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November 19, 2003

T-Mobile, GPRS and my New Blackberry

I've been playing with a colorful new Blackberry for the past week and to date my user experience is mixed.

Access to my email is tied to my T-Mobile account.

A couple of years ago I had much more positive experience using an earlier RIM device I had from GoAmerica but after losing the device a couple of times, I eventually migrated off of it.

My motivation for giving mobile email another try has been that during the past month I'm been "in motion" more than at my desk and had many hours where I was away from my email at a time when more and more people whom I communicate with on a daily basis have are started to use their email as a replacement for Instant Messaging and I felt as if I needed to do something to catch up.

The GPRS service from T-Mobile is slow at best and makes me feel at home whenever I'm stuck with a 21.6k dialup connection and I have to Telnet/PINE to check my email from hotel rooms which don't offer broadband access.

The actual new RIM device has an easy-to-use interface and the one game which it comes with is good enough to help occupy my time and my kid’s time.

One area major which really is lacking is the BlackBerry Web Client. Every time I try to use it I suffer thru using it's painful interface and don't appreciate that more quality assurance testing wasn't done to test the application across multiple browsers.

One place where I planned on using their web client was at airport kiosks especially since I need to delete emails from my web inbox when my quota is met rather than directly from my RIM device which makes it almost impossible to rely on using this service if I'm on the road for a full 12 hours any given day.

While it is quite convenient to be able to check emails, not having the direct ability to manage my inbox limitations from my RIM is a problem. Add to that the general lack of security associated with the device and until the service matures, and the web client is improved, it's acceptance into the enterprise communications marketplace will be limited at best.

But the new colorful Blackberry device is a nice piece of engineering...

Posted by jeff on November 19, 2003 07:08 AM | Permalink

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