New Toy

Yesterday proved to be quite an exciting day. After attending the Leadership seminar, I received my new toy, the Blackberry 7100t. I purchased this little gadget over the phone, based on the reviews found on CNN and other noteworthy places. I did not have the opportunity to check out how it actually worked and felt until yesterday.

I am not a proud owner of Tmobile's Sidekick 1. At the time, it looked great and had the keyboard that I wanted/needed for txting and writing in my PDA. But, as confirmed by the reviews on it, the voice quality was poor and after checking the Treo, it felt like a kid's toy. I finally lost it one day when all my data was lost (yes, this includes all calendar and contact info).

So I went online and began searching for the next gadget to replace the doomed Sidekick. The voluminous amounts of options were dizzying. I had to backtrack and strategize. I needed to determine whether to stay with Tmobile or move on to another carrier. Unforunately, as I made my comparisons against the plans provided by Verizon, Cingular and Sprint... none could compare to the plan I had with Tmobile. It also helped that I had switched from Verizon to Tmobile in early 2002 when Tmobile initiated itself in the marketplace. My plan is 5,000 whenever minutes for $99.99. There is nothing close to that anywhere. Why do I need so many minutes? I looked through my bills to determine what my minutes and usage hours/times were. Because I truly believe that the landline is the thing of the past, I use my cell phone for everything. Why have a landline? It's truly unnecessary in my book.

I decided that I would begin my search with Tmobile's choices and if I could not satisfy myself with a phone supported by them, I'd move on to a different carrier. Fortunately for me, the Blackberry 7100t was just recently released and at a great price to boot. I've used Blackberrys before. I also needed a phone that could sync up with my outlook calendar and contact. This gadget appeared to have almost everything I need (no camera though - bummer). So it came yesterday and I began playing.

After reading through the manual and trying to set up my accounts, I began having concerns. The keyboard was quirky and was set up in a mode that proved frustrating and irritating, called Suretype which allows you to type one letter and you would have to select (adding an additional button) to accept that letter. I preferred the "tap method" where you hit the key (which has 2 letter possibility) and you tap once for the first letter and twice for the second. Once I understood that there was an option, I realized that it was a keeper. What other choice did I have? I would have preferred to purchase the Treo 650, but Tmobile doesn't support it.

Today, life has been easier. I've installed the Blackberry desktop which syncs up my information from Outlook. The phone also has bluetooth capability, a good web browser, IM capabilities, and it's a lot lighter than the brick I was carrying around.