I retired from personal blogging in July 2008 but you can find me over at blog.xero.com
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So after numerous shipping and customs hurdles my BlackBerry 7730 has finally arrived.
I wanted the big screen model that is not available in NZ, so had to source out of Oz.
I was concerned that an Australian sourced BB may not work. Vodafone thought it wouldn’t and there was talk of it having to be reflashed for NZ.
Thankfully I just went through the process. It took about 6 hours to fully sync so I thought it had died but about 11:00 at night email started coming through in near real time.
Anyone that knows me would know that I’ve been very pro Microsoft in the past. And I’ve paid. I had a Philips Nino when they first came out and have had almost every generation since of what is now Windows Mobile 5.
It is staggering to me in all those version MS has just not got it right. My latest phone was the K-Jam. While still an OK phone relatively it is probably the worst phone I’ve had. The hardware was cool, but the software was slow and buggy. It would frequently hang, the touch screen would go out of alignment, poor battery life.
Compared to the Blackberry, the PocketPC is a swiss army knife with it’s small and fiddly interface not suited to a phone. It’s a classic case of lack of real interaction design. The BB just works and without a touch screen. The Palm Treo works with a multifunction joystick. A pen/menu based UI doesn’t work for a phone. It’s hard to text in the car with a pen (not that I would ever do that).
The biggest feature is push email, which has still not been delivered in the MS world, though it’s ‘real close now.
There is some good innovation on the BB as well. Threads on SMS converations being one. The UI is not as pretty as MS but I can live with that.
The BB only works for me as we have the Enterprise Server. For small business’s it may not be doable.
It’s taken 5 years. I tried to stay loyal, but they finally got me.
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