Iain Mac

Because I'm spending so much time outside now, I'm missing out on emails all day, then having to reply at night - often too late.

Is Blackberry worthwhile?
And are they easy to use?
Any alternatives?

Turbocabbie

Blackberrys are awesome, I loved mine and consider it the best phone, communication device I have ever had ( 7100x on 02 )
I got my blackberry after a sony ericsson p900i which was rubbish.... this year I gave my blackberry upgrade for a XDA 02 Exec whic also is not a touch on the blackberry

I miss my blackberry

if you want gimics and new features you will not find these in the blackberry, if you want the easiest to use communication device with amazing battery life... there is nothing better imho

saff_cossie

A lot depends on what you will use it for. I have purchased, configured and installed a couple of enterprise servers here.

Desktop redirection is easy and the simplest if you only require attachments of either .doc, .pdf, .xls, .txt. Any more than that such as .tif (commonly used in paperless offices for images from fax machines) and yuo need to start routing via an enterprise server. That server has to be of a decent spec inc 2GB recommended of RAM which soon amounts to a costly exercise for only one Blackberry.

If you just want your emails forwarding on, they are great (model choice is a bit limited here in Oz).

Iain Mac

Next question then is will it work with an ordinary ISP and not via a server?

My emails come to my laptop at home, but I also get emails via our website which is hosted by our web company and it is really those emails I need during the day. At the moment, they get forwarded via my ISP and I have both accounts set up in Outlook on the laptop.

Jim Galbally

the way it works is your PC receiveds the email (via outlook express), and then forwards to a worldwide blackberry server. (so your PC needs to be on and connected to send the emails.

your blackberry connects to this worldwide blackberry server via your telephone operator's access point.

as long as your telephone operator has data roaming in the country you're going to, you can use it worldwide i think only the 8700g and newer work in quadband countries tho (ie the states)

Turbocabbie

When you get a blackberry on O2 or Vodaphone they give you a email address for the blackberry which is configured to forward copies of your email to the handheld.. it does not remove them from the ISP email server so that you still have copies for your PC

Jim Galbally

is that blackberry internet mail then? i've never used it... only used it with enterprise redirection myself...

doesnt help with having yuor PC on all the time tho as you'd still need you PC to auto-forward the mail

RANJ

o2 redirect your email after you have etered your mail account details onto there internet blackbery server.

Ginge !

whats blackberry,,,, i was hungry and now im thinking of jam on toast,,,, whats this got to do with phones

Turbocabbie

its a communication tool /email /phone etc made by RIM (research in motion)

AddyT

We bought a few at work (8) and ended up selling them on, assaff_cossie says, it gets expensive to set up computers etc, seperate servers for just the Partners. Cost wise we scrapped the idea.

Andreas

Check out the Palmone Treo series, phone and pda.

You can set it to fetch mail at certain times or with an interval. Can also be set to just fetch first few bytes of the mail so that you can choose wether to recieve it in full or not.

T650 - the one ive got


T680


www.palmone.com

L33 BYT

Let me introduce the one im after.
http://www.expansys.com/p.aspx?i=139471

Turbocabbie

You can set the blackberry to recieve only the mail headers as well

Andreas

Cool, great function to cut down on data transfer.

Can it play video?

Jim Galbally

we've started using orange SPVs which are basically PDA-Phones running WM2005

shits all over blackberry

finally you have a PDA-Phone that WORKS as a phone

polly_x

iTrader: (2)

Guys, Blackberry rocks especially if its connected to an enterprise back end.

Sounds like none of you have tried the Blackberry pearl?

Shits all over any Orange SPV (Sorry Jim)

Iain Mac

I had an Orange SPV C500 that went back in its box because it had the WORST network coverage I've ever had.
In fact, when a colleague came to Scotland with her Orange sim in her SPV and I had my Orange sim in my old 6310i, I had signal at least 80% of the time - she was lucky if she had signal over 25% of the same journey.

Jim Galbally

not really a problem with the new SPV series

i've been working with BES for a while now, and i'm just dissapointed with its technology limitations and the way it actually handles mailbox lookups and attachments. it's just poor imho.

Fastmaul

That's the new T Mobile "Dash" over ere' in the States. Same one I'm thinking of getting.

The Blackberry Pearl is nice but too girly lookin'. Or maybe the only ones I see using them over here are girls because they think the phone looks "cute" LOL.