One of our new employees has a thing called a "Blackberry". I don't 
fully comprehend what it's supposed to be, but apparently it's supposed 
to be possible to read email using it. And I have been asked to 
configure this.

My first question is: Oh my God, what the HELL?! Are you KIDDING me?!! 
This thing is just *horrible* to operate. It took me, like, 25 minutes 
to type in an 8-character username! Jesus, talk about unfriendly...

I thought the glide pad on laptops was useless. But this has something 
far worse: a small ballbearing. It rotates, and this sometimes moves 
stuff on screen. (But only if it feels like it.) You can also press on 
it to "click" it - with the obvious and inevitable problem that doing 
this causes the ball to rotate rather than depress, with extremely high 
probability.

Next we come to the keyboard. What, you couldn't make the buttons any 
smaller than that? :-P (Watching Mr Piggy Fingers attempt to operate it 
was just comical.) I especially love the way the keyboard works 
differently depending on which text field you're trying to operate. 
Actually, on some of them it works kinda OK. But on others, it 
absolutely *insists* on inserting unwanted extra characters, and even 
*changing* characters that I've already typed in correctly. (Like I 
said, 25 minutes to enter one username.)

Other nice features include input fields that are only wide enough to 
display 3 characters at a time (to prevent you from checking whether you 
typed everything in correctly), and the inability to move the pointer 
far enough to the right to access the scrollbar.

Why in the name of goodness would any sane person want to use this 
horrid, horrid device?! >_<

Post a reply to this message

> One of our new employees has a thing called a "Blackberry". I don't fully 
> comprehend what it's supposed to be, but apparently it's supposed to be 
> possible to read email using it. And I have been asked to configure this.

Do you have the blackberry software to go with your exchange server?  I was 
under the impression you can't just use this thing without the server end 
being sorted out too.

> My first question is: Oh my God, what the HELL?! Are you KIDDING me?!! 
> This thing is just *horrible* to operate. It took me, like, 25 minutes to 
> type in an 8-character username! Jesus, talk about unfriendly...

Hmm, everyone I've seen using them seems to manage ok.  I don't think they 
are meant to replace laptops, they are just for reading email and sending 
short replies when you can't get access to WiFi or don't want to use your 
laptop.  Actually in a couple of situations I'd wished I had a similar 
device, would have saved a lot of time and money.

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:

> Do you have the blackberry software to go with your exchange server?  I 
> was under the impression you can't just use this thing without the 
> server end being sorted out too.

Apparently it can connect to Outlook Web Access (which we have). Several 
other employees have it working, so it's gotta be possible somehow...

>> My first question is: Oh my God, what the HELL?! Are you KIDDING me?!! 
>> This thing is just *horrible* to operate. It took me, like, 25 minutes 
>> to type in an 8-character username! Jesus, talk about unfriendly...
> 
> Hmm, everyone I've seen using them seems to manage ok.  I don't think 
> they are meant to replace laptops, they are just for reading email and 
> sending short replies when you can't get access to WiFi or don't want to 
> use your laptop.  Actually in a couple of situations I'd wished I had a 
> similar device, would have saved a lot of time and money.

"Short" replies?

Hmm... extrapolating from my "8 characters in 25 minutes", a reply 
consisting of, say, a whole sentence could be something like 10 words 
long, each word probably 2--6 letters, making a total of about 32 
characters or so, which would take... over an hour to type.

Still, every now and then somebody from IT sends me a quick email that 
doesn't make sense, and I reply, and they're all like "damned iPhone 
keyboards!"

Post a reply to this message

> Apparently it can connect to Outlook Web Access (which we have). Several 
> other employees have it working, so it's gotta be possible somehow...

Ah interesting to know because some guy here was looking at it, but our IT 
dept basically said "no, it won't work because we need to get the server 
software".  Hmmm we have outlook web access available here, so I wonder if 
it could work somehow, I'll have to investigate further.

> Hmm... extrapolating from my "8 characters in 25 minutes",

I suspect other people can type faster than that :-)

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>> Apparently it can connect to Outlook Web Access (which we have). 
>> Several other employees have it working, so it's gotta be possible 
>> somehow...
> 
> Ah interesting to know because some guy here was looking at it, but our 
> IT dept basically said "no, it won't work because we need to get the 
> server software".  Hmmm we have outlook web access available here, so I 
> wonder if it could work somehow, I'll have to investigate further.

Perhaps there *is* a server option that you can have instead of using 
OWA? (And perhaps it does something that OWA can't.) I don't know though...

>> Hmm... extrapolating from my "8 characters in 25 minutes",
> 
> I suspect other people can type faster than that :-)

I suspect other people have found the button to turn off the "hey, let 
me automatically mutilate your text as you helplessly try to type in it" 
feature. :-P

Post a reply to this message

And lo On Tue, 16 Dec 2008 14:56:10 -0000, scott <sco### [at] scottcom> did  
spake thusly:

>> Apparently it can connect to Outlook Web Access (which we have).  
>> Several other employees have it working, so it's gotta be possible  
>> somehow...
>
> Ah interesting to know because some guy here was looking at it, but our  
> IT dept basically said "no, it won't work because we need to get the  
> server software".  Hmmm we have outlook web access available here, so I  
> wonder if it could work somehow, I'll have to investigate further.

The answer lies between yes and no. The point of the Blackberry was the  
Push email facility which sent email from your server to the phone without  
the need to routinely 'dial in' and that requires extra software at the  
server end. If you just want to use it as a standard email device it  
should work fine as any other email-capable phone. Except of course you  
then have to justify buying one over every other email-capable device.

>> Hmm... extrapolating from my "8 characters in 25 minutes",
>
> I suspect other people can type faster than that :-)

I've seen people tapping away at it quite happily. Must get used to it.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

Post a reply to this message

What you need for connectivity to the Exchange Server is BES server. I can't 
imagine it being cost justifiable for only one user though. My blackberry 
can access almost all exchange features, even Microsoft Office Messager.

-- 

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> Hmm... extrapolating from my "8 characters in 25 minutes", a reply
> consisting of, say, a whole sentence could be something like 10 words
> long, each word probably 2--6 letters, making a total of about 32
> characters or so, which would take... over an hour to type.

Was the username an English word?

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
>>> Hmm... extrapolating from my "8 characters in 25 minutes",
>> 
>> I suspect other people can type faster than that :-)
> 
> I suspect other people have found the button to turn off the "hey, let
> me automatically mutilate your text as you helplessly try to type in it"
> feature. :-P

Last I heard, the new version of the iPhone firmware that has such a button
hasn't been released yet.

(however it has been possible for a while with 3rd party software, after
jailbreaking that is)

Post a reply to this message

On Tue, 16 Dec 2008 14:12:00 +0000, Invisible wrote:

> Why in the name of goodness would any sane person want to use this
> horrid, horrid device?! >_<

Because it's very useful.  I've got an 8700c myself, apart from the weird 
software bugs (like not being able to delete messages because of database 
corruption), I really like it.

The 8700c doesn't have the "trackball" like scroll wheel, though - it's 
got a dial on the right-hand side of the screen.

Jim

Post a reply to this message