My job is essentially passing information around, and when I’m not available, it slows everyone down. That makes it hard to be in long meetings or to go to lunch, so I find my blackberry really convenient for those situations. And I pretty much limit myself to using it only then. Sometimes I check what’s going on before I come in to work in the AM - just so there are no surprises.
It’s horrible for viewing/opening/adding any kind of attachment, which is also something that would help me a lot. I’d never buy one personally… but I would buy an iPhone b/c I think it would meet my needs a lot better.
One thing I can say about my blackberry… it still works if you drop it in the toilet. oops…
i don’t really have an orgasim over it.
Proof you have been faking–spelling that is.
I was wondering why this post was in the lavender room. I thought he was talking about his bottom bracket.
I thought bottom bracket too…
I’m ashamed of what I thought.
I’m at the end of the scale that a BB is a complete disaster for me - with automatic monitoring, group emails, and various tasks I am involved in, I get roughly a mail a minute during work hours and about 1 every 5 minutes out of hours. Having a BB means a lot of email gets pushed out that I won’t respond to.
I tried it for a couple of weeks twice and couldn’t get rid of it quickly enough each time.
belly button?
big bong?
blue balls?
brown Buick?
do tell.
Love? Nah. Find useful? Yeah, OK.
I held out for the pearl. I like my gadgets small. And I certainly wasn’t willing (as so many BB users seem to be) to carry a BB and a phone, and not use the BB as a phone.
A pearl is pretty useful. But be aware of its limitations. As a phone, it is very good - audio quality is good, and the UI is very good in allowing you to find numbers quickly.
As an organiser, it is ok. The screen is small and it is very difficult (IMO) to present diary information effectively on any screen. I use it principally to provide me with reminders, rather than as a plan for my day.
As an email client, it is very good, but with limitations. Big attachments are difficult. PDFs in particular I have found almost impossible to read. Word documents are readable, but it’s very easy to lose the thread of what you’re reading when you can see so little of it. Editing requires a third party plug-in. As a result, I use the email client partly in a conventional way - replying to short emails, and partly as an email pager - if something is to big to handle, I head for the nearest desktop machine and look at it there. Senders seems cool with this, as long as you keep them in the loop as to what you’re doing.
As a browser, it is so-so. Streaming video is a no-no on my pearl, and secure sites often seem to bounce it away.
Setting the pearl up as a wireless internet modem is not completely straightforward, IIRC. I haven’t needed to do so, but stuff I have read leads me to believe that it is quite fiddly.
If you’re in the market for one, bottom line is how it compares to the competition. I loathe Outlook, and my experiences of windows mobile on my wife’s pda certainly did not leave me begging for more of that. Haven’t tried a palm or treo.
What’s it missing? Well wi-fi would be nice, and google maps plus GPS would be nicer still (in the UK, google maps simply isn’t available on a BB).
I’m actually quite keen to see the iPhone in action. Not because I think it is a direct competitor - it seems to me to be more of a recreational phone than a business phone - but because I want to see the UI in action. keypads and keyboard suck, and are so unbelievably past their sell by date I really can’t understand how they are still in production.
belly button?
big bong?
blue balls?
brown Buick?
do tell.
Big boobs
You dragged it out of me.
belly button? vs. Big Boobs
big bong?
blue balls?
brown Buick?
do tell.
And there you have it my friends, in a few short words, the fundemental difference in female and male thinking.
LOL!!
Big boobs. So now I’m rethinking the OP’s question into:
Q:How much do I love my big boobs?
A:Hmmm, not very much when it comes to athletic endeavors. 