anyone own one? i know medmech was talking about a blackberry a few days back, but idk the model. im thinkin about gettin the pearl from tmobile. its time to upgrade and i have heard quite a bit of bad about the razor and the new samsung. if i choose not to get the crackberry i will probly end up staying with the nokia i have now.

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have no worries.....President Obama swears "If you like your gun, you can keep it

my good friend had two blackberries and now he owns a treo from Verizon....he likes the treo better. You can have one for around 200 bucks from ebay.

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Audi TT

I have a crackberry 7520 for work. I've never had a Treo or other current "smartphone" but I can comment on a blackberry a little bit...

The bad: I dont like thumbwheels, having once used a handspring I much prefer the touch screen (and the palm OS btw)

yeah, my BB750 seems to run kinda slow sometimes, that might just be a 7520/Nextel thing. It has only maybe crashed once (in 3 months of **hard** use) so it stays up, but you have to wait when doing something complicated.

The email is nice, works well with the office's outlook server. kinda finicky to get set up my advice - find someone that has done it before, not sure if its easier than any other brand (I'd think that it is). You get the email quick too.

it will read word .docs and .xls files - nice touch.

ringtones/themes suck - I hate to say this becuase I consider myself a better geek than that, but finding stuff for the 7520 sucks (does it work with the 7100 stuff or the 7200 stuff ?

my 7520 has the GPS built in, but its response is 240D slow - not a surprise, nor could you really use it without an unlimited data plan$$$ (thank you company) and/or the $15/mo service - blah.

32M internal memory is enough.

no decent apps at all - not compared to my Handspring Visor edge (which is older than my son =) I guess blackberry doesnt have a lot of hacker support =) Definitely get "google maps mobile" and/or "HelloWorld" - good stuff.

Don't sweat on the screen, it falls down onto the keyboard and the alt key (**very important to BB users**) stops working - Found this out on a jobsite in AZ =)

That is one recognized plus of the BB's - the case seems to be pretty tough. I have personally dropped my from waist height many times, dropped from 5 feet and kicked down a hallway a couple times, I've even dropped it from 15ft (I was up on a ladder) twice - works fine - the battery and battery door run away screaming, but i put the batt. back in, and it booted up just fine.

With the 7520's color screen and 1h or 2h of phone use - expect the stock battery not to last more than 2 days, see disclaimer below. I'll charge from a USB port (faster is you have the interface software up and running =) so I nwever ran out, but color screens and phones in the middle of nowhere eat this battery - an upgraded battery is $90 all told

Most of these are probably issues with my specific model (the 7520 sprint/nextel build) - I know theyve come out with newer models since then, and they are more popular solving the ringtones/application issues. Mine was given to me from work, and I like it, it does a lot, and is a phone, and does the email thing...its pretty nice to me even given its drawbacks.

some comments on me as a person - I'd never spend more than $50 on a phone for any reason, so my view is kinda colored. (and I miss the speed of my old visor)

Just some things to think about. I am curious if anyone can simplify the ringtone issue for me =)

-John

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2009 Kia Sedona
2009 Honda Odyssey EX-L
12006 Jetta Pumpe Duse
(insert Mercedes here)

Husband, Father, sometimes friend =)

Medmech overted a near disaster AND saved the day with his crackberry and MAC..you might want to look into the Treo, those are pretty good too.

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"It's normal for these things to empty your wallet and break your heart in the process."
2012 SLK 350
1987 420 SEL

I went from Treo to Blackberry and prefer the blackberry by a long shot.

medmech, what model do you have?
this is the pearl

http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/phones/Detail.aspx?device=6d4fca92-916c-48bd-a991-e1f1dc91bc0d

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have no worries.....President Obama swears "If you like your gun, you can keep it

well i just ordered it, we shall see how i like it.

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have no worries.....President Obama swears "If you like your gun, you can keep it

I have the 8700 but I have used the pearl and it is a NICE phone. Blackberry has dead nutz reliability unlike all of the competors. I have Treos in mt closet to remind me of how much they suck.

yea it is nice, i played with it for about 30 mins the other day at the tmobile store and have finally figured it out. i figured its finally time for a new phone and they dont have anything nokia anymore. all the others i dont like so i finally broke down and ordered it. when i had a motorola throught cricket i went through 8 phones in 6 months.

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have no worries.....President Obama swears "If you like your gun, you can keep it

There is a learning curve but if you visit blackberryforuns and Pinstack you will master it fast. What type of email do you use? Exchange, Gmail?

ok will do. i use yahoo. is that a bad thing?

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have no worries.....President Obama swears "If you like your gun, you can keep it

http://mobile.yahoo.com/blackberry

Different strokes for different folks. The Blackberry is good but in many respects the TREO eclipses it, especially in the realm of application availability. Try authoring applications or running VPN on your Blackberry - simply can't be done easily (if at all).

I must say that the TREO tends to get a bad rap but I find it is usually a case of mismanaged expectations. The device runs a full Windows operating system with registry, with a full mini-suite of office including Word, Excel, Outlook, and Powerpoint, and you can edit/save/create new documents unlike what is natively available on the Blackberry. It has a full-fledged Internet Explorer browser as well, task manager, etc. After all, this is Windows Mobile. Now tell me, can you expect your Windows desktop or laptop to run for days or weeks on end without rebooting? Of course not. And yet somehow this "phone" running Windows Mobile is expected to do so. If you do a soft reset periodically, the device is less prone to lockups and slowdowns.

Also, if you actually close the programs on the TREO when you are done with them, things will be good. If you toggle from the browser to Word and then take an incoming call, those 2 programs are still open! Some people continue in this fashion until task manager indicates they have a dozen programs open! Now tell me, would you go a whole day without closing your programs on your Windows PC? Of course not, but TREO users will often leave a dozen programs open and complain that it is "slow" when all they need to do is launch task manager (hold the OK button down) and hit the "stop all" button to close all those running apps.

On top of that, the TREO has a touchscreen. While creating an unparalleled level of user interactivity on par with mouse point and click, unfortunately the touchscreen can also occasionally introduce a minute amount of RF interference with the rest of the device. This can result in the occasional missed or dropped call, or periodic erratic device performance. Nothing that other phones and PDAs don't suffer from, and nothing that can't be resolved with a soft reset.

The TREO is a great device; in my opinion it is more a laptop replacement than the Blackberry will ever be. I have left my laptop at home and traveled with just my TREO and can often work from home (or at the mall, in a restaurant, etc.) exclusively using my TREO. Something you just can't do with a Blackberry. I won my 300E on eBay 2 years ago using the browser in an old TREO 650 I had at the time - try that with the stylus-challenged Blackberry. I frequently surf the web and read/post here on MercedesShop using the browser in my TREO 700w - very very cumbersome using the Blackberry's thumbwheel. How about hooking your TREO up to a projector and using pocket PowerPoint to do a presentation? Can't do that on a Blackberry. In short, I think if the limitations and proper use were pointed out at the time of purchase, you'd have a lot fewer dissatisfied users.

Oh yeah, I should mention that I am the wireless handheld engineer for my company so I have a point of view which is different from the average consumer, having had exposure to many of these devices. The average consumer, who doesn't need all the above features, might just find the TREO cumbersome. For them I'd recommend something like the Motorola Q. Or just a regular phone.

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08 W251 R350
97 W210 E320
91 W124 300E
86 W126 560SEL
85 W126 380SE Silver
85 W126 380SE Cranberry
79 W123 250
78 W123 280E
75 W114 280

Out of curiosity, what exactly did you dislike about 'em?

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08 W251 R350
97 W210 E320
91 W124 300E
86 W126 560SEL
85 W126 380SE Silver
85 W126 380SE Cranberry
79 W123 250
78 W123 280E
75 W114 280

It is not a dislike its the fact that the bugs pop up at the worst possible times. If I am doing a presentation my laptop is always handy and it always works (mac). Email is flaky on the Treo and works when it wants to, since email and talking on my phone is my priority I use the Blackberry. Word and Excel also work fine on the BB.

Comparing a Treo to a laptop is like comparing a Ferrari to a go-cart.

If you have plenty of time to spare fartin around with your phone to keep it running run with the Treo but if you want battery life and reliability get the BB. I used to like the Treo but once I was convinced to use BB I never looked back.

(Disclaimer)
Like any other techie that can change tomorrow. I do like the new Nokia PDA phone.