Blackberrys Rule

AT&T has been my cell phone provider for years, but was recently bought by Cingular. At first I was a little hesitant about making the switch or just switching to a new company, but they came out with a great incentive plan to get existing AT&T customers over to their service...offering new service discounts on phones!

I've been looking seriously at a PDA for the last couple of months because my life just got that much more hectic recently, and Outlook seems to be running my life now with the Calendar and Tasks tools. When I saw the offer to get a Blackberry 7290 for $150 after mail-in rebate, it made too much sense. So I bought one and it arrived just last week.

The Blackberry is a really neat device. Similar to the iPod, it has a wheel to help you navigate the screens. And like any good Windows application, it has tons of keyboard shortcuts so your not reliant on the wheel. The screen is colorful and clear, and the backlight has two modes for times you don't need a lamp. Those are the physical design considerations, but its real genius is in the software that's so well thought out its already starting to change my habits.

First off, I've been using my cell phone as my alarm clock for the past three years (I'm just too lazy to replace the stupid thing). Usually, cell phone alarm settings are pretty basic with just setting a time and getting a ring. The Blackberry however has some elegant features like a setting to tell it only to ring on the weekdays (so I can sleep in!). But the best part is it has a snooze bar! I hit the space key, and I snooze for the 5 minutes (which is customizable, of course!). But a smart alarm clock is not why I needed a PDA.

As I stated earlier, I've been living out of my Outlook lately. I used to use a Priority Management book to keep track of my life, but its much easier to drag and drop meetings, appointments, and whatever tasks into the appropriate tools in Outlook to keep track of them. This had been working great until I'm in a meeting and need my calendar, but the agenda says "no laptops". Blackberry to the rescue. I installed the desktop software on my computer, made a few easy adjustments, plugged in my Blackberry and that was it! No extra work or programs, just perfect syncing on all my tasks, and appointments. In fact, since the Blackberry is next to my bed at night, I can write items into it that I remember just before I go to sleep (a little bit disturbing, but I think we all do it).

Finally, the whole point of getting a Blackberry over a PDA is that its a phone too! I've noticed a remarkable improvement in sound quality with the Blackberry, as it broadcasts Quad-band: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz GSM/GPRS networks. And the web browser is allright, but I'm still playing with it (remember Mobile Web is the next big thing!) and will report back later.

Overall, I'm very satisfied with my new phone/pda. Everytime I think I'm even remotely stuck and have a question how to use it, the developers have thought of it and built in a path to the answer, like magic. I would recommend one to anyone looking for a more affordable alternative to the Treo.