It is almost as neat as your regular iPOD and wins hands down when it comes to practical and usable. In theory it would seem that it wins to Windows Mobile alternatives (Asus / HP PDAs and similar gadgets).
But as you travel the road of customizing your new bundle of joy you quickly encounter problems, stumble and fall. The initial bare bones (like the lack of GPS software for your built-in GPS) causes the reality to set in. The problem is that there is no real community thus no community software. Even most basic things are payable (I can understand this) but they don't deliver (this is somewhat harder to understand, as they ask you to pay for crappy software). The good thing is that most of the software is share/demo/trialware so at least you get a chance to just say no.
For one thng, there is no reliable and efficient dictaphone & call recorder software for BlackBerry. Time tracking tools are crappy as well. Planing yes, but once you need to say "I am working on this now, then something comes up and I need to activate another task, then return to earlier"... there is not nice software to track that. Now think on all the lawyers and consultants and so so on...
There are several community sites but most are outdated, based on commercials (and/or selling of assesories for BackBerrys).
What a waste of nice things. I did however find several useful programs:
- Opera Mini
- BlackBerry Expenses
- Nav4all
- Google Talk, http://www.blackberry.com/googletalk (navigate here using your BlackBerry for Over The Air (OTA) install)
Browsing over the different community sites (mostly forums and inacurate blogs), leaves a lot to be desired. A bitter taste after 10th click on 404 link or on app that is in beta and is advertised as free but in truth isn't. Regardless, for the record (and since they aren't completely useless) here's a list of some community sites (in no particular order):
- BlackBerry freeware offers lots of links to software that should be free but isn't
- CrackBerry sounds cool but unfortunately it doesn't deliver
- BlackBerry forums on pinstack offer a nice variety
- BlackBerry forums seems to be de-facto community but it still lacks the punch
Ziga
Glossary:
- OTA - over the air intall, as opposite to downloading on your PC and using Desktop Manager Software
- BlackBerry - is a wireless handheld device solution by Research In Motion
