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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?! >_<
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> 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.
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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!"
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> 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 :-)
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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
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And lo On Tue, 16 Dec 2008 14:56:10 -0000, scott <sco### [at] scott com> 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
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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.
--
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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?
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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)
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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
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