Blackberry

Drinks With Friends

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Gretchen came into the city today and Jayson and I had lunch with her, her cousin, and her cousin’s friend. We went to Old Town. It was good as usual. Dealt with the usual busy stuff at work, and then I got an IM from John wanting to know if I wanted drinks after work. I didn’t have much going on so I said why not. Jayson was out at the Nextel store getting some new Blackberry’s for work but wanted to go also. Man we should not have waited for him. It took him forever, then he needed to go get Gretchen a new phone at Cingular so that took a while also. John and I ended up waiting for them for like an hour.

We finally hit a nearby bar restaurant we like. I didn’t drink much and had some appetizers. John wanted me to go play poker with him but I had an early meeting on Tuesday so I passed.

As a side note Jay got a new Blackberry 7100, and a new guy got one also. We handed down Jayson’s old 7520 to someone who destroyed their old one. I like the size of the smaller 7100’s, and I know it is easy to learn the keypad setup, but I just can’t bring myself to get one. My 7520 is big, but I am sticking with it for now.

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Crackberry

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I finally got my replacement Blackberry yesterday. My old one was fried. It did a ton of quirky things. I finally had enough when it wouldn’t connect to any computer and I lost all my contacts out of it. This new one seems ok. I have all my contacts synced up and I can see caller ID now. I can get back to using it again. I was starting to go through withdrawal from not having it. That was interesting since there where weeks I didn’t use it or didn’t want to use it because I could use my Treo for allot of the same functions. But I always end up back with the crackberry since it really is the best thing for real time mobile email.

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Treo Refresh

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Last night I ended up wiping my Treo 650 and reinstalling all my software. I have been having issues with it rebooting every time I tried to sync my mail using Snappermail. That program is half the reason I use my Treo over the Blackberry, so I was not too happy when it started acting up earlier this week. I had to go on my trip Thursday without being able to use the Treo for email. I got by on the Razr and the Blackberry but I like the Treo better. After the reinstall Snappermail seems to be working. But I have had 2 random reboots since the hard reset. Once after a call to my sister right after I got out of the subway this morning. The other when I was syncing with my Powerbook. The sync reboot also happened often before I wiped the Treo, but I am not sure if it is because of the config on my Powerbook or the Treo.

I will try using for a while longer, but if the random reboots continue I will have to seriously consider an alternate PDA phone. As much as I like this device, I cannot have it randomly rebooting on me almost daily!

New Used Blackberry

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About 2 weeks ago I got a new Blackberry 7520. Well it is new to me. Someone else at work had it, and never used it. They finally gave it up saying give it to someone who will use it. My group was having a new guy start so we were going to give him the Blackberry. Instead of giving him a new one, I decided to “upgrade” mine and give the older hardware to the new guy. Hey he is the new guy.

Well the musical Blackberry’s don’t end there. Someone else’s Blackberry broke this week. Instead of waiting for the replacement we configured my old one up for her to use, and we can wait for the refurbed unit for the new guy.

The new Blackberry is very similar to the old one. The major enhancements are the screen, and screen brightness of the backlight. It is a night and day improvement. Also the new unit has bluetooth so I can use my wireless headset on it, if I wanted to.

I also went out and bought Pocket Mac for the Blackberry. Now I can sync the Blackberry address book with my Mac!

Travel Essentials

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As I said the other day, I don’t travel anywhere near as much as I used to. Just because I don’t go out of the office that much doesn’t mean that when I do I want to be any less connected. I did a quick overnight trip Monday-Tuesday. I (bored on the train) now write about what I relied on during the trek.

While in transit nothing says keeping in contact with the world like a Blackberry. When you can’t or don’t want to bring out a laptop it is essential. I hate it for everything else, including the stupid direct connect. I find that if I want to hold a conversation I might as well call the person than have a 20 minute conversation on DC. For email nothing beats the Blackberry, yet.

My powerbook was the laptop of choice this trip. My thinkpad is acting funky, and I don’t want to wipe it since I am getting a new one next week. So the powerbook stepped in and performed flawlessly (so far). I used it to watch some tv shows I recorded last week. Checked mail, did work, blogged, etc. All over Wifi!

Without the iPod I would not be sane. It makes train trips, and quiet hotel rooms that much more tolerable. It also is a great portable hard drive to store said TV shows that I watched on my powerbook. I say YES to plug and play!

My Treo is great (always carry it), but this trip it was used as it normally is. Still great, and a must for travel. What I used instead was Extension Mobility on Cisco Call Manager. It is the ability to log into any CCM phone and your extension moves with you. That coupled with the Cisco WIFI cordless phone make working in a different office just like I was in NYC, even when I was running around between 2 floors.

My new Omega X-33 watch was also a must this trip. I use my watch as an alarm wherever I go. I took my timex (broken band and all) along just in case the Omega didn’t do its job. It worked fine. I almost fell out of bed with the loudness of the alarm this morning. First impressions is this watch and I hopefully will have a long friendship!

Lastly I loved my Broadvoice VOIP phone, & Skype. I didn’t use broadvoice this trip, but I used its voice mail. I got all my VM emailed to me so I stayed in touch with everyone. I would never have checked my NYC VM without it. Skype is great since I can use it on my powerbook with my Sony Ericsson HBH-65 bluetooth headset from anywhere I have an internet connection. For this trip it was free calls from the hotel. I didn’t even need my cell phone for it. If I had broadvoice soft-phone I wouldn’t even need skype.

I have talked (praised) most of these items before, but when you use them all together you have a very smooth travel experience. I will most likely be using most if not all of this gear on my next extended trip. Now if only Amtrak could accommodate a nice ON TIME trip and travel would be painless.

The train is approaching Penn now. About an hour and 15 minutes late. So I will wrap this up so I can put the powerbook away. More mobile reviews when I use the stuff and have time to write about them! This post was written on Tuesday afternoon 5-17-05…

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On-Call This Week

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After weeks of flying under the radar I got the joy of being “technically” on call this weekend. I mean technically since I am always on call. I get calls for problems even when I am not the person who is supposed to be called. It comes with my position. One of the worst things that can happen to me is to be sleeping and get woken up with some major systems outage. It get the same feeling I used to get when I ran on an EMS squad in college and a call would come in late at night. The only difference is being on call at work usually does not require me to go out in the cold to respond to something.

To set a good example I took the on call pager this week. Well it is not really a pager. We all have nextel’s (most with Blackberry’s), so we just route the emergency number to the Nextel of whoever is on call. Of course most of the team was happy when I got to be on call. They assume if someone calls for a non emergency I will give them a verbal beat down. They are probably correct.

More Fixation On The Treo

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So for the next few days I will be writing about the Treo 650. I get fixated on nice new tech. So far this little device has not let me down. A few quirky issues with bluetooth syncing but otherwise all looks good. even the bluetooth issues are kind of minor. The dam thing still sync’s. I had problems with the built in DUN, but after installing PDAnet my laptop connects via bluetooth to the phone just fine. And it is just in time too. I am packing to go away for 2 days. The train ride is allot better when I can check my mail on my laptop and not rely on my Blackberry. And yes I have a Blackberry and a Treo. I was “given” the Blackberry for work. It is for email and direct connect. I am stuck with it until I can get the Blackberry software for my Treo.

I also got my USB sync cable in the mail today. I am glad it arrived before my trip, but for the amount I paid for shipping they should have driven it over here. I also got a little exoskeleton case for the Treo, and a screen cover. The cover is one that I had on the 600, but this one applied like crap. it has some blemishes. you cannot tell when the device is on, but when it is off it looks like crap. All the accessories are from Boxwave. They are a great PDA accessory site.

Other cool software I tried (i had it for my Treo 600 but never tried it) is Tussh. it is a free-ware SSH client for the Palm. I was able to remotely connect to and reboot a linux server jayson was playing with. it was nice.

I will have more real world opinions after my road trip tomorrow.

New Cell Phones

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We are expanding the team. That means we need more cell phones. We figure if we want people to be available all the time (on call) then we need to provide a cell phone. We like Nextel. Direct connect is addictive. We can add a phone to our account for like 10 bucks a month (plus tax). Not bad. One emergency and it pays for 6 months or more of service. That is my opinion at least.

We picked up 2 Motorola flip phones for some of the guys who don’t need Blackberry’s. Our sales department is also interested in Blackberry’s so we may get them some on our account. many of them have Blackberrys from different carriers already, but new people would get the nextel’s.

Why can’t Palm or Microsoft make a product as good or better than RIM? I have been waiting over a year for Blackberry software on my Treo. I am still waiting…

The Treo is Off

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I did the unthinkable. I turned off my Treo today. I took the SIM card out of it and placed it in my Sony Ericsson T610. I am doing this for the day. Why you mask ask? Or you may not give a crap. I am wearing shorts today, and pocket space is limited. Carrying my Treo, & wallet it fells like I am carrying rocks. I have my new blackberry. It is big, but clipped to my belt. So for now I don’t need this huge phone. I still love it, and need it. I will leave it on my desk and use it as a palm when needed. But I want to keep my cell on me during the day. I can do that easier with the T610. This is the weight dilemma that I have always had. It is a bigger issue in the summer time when I have no jacket.

What I really need is the Blackberry software on my Treo so I don’t need this new big Blackberry I have. But this big blackberry is great. it has a nice wide keyboard, and direct connect. I am in technology heaven, but I now have too many devices. each one is great, but only does some of the things I need:( I need the pocket knife of smart phones, but it hasn’t been made yet. Come on PalmOne, make me a better Treo. I will buy it!

Blackberry’s & Nextel

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I finally approved getting the first of several new blackberry’s for our on call teams. I was holding off since the cost of the device was allot ($350). The current blackberries we have were only between $100 and $200 to purchase. Of course they are the smaller pager stye ones. Unfortunately no one seems to be selling them anymore. Everyone is trending towards the all in one pager, cell phone device. For us this isn’t the greatest. Almost all of us already have cell phones, so the pager/phone combo just adds weight to what we want to carry around.

The reason we are buying the more expensive units is simple. The current system we use with the pager style blackberry’s are charging a flat rate for up to 1mb of email. Then they charge you for every kb over that. We send alert pages to these devices and some months our overages can be $100 – $150 per device. Knowing that, by switching to Nextel’s blackberry server with a flat rate all you can receive plan we will over time save more money. I figure if we pay for $50 overages per pager per month, the $350 pager pays for itself after 7 months. We have had some of our older pagers for over 2 years and some of them are in great shape. That means in the long run we save cash.

Another added feature that made the decision easier was the fact that these new blackberry’s have Nextel direct connect. We get unlimited use of direct connect for free with the plan we have. It becomes useful when we deploy that to everyone who is on call. The goal is to improve our paging and on call system as best as possible while saving money. Man I am really starting to sound like a manager:(

We get our new blackberry today I hope. That would give me the weekend to play with it. Jayson already has one. We can test the direct connect. He loves the email functions on his. I have been using my Treo for a while, and I like it. But the blackberry seems to deliver mail faster, and it is easier to type on. I think my blackberry use may be making a comeback. Not sure yet!

This blog entry was written while listening to Sad Songs from the album “Beneath These Fireworks” by Matt Nathanson