CT Blue

A product review. This is by way of venting, so feel free to ignore.

Last month I mentioned that I got a Blackberry, through my place of employment and “free” to me. Having had the device for a month I think I have enough experience to ask this question: What is wrong with all those Blackberry fans? Can they really be addicted to using this piece of crap?

I actually have a theory about that, which I will explore briefly at the end of this post.

First, some background information for anyone who doesn’t know what a Blackberry is.

A Blackberry can do anything an Iphone can do, only worse. It can synchronize with your office email and calendar, if your IT person can figure out the settings to make it function. Otherwise, like us, you will find that you can’t enter an appointment on the Blackberry with any confidence that it will show up on your computer. My wife’s Iphone, by contrast, synchronizes perfectly through Apple’s MobileMe service.

There are scores of third party apps for the Blackberry, which you can find at Blackberry’s impossible to use app store. Downloading is an absolute pleasure. All you have to do is choose to download the program of your choice and then answer a series of questions querying whether you really want to grant the new app permission to access various functions on the Blackberry. Naturally, the consequences of any given answer are not explained, and the function names are indecipherable. Of course you always answer yes, so the point of the exercise is lost on any sane mind, except, no doubt, that of a corporate lawyer.

You can play music on a Blackberry, if you don’t mind the fact that it can’t seem to manage to keep track of the music you’ve put on it. Tracks disappear from the media player for no reason. Periodically, I’ve noticed it refreshing itself, and the tracks re-appear, only to disappear again shortly thereafter. The music is there, but you can’t find it to play it.

Finally, as I mentioned in a previous post, application memory is limited to 128 mb, despite the fact that my Blackberry comes with 1 GB of on-board memory and an 8GB mini-SD card. I’ve added three apps, which I use rarely. For whatever reason, and my web wanderings lead me to believe this is a common problem, application memory fills up simply with use of the product. Yesterday I couldn’t make a phone call because the application memory was full. I verified that fact in the “Options” program. I rebooted the device, and checked again. I now had 26 mb of free application memory. That’s not a memory leak; it’s a memory gusher. And how did I manage to re-boot? Is there a reset button or a key combination that does the trick? Of course not. The only way to re-boot is to remove the battery, replace it, and wait an interminable length of time for the device to come back to life. How can something so elementary as a reset process be left out? I’ve had Palm Pilots and Ipods; my wife has an Iphone. They all have simple reset methods.

When PCs first came out, IBM machines took a commanding lead among the corporate crowd because IBM was a safe choice. It’s machines were rarely as good as those of its competitors, but no one was going to get fired for buying IBM. The Blackberry is a corporate favorite, and I’m now convinced it’s for similar reasons. It was the first device down the pike, and it’s considered the safe and right choice for corporate America.

As I said, my wife has an Iphone. Downloading apps is simple. It plays music. The web browser works well. She has never experienced memory leaks. She could load a thousand programs on it, if she was so inclined. She’s never had to wait to make a phone call while she watches a little clock face circle endlessly while the device desperately tries to find available memory that’s been filled with God knows what. And, if something does go wrong, she can re-boot it with an easy key combination, and in a few seconds, she’s back in business. My guess is that the Pre, from Palm, works just as well.

So, you are probably asking: Okay, John, tell us what you really think. Would you recommend a Blackberry to a friend?

No, but I might give it to an enemy.