Blackberry???

JohnMF · May 5, 2006

Can someone tell me what these Blackberry things are (not the fruit)?

are they like a pocket pc or mobile phone or along those lines??

Does anybody have one? are they expensive and are they worth the money?

Sorry about all the questions. I feel like im getting old when technology starts leaving me behind. Im probably the only person who doesnt know anything about them

Chase · May 5, 2006

They are quite a bit more limited than a pocket PC. The basic use is for telephone and email access, but beyond that their usefulness is pretty limited. I use one for work and can also run things like Yahoo Messenger on it when I'm bored (which is most of the time).

JohnMF · May 5, 2006

thanks chase

so you can check emails? How do they connect to the internet, do you need to be near one of these Wi-Fi ports?

Antarctican · May 5, 2006

Yes, you can check emails. Photo attachments take a while to bring up, at least on mine. You don't seem to need to be near a wifi port to access the 'net on mine, but you have to be in a spot where you can get a signal (so for example, when I'm on the subway or in an elevator I can't really access the 'net or send emails, or use the phone for that matter).

I resisted getting one, but am now addicted to the email access it provides.

Chase · May 5, 2006

You can check both regular email accounts and "corporate" email acounts depending on how the corporate mail is set up and if they have the right gear to support it. You can usually setup your regular email accounts to automatically forward email to the blackberry. Everything runs over the cellular network, so you don't need hotspots, etc. Be careful though about rate plans - if you use a lot of email, definitely consider the unlimited plans that most of the carriers (at least here in the U.S.) offer. Others charge you based on how much data you send and receive and that can get quite expensive if you aren't careful.

magicmonkey · May 6, 2006

Smart phones are now available for around £100 SIM free, they're cheaper and better than a blackberry in that they can do everything a BB can do and a whole lot more besides. Unless you need to log onto an enterprise server dierctly (very unlikely that you'll actually NEED to) then get a smartphone...

Here's a link to a really good yet cheap phone, I played with one last week and ordered it today. It's clearance stock though so may not be available for too long:

http://www.expansys.com/product.asp?code=SMARTPHONE_3

'Daniel' · May 6, 2006

Yes magicmonkey but they're nowhere near as fashionable and we know thats what actually matters.

mentos_007 · May 6, 2006

As far as I remember - Rob can tell you a lot about them coz he owns one.

ferny · May 7, 2006

Aren't the people behind Blackbury being taken to court or soemthing like that? Apparently the technology they use was stolen.

May have been something else though.

Rob · May 7, 2006

Blackberrys have one predominant feature - push e-mail. This means your e-mail is delivered via GPRS, rather than the handset having to connect via WAP or whatever to check for mail. It's very very fast at recieving mail. I have one for work.

There are lots of downsides to BB. They are big, they have very slow processors - scrolling through a list of pictures is agonising. They run propriatory software which is not being exploited, so there are no interesting applications (that I know of). They have fairly short battery life and not very good screens.

However, everyone in the pub gets terribly excited by them. I guess they don't know how limited and dull they are.

I'm probably going to get a new phone which is on Vodafone business e-mail, so I can have a small Nokia phone, but still recieve e-mails directly on it. The small phones are really clever these days, and I find that Nokia are very easy to use.

Oh, and Blackberrys crash quite a lot.

Rob

photogoddess · May 7, 2006

When they first came out, they were so addictive that they called them "Crackberries" I had one for work and absolutely hated it. I traded up for a Pocket PC and loved it. T-Mobile wasn't selling the Pocket PC so I got a Sidekick when I upgraded this time. I really LOVE it. It's the best (and fastest) PDA I've had so far.

magicmonkey · May 8, 2006

Rob said:
Blackberrys have one predominant feature - push e-mail. This means your e-mail is delivered via GPRS, rather than the handset having to connect via WAP or whatever to check for mail. It's very very fast at recieving mail. I have one for work.

That's not quite what push email is (I worked in tech support for Vodaclone until a few months ago) push email means that you get an email delivered to your phone when it arrives on an enteprise server (not a web based email service, work only) and pull email (the usual one) means your phone logs on and checks for emails every so often (you can set the time on the phone) with push you only pay the GPRS fee for the emails you get and will pull you pay the GPRS fee for checking your inbox and getting the mail, it's only a few Kb to check your email though so not very expensive. They both use the same connection (gprs, not wap) depending on what the phone is capable of but anything that can pick up email should have at least GPRS if not 3G these days.

IMHO blackberries are very uncool, they have no features, they're brick like and the only advantage they have over anything else is getting your work email straight away (not much of a bonus unless you're thinking from a corporate point of view)

magicmonkey · May 8, 2006

ferny said:
Aren't the people behind Blackbury being taken to court or soemthing like that? Apparently the technology they use was stolen.

May have been something else though.

Only in America, dodgy patent argument with a company which had a patent on the type of mobile network they were using, word was that they had a work around for that though so should be acle to carry on doing business in America which was about 70% of their customer base...

God I wish I wasn't such a geek!

Corry · May 8, 2006

magicmonkey said:
Only in America, dodgy patent argument with a company which had a patent on the type of mobile network they were using, word was that they had a work around for that though so should be acle to carry on doing business in America which was about 70% of their customer base...

God I wish I wasn't such a geek!

Geeks and nerds are welcomed with open arms in these parts.