Blackberry

More and more of my clients have one of these things. I also see more and more people using them when I'm travelling (train, plane, coach, ...). Although I still adore my beloved Palm TX I had to finally go out and get myself a Blackberry 8700.

It took most of the day to get the damn thing to work. This had nothing to do with the Blackberry itself but rather the amazing level of imcompetence of Orange (the mobile phone company which is a direct affiliate of France Télécom which is our national phone company. All of the employees of both companies are therefore civil servants. The level of service, or lack thereof, can be quite amazing.

I had ordered a Blackberry with the Blackberry data plan (15 MB per month automatically adjusted) to be used in addition to my mobile phone. My mobile phone is still my voice line and my Blackberry is to be used almost solely as a mobile Internet terminal.

Funny enough I had just spent yesterday installing a Blackberry 8700f (Orange) for a client and had exactly the same sort of problems there. They had not activated the Blackberry option and had only activated the voice option. Yesterday it took me about 2 phone calls and an hour to get it all sorted out. Today it took at least 8 to 10 phone calls and several hours. Finally I got everything working and was able to start playing with the handset.

I of course immediately started searching the web for additional software and options. I was actually quite underwhelmed by what I found... especially in comparison to the hundreds, if not thousands, of software I find for Palms.

But I can definitely see the attraction. The thing does what it's supposed to do and it can certainly become addictive. Always being able to get one's e-mail and being able to answer and being able to (relatively) quickly access the Internet for info and such is a great feeling of power. But it's still just like a mobile phone: the first thing to learn is how to turn the damn thing off!

I will be testing software and various options to see if I can get the thing to work with our secure e-mail services, with digital certificates and such, and whether it will be a valid option for our mobile users.

I now am a very well-equipped travelling geek. I'm easy to spot. I'm sitting on the Eurostar with a Nokia N70 mobile phone, a Blackberry 8700, a Palm TX, an iPod Nano and my big Dell Inspiron 9400 laptop.