RIM Blackberry - does it have legs?

[Ed Hansberry]

<a href="http://makeashorterlink.com/?K6B712D31">http://makeashorterlink.com/?K6B712D31</a><br /><br />By now, everyone has seen or heard of the RIM Blackberry device. It is almost mythical in how widespread its use is. The fact is, though, that only 300,000 are in use. RIM sees an incredible churn in its subscriber base. Personally, I wouldn't want one. Email push is very enticing, but it is about 10% of what I use my Pocket PC for. Between ebooks, music, Pocket Mindmap, PIM and so many other functions, the Blackberry just comes up short. I can get email via my Pocket PC and am looking forward to the Pocket PC 2002 Phone Edition coming to my Sprint PCS store, or Cingular if they ever get off of their kiester and get GSM/GPRS in middle Tennessee. <i>(Feeling another cell phone infrastructure rant coming on.)</i><br /><br />So, what about you? Do you use, or have you used the Blackberry? I am interested in why you carry that with your Pocket PC or why you gave it up.

[mexijew_dot_com]

I work down in Washington D.C. as a contractor at the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, and I believe that 1/3 of the "on campus" HHS employees (That's about 1000 people) use RIMs. It's interesting, because you can always easily determine who's an "essential" person by looking to see if they have a RIM or not.

One of the other Analysts that I work with is a Government-certified RIM training instructor, and she loves 'em. Personally, I think they are nice little toys, but my cellphone can do most of what the RIMs can do.

[jdhill]

I am a software consultant. I am frequently at a client site or working from my house. My wife also spends a great deal of time away from home at her business/hobby (dog agility). We have both become very dependent on the ability to send and receive e-mail from anywhere.

I have selected e-mail messages forwarded automatically to me by my Exchange Server (based on who the sender is). Some of these are time-sensitive and need to be responded to immediately.

Since my wife travels a lot, I need to be able to reliably contact her regardless of where she is.

While both of us have cell phones, we use them primarily for outgoing calls and they are not normally on all of the time to recieve incoming calls.

For us, wireless, always on e-mail is critical to the mobile lifestyle we live. We also both have Pocket PCs for all of the rest of the stuff we need to take with us (maps, e-books, color photos, MP3s, etc.) that can not be handled by today's wireless e-mail devices.

[Jeff Rutledge]

I agree that a RIM is symbolic of a person's importance. In my company, only the top get RIM's provided. However, I think they're key at that level. The ability to always be in touch - to instantly react - is invaluable. I've found myself wanting one for a while. I finally got one for a time while I was covering for my boss's vacation. It is a great little device. I like always being connected, and the form factor is great (I had a 957 -- the larger unit). Having said that though, there were drawbacks. I didn't like WAP browsing much and the PIM functions were terrible.

I've been using Synchrologic on my iPAQ for the past few weeks. It's been great! It acts almost like a RIM. It's not push per se, but pretty close. Your client checks every 15 minutes and you can accept meeting requests, etc.

The one thing that no one but RIM has offered yet is the total back-end structure. With a RIM, when I get a message with a 2MB attachment I want to forward, it takes seconds as all of the work is done by the server. With any PPC service I've seen, you must first d/l the full message and then re-upload it when forwarding. This is a huge waste of time. Also, a waste of money if you're paying for, say, a GPRS service that charges by the amount of data.

Here's hoping that the next iPAQ rumours are true -- integrated GPRS -- and that someone comes up with a RIM-like system that allows all the work to be done on the backend (but still integrated with the Activesync Inbox).

I don't think that's too ambitious, but what do I know... :?

[wm5051]

I have used RIM devices and their strong point is that they do one thing extraordinarily well – EMAIL. Beyond that, I found the devices lacking in almost every other respect (screen, software, GUI…) other than the keyboard and battery life.

I think we will see RIM slowly disappear as push technology becomes more prevalent in Pocket PC and (gasp) Palm devices.

[jjjwicks]

I currently use a Blackberry 957 and it is great at e-mail and calendar maintenance. How often do I need pushed e-mail? Only when a site, server or piece of infrastructure acts up. How did I do it before the Blackberry? With an SMS message to my cellular phone. That is why I am TOTALLY going to buy the T-Mobile Pocket Pc Phone Edition. As a beta tester, I was able to set up e-mail header downloads every thirty minutes when I was away from the office. I was able to do everyhting that I wanted from that one device, including using SMS for outage notification. One device, full communication.

As stated by others, there are certain executives that need to stay in touch with people to get their job done effectively. I need to talk to equipment, so the Blackberry goes as soon as Voicestream markets the Pocket PC Phone Edition.

[alee]

The RIM 957 stinks as a PDA. However, as an always-on email device, Pocket PC, Palm and others stand to learn a lot from RIM -- I think this is one formula RIM has down to a science. Compose an email, in range or out of range, stick it in the holster. Your mail is always sent when it's back in range without you needing to connect and send. Never worry about email getting to you -- your mail is pushed to your RIM and is waiting for you the next time you have a free moment. I think the real magic is never needing to dial in -- it is available as soon as your device is in range.

Downsides -- rotten attachment support, rotten PDA functions, rotten applications in general. Great technology with a pretty weak operating system.

That said, my RIM 957 is still ticking after being dropped down a long escalator flight, after being dropped on hard pavement, and after having soda spilled on it. None of my other handhelds can take that abuse. There's no glitz or glamour with the Blackberry -- it's a solid email tool and that's it.

On a side note, I think RIM's technology is what vendors should really look towards licensing. Email is still the killer app, and while the Pocket PC can make it pretty, and other vendors can make it do "nice" things, RIM has what it takes to make the email go places and they have what it takes to make sure the email gets to you, without you having to worry about dialing in, or registering your wireless device.

Until then, the Blackberry goes everywhere, and I have to do the 2 PDA routine.

[MonolithicDawgX]

Recently had a Nextel rep in my office who showed me integrated Nextel/RIM device... not ready yet, but coming. Again, once you have voice & data (all back-end heavy) the e-mail portion needs to handle attachments like spreadsheets, documents, etc... that means it needs to be a robust device with memory. Looks like PocketPC or tablet PC...

[Take1]

Worthless for the average 'casual' consumer, essential for 'VIPs' and neat for 'gadeteers'. I personally don't find them exciting or even appealing as PDAs -- they seem more like tools than a PPC or Clie (Personal Information Managment AND adult recreation device).

[Terry]

I have one and it sits most of the time in its cradle, trying to charge (something's wrong with the beast). It does handle e-mail well...I wish the PPC had a wireless connection that worked as well and didn't require a large dongle, slide on attachment or other brick.

I think it will work very well once we install the corporate mail software. I'd still rather use my PPC though.

[ppcsurfr]

RIM? Isn't that a pager?

I know pagers are dead! Well at least here in the Philippines, pagers have been dead for a cople of years. Even two-way pagers.

The GSM mobile phone is te better choice. Now... I don't know abot you guys if you think you can get a service to go on for years and years with miimal support?

You can easily get millions of subscribers for GSM phones in a year and you will still be stuck with a few hundred thousand subscribers for a RIM. So if you want to throw away money and feel bad in the future? Go ahead and get a RIM.

Email? My GSM phone does it too. What can a RIM do that my mobile phone can't?

ppcsurfr

[Willa]

On September 11, I worked for a company with offices in Arlington, Virginia, and New York city. As many will recall, cell lines were jammed by heavy use or dead because of the cell towers that were lost on top of the WTC. I was in Arlington, right across the street from the fire house that first responded to the crash at the Pentagon, and couldn't get through to our NY office even by landline. We were able to communicate, however, by email and Instant Messenger, but that communication was only available to us while we were at our PCs... and we were in the process of evacuating both offices. Road traffic was jammed, too, but the most polite traffic jam you ever saw. It took several hours longer to get home and get connected to my PC there so that I could find out how everyone else had fared. Just seeing my IM buddy list grow as colleagues and friends logged on was immensely reassuring. The one person who stayed connected through it all was our traveling CEO; he had a Blackberry.

At the time, I was using a Palm Vx and had a modem I'd given up on because the service was lousy - spotty and erratic. I decided to get a RIM Blackberry 957 because of its 'always on' feature and better coverage. As a basic and reliable email device, it can't be beat, especially the way it 'pushes' messages. And the battery life, as noted in other posts, is phenomenal. As a PIM, however, it just doesn't cut it for me; for starters, I couldn't get used to not having a touch screen. I got a PPC in December, and now I carry it, the Blackberry, and my cell phone - it gets to be a bit much at times, but each device is discrete (for now) and performs its own functions well. I'm glad to be able to send and receive emails at my convenience while traveling without having to hunt down and pay for Internet access. Also, I work from home now, and when my ISP went down a few times this year, the Blackberry made it possible to keep in touch with clients.

I bought into an annual service contract when I bought my Blackberry, so I have it until October and will have to make a decision then about continuing with it or finding a wireless solution for my PPC.

[njb42]

I had one for a while but ended up returning it. Their coverage wasn't anywhere near as good as they claimed, which made it useless (to me) as an always-available email device.

[Jeff Rutledge]

Here's the question I would really like an answer to: Why haven't we seen RIM-like functionality in a PPC yet? The form factor shouldn't be an issue because RIM's are smaller than all the PPC's. And the Blackberry devices just have an x386 processor in them, so a 206mHz Strongarm should do the trick there.

Is it just that no one has done it yet? If so, that's very unfortunate. I think it's integration to a PPC would make for a huge increase in corporate use.

Does anyone have any light to shed on this?

[Ed Hansberry]

Is it just that no one has done it yet? If so, that's very unfortunate. I think it's integration to a PPC would make for a huge increase in corporate use.

Does anyone have any light to shed on this?
Look for this in the PPC Phone and Smartphone products. They don't have push, but can do scheduled syncs. The problem is right now you have to have Mobile Information Server to do this with. I think it will be a problem unless the carriers (SprintPCS, Cingular, Verizon, VoiceStream, etc.) offer MIS and mail forwarding services to end users that are not part of a company where MIS is installed.

Pocket PC Phone Edition and Smartphone really shine with MIS behind them. Without, it is still good, but many benefits are missing.

[dma1965]

I work as an IT manager at the corporate offices of a retail establishment and our regional managers (5 total) all have RIM's, as well as our CEO and myself and my boss, the CIO. The regionals use it to track realtime data (cost of sales, total sales, labor, etc.) through an Access program we have custom built to pull the data from several databases and push it to their RIM's. If they reply to a message, it gets posted to an Access program running at the store locations. So, for our regional managers, it is invaluable (the first year of implementation it turned our company from 2.5 million in losses to 4.5 million in profit). For myself, the CIO, and the CEO, it is of little to no use. I do not even know where mine is and whenever I run accross it the battery is usually dead. My CIO and I both carry iPaqs, and mine is loaded with all kinds of networking utilities, spreadsheets, passwords (eWallet), etc.. For times I need the email push/pull, I use a Sierra Aircard, 802.11, an Ethernet card, or a CF Modem. Since I am almost always near a source of high speed access, I rarely use the Aircard or Modem, and if I have to use them, they are definitely fast enough for email. I can browse the web, read and send newsgroup postings, play music, watch videos, read ebooks, carry documents galore, and so on and so forth. I carry a cellphone for the times when someone must contact me NOW, and vica versa. Unless you have a compelling reason to have email/text date available 24 hours a day in the transparent manner the RIM's provide, I see no reason to ever carry one, and find the Pocket PC to be a much better tool for my personal area network (better known as my belt). 8)

[sweetpete]

Is it just that no one has done it yet? If so, that's very unfortunate. I think it's integration to a PPC would make for a huge increase in corporate use.

Does anyone have any light to shed on this?
Look for this in the PPC Phone and Smartphone products. They don't have push, but can do scheduled syncs. The problem is right now you have to have Mobile Information Server to do this with. I think it will be a problem unless the carriers (SprintPCS, Cingular, Verizon, VoiceStream, etc.) offer MIS and mail forwarding services to end users that are not part of a company where MIS is installed.

Pocket PC Phone Edition and Smartphone really shine with MIS behind them. Without, it is still good, but many benefits are missing.

Ed, why wait? Infowave software has had the Symmetry Pro service with features like the RIM and more for some time now ... and no need for MIS, just a desktop redirector (or buy your own company server). It has power-forwarding like the RIM (though on Palm only for now :cry:), and depending on whether your device is SMS aware you can have either push email sent to you or polling if you don't. I've had an opportunity to use both RIM and PPC and the PPC solution with Symmetry Pro was much more enjoyable.

[Ed Hansberry]

Ed, why wait? Infowave software has had the Symmetry Pro service with features like the RIM and more for some time now

hack... cough.....cough......hack.....hack....whhhhhqqqqkk-ptoooo {flying hairball} $19.95 a month? 8O

[jdhill]

hack... cough.....cough......hack.....hack....whhhhhqqqqkk-ptoooo {flying hairball} $19.95 a month? 8O
I guess it depends on the old cost/benefit analysis. I've been paying that for the last two years for my T-900 wireless e-mail service, and the same amount for the last year for my wife's wireless e-mail service. It was worth every penny. As I mentioned in my previous post, me and the wife live a mobile lifestyle. We need the service.

You should have heard my wife's outburst when she found out that she may not have T-900 wireless e-mail service or Sprint PCS digital cell phone service for her trip later this week to Lake Placid, NY :!: :!: :!:

"Hell hath no fury like a woman deprived of her digital voice and data services !!!" :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

[dave]

i have had a rim 950 for what seems like 3 years now. several others at my company have them, and we all use cingular for service.

As a messaging device, it kicks ass. i can type pretty durn fast on it, and the best part is that when you send to other cingular users, you get real time updates on status (sent, delivered, and read). that's very cool.

would i pay $30 a month for it. no, but my company does, and that's cool by me.

if rim does fail, i hope somebody buys the patent to that keyboard and licenses the cornbread hell out of it. i read recently that ericsson and rim recently cross-licensed a bunch of stuff. anyone know if the keyboard was included?

[corphack]

I work for a Fortune 100 company (one of the few whose auditor isn't A. Andersen, so we're still able to stay in business..) that settled on Lotus Notes as its internal email, calendering, and www database (via Domino servers). My 957 is the only thing that allow me to be productive (well, I can at least appear to be responsive) using Notes: when the Notes servers are non-functional (at least 4 hours per weekday...) I'm still able to work my email via the Blackberry server.

I actually turned down a Blackberry whe I was first offered one, because my PDA did more, easier and better. It was only their integration with Lotus Notes which made me change my mind - anything that allows me to work my Notes email without actually using the Notes client, is worth a second look...

[Corn Bread]

RIM? Isn't that a pager?

Email? My GSM phone does it too. What can a RIM do that my mobile phone can't?
[/quote]


Push e-mail, always "on" e-mail without having to dial-up to anything.

[jdhill]

Email? My GSM phone does it too. What can a RIM do that my mobile phone can't?
Non US people seem to like typing e-mail messages using the 12-key phone keypad. My phone (Neopoint 1000) allows that. I sent maybe 5 messages that way over the two years I had e-mail service on the phone. With a RIM style thumb-keyboard, I can type so much faster. I usually send more than 5 messages a day with my wireless e-mail device.

[Rob Borek]

I live in RIM-town, live about a kilometre from RIM Corporate HQ, and work about a kilometre from RIM Corporate HQ. I also have friends that work at RIM.

That said, they really need to beef up the Blackberry units to do more than just e-mail. They may have something cooking, they may not - but I haven't yet seen anything but their public stuff yet (I did see a Blackberry with GSM and a headset about 6 months to a year before they announced it publically). I'd like to see colour, but before that I'd like to see some decent PIM functionality and some decent productivity applications - Word and Excel-compatible applications come to mind. Without these, people will continue to use the Blackberry for e-mail, but have another PDA for everything else (such as the Rogers Cable execs I meet with - they have a Blackberry for e-mail, but have an iPAQ for everything else).

[fsaunders]

I am a longtime PocketPC user (since they were WinCE 2.X palm-size PC's). I also have used a Blackberry 957 for several months.

For corporate use when you have a Blackberry server, they are awesome devices -- if I had to choose one, I'd pick the Blackberry (luckily, I have both).

For personal use the Blackberry is a much inferior device and I would choose the PocketPC (regular or Phone edition, from what I've seen of it) if I had to choose one.

At the company I work for, we use Exchange 5.5 for email and calendaring. I installed the Blackberry server software in under two hours without having to make any changes in Exchange (other than adding a user) or in my firewall. The server software is really simple and well-designed. Our Blackberry users (including me, so I'll talk in the first person from now on) don't need their computers to be on to use the devices. Also, any e-mail or calendar info I send or receive is completely encrypted (and can only be decrypted by my own device or my own personal Blackberry server account), so all the internal emails and calendar changes I send and receive are 100% secure with zero effort.

Although the PIM functions are subpar compared to the Pocket PC, they are really just fine. There are lots of great keyboard shortcuts, which helps. The keyboard shortcuts are even better when composing email, such as automatic @ and . in email addresses, holding down a key to capitalize, automatic periods when you hit the spacebar twice at the end of a sentence, etc.

The hardware of the Blackberry is prehistoric but great. The battery life is super, the coverage (the 957 and 857 use the old-school Cingular and Motient networks respectively) is good and is very good inside buildings)better in my house than any cell phone I have tried (I have not tried the 5810 cell phone/RIM combo), and the "always on" nature of the device is great (the device vibrates in its holster whenever I get email, and if you are out of coverage, it automatically gets email as soon as you are back in coverage). The go.web browser is text-only but useful as an avantgo substitute or as a way to make sure my websites are up and running (also it's useful to get basic info from any website), but pales in comparison to Pocket IE. The ease of setup and use as a corporate email tool is still unmatched by the Pocket PC.

That said, if you are not working in a corporate exchange server environment, the Blackberry loses its luster. There is no security benefit to using the Internet Edition Blackberry, and group calendaring isn't an issue. I'd much rather have any flavor of Pocket PC with its great PIM features (I use Pocket Informant 3), attachment reading and editing with Pocket Word and Excel, Avantgo, and other fun things (like the Atari 2600 emulator I run on the device...)

Hopefully I've shed some light on the Blackberry secret
--fsaunders

[HR]

I personally don't like to be connected when I have the chance, so always on is something I would avoid.

In any case, the always on functionality that RIM offered filled a functionality vacuum. No one else simply offered this. But once wireless PDAs become more prevalent and offer the same functionality, Blackberries will become a commodity. I cannot see them competing in the full-PDA market with PPC and Palm. Their hardware and software would need to make a huge leap. This is unlikely and does not look consistent with their current strategy. But they will not disappear. They will become the new pager standard. I bet that 2 years from now, small, inexpensive, black, always-on pagers will be the new norm for pagers.

[GadgetDave]

I've had a BB for almost 3 years now - I brought them in to our company when they were just getting a foothold ... and as much as I love my PPC (don't get me wrong, it's still my first choice--currently a new Toshiba e740), the Blackberry certainly does what it does the best of any device - and it's completely transparent to the end user.

Even in an engineering firm, most of the users we support don't have the sense to get a PPC (or Palm) out of the box and make all this work - but we hand them a 'berry and they start sending and receiving email. The PIM functions do leave something to be desired, but the push, the transparency, and the battery life (1.5 - 2 weeks on 1 AA 8O ) makes it work. (Oh, and the keyboard is awesome after you use it for about a week.)

I'll give mine up for sure when I get reliable GPRS service with a bluetooth connection to my e740.

I wish someone would license RIMs back end and make it work for a PPC device.

[Unreal32]

I quit carrying mine when my company would no longer use external email addresses instead of our corporate email address. They switched to an Exchange server setup recently, but it's far from perfect, and I still have not returned to the RIM. I loved being able to answer my emails from everywhere, but if I can't get all my email and my company won't support ISP-based email like my home email address, the device becomes useless and expensive.

&lt;sigh> So I log in to my laptop daily now, and use the cell phone much more. I hope they'll have better integration down the road... but I can't hold my breath and wait, either.