Newbie needs advise

[Eric5273]

I'm new to the world of blackberrys. I don't have one yet, but I've used Pocket PCs & Smartphones in the past. So I'm thinking maybe the blackberry is the device for me. Here is what I need to use my phone for:

1) Phone calls
2) Contact Manager (not a huge contact list, but around 50-75 contacts)
3) Very occasional use of the callender, but not often
4) Browse the web -- I will use this feature daily
5) Stay signed onto AIM at least a few hours per day even while I do other things (can the blackberry multi-task? can I have webmessenger open & signed on while I check my email, browse the web, or make phone calls??)
6) send and receive text messages on occasion
7) And of course, check my email: my business email is a pop3 account, and my personal is AOL. I want to be able to not only receive copies of my mail, but I want to be able to delete all my junk mail and spam and then purge the server of these emails. My biggest problem when I go out of town is that I come back to hundreds of junk emails and it takes hours to go through them all and delete the junk. I'm hoping whichever device I get, it can help me do this remotely on a daily basis.

I have no need for MP3s, or fancy wallpaper or Top-40 ringtones. I use the device more for personal use, but occasional business use the 2-3 times per year I travel on business.

So is the blackberry the device for me? Will it do everything I listed above? I do realize I will need a BES service, and I don't mind paying to subscribe to one -- cost isn't really a big concern of mine. I'm most concerned with getting the right device that can do everything I need.

Thanks for any advise...

[Gothalyptic]

Blackberry is for you! It can do all that and more in a much smaller package then most pocket pc's out there ;)

1) Of course you can call
2)No problem there either, has one integrated, allowing access to multiple numbers and email addresses as well as physical addresses for one name!
3)Has a calendar built in, which is very nice, not as nice as Palm OS's DateBook 5 but does it's function well and easily
4)You can browse the web via WAP, with a BES/MDS you can browse HTML
5)With Webmessanger, it's not "open" per se, the BB does multitask rather well, so you sign into Webmessenger, once logged in and you see your contact list, you hit the back button and do what you need to do, when someone IM's you, you will be alerted. You then simply back out of what you were doing and open WM to send a msg if needed. As far as having a browser AND WM open, It's not possible, at least from my playing around with WM.
6)SMS no problem!
7)Email is automatically pushed, you get set up to 10 pop3 address to be forwarded to your BB so you're always in touch!

It will do what you n eed and more my friend, worthwhile investment for what you need to do, you WONT regret it.

[finch]

I'm new to the world of blackberrys. I don't have one yet, but I've used Pocket PCs & Smartphones in the past. So I'm thinking maybe the blackberry is the device for me. Here is what I need to use my phone for:

1) Phone calls
No issue here as new BB offer voice and data capability

2) Contact Manager (not a huge contact list, but around 50-75 contacts)
BB's include a contact/address book which integrates with with Outlook, Notes and others and integrates with phone and email vary well.

3) Very occasional use of the callender, but not often
The calendar app will do so and also intergrates with Outlook, Notes and others.

4) Browse the web -- I will use this feature daily
You can use the built in brower or a third party solution, full html browsing requires MDS (Mobile Data Services)

5) Stay signed onto AIM at least a few hours per day even while I do other things (can the blackberry multi-task? can I have webmessenger open & signed on while I check my email, browse the web, or make phone calls??)
It's been a while since I've used WM but from what I remember yes you can leave it to runin the background while using other apps.

6) send and receive text messages on occasion
Yes

7) And of course, check my email: my business email is a pop3 account, and my personal is AOL. I want to be able to not only receive copies of my mail, but I want to be able to delete all my junk mail and spam and then purge the server of these emails. My biggest problem when I go out of town is that I come back to hundreds of junk emails and it takes hours to go through them all and delete the junk. I'm hoping whichever device I get, it can help me do this remotely on a daily basis.
BWC (Blackberry Web Client) can collect up to 10 POP3 accounts, create filters, rules etc.

I have no need for MP3s, or fancy wallpaper or Top-40 ringtones. I use the device more for personal use, but occasional business use the 2-3 times per year I travel on business.

So is the blackberry the device for me? Will it do everything I listed above? I do realize I will need a BES service, and I don't mind paying to subscribe to one -- cost isn't really a big concern of mine. I'm most concerned with getting the right device that can do everything I need.
Sound like a good fit!

Thanks for any advise...

[Gothalyptic]

Jynx to you finch! haha

[finch]

So we know who has the faster fingers 'round these parts!

[DJJeffT]

I'm new to the world of blackberrys. I don't have one yet, but I've used Pocket PCs & Smartphones in the past. So I'm thinking maybe the blackberry is the device for me. Here is what I need to use my phone for:

1) Phone calls
2) Contact Manager (not a huge contact list, but around 50-75 contacts)
3) Very occasional use of the callender, but not often
4) Browse the web -- I will use this feature daily
5) Stay signed onto AIM at least a few hours per day even while I do other things (can the blackberry multi-task? can I have webmessenger open & signed on while I check my email, browse the web, or make phone calls??)
6) send and receive text messages on occasion
7) And of course, check my email: my business email is a pop3 account, and my personal is AOL. I want to be able to not only receive copies of my mail, but I want to be able to delete all my junk mail and spam and then purge the server of these emails. My biggest problem when I go out of town is that I come back to hundreds of junk emails and it takes hours to go through them all and delete the junk. I'm hoping whichever device I get, it can help me do this remotely on a daily basis.

I have no need for MP3s, or fancy wallpaper or Top-40 ringtones. I use the device more for personal use, but occasional business use the 2-3 times per year I travel on business.

So is the blackberry the device for me? Will it do everything I listed above? I do realize I will need a BES service, and I don't mind paying to subscribe to one -- cost isn't really a big concern of mine. I'm most concerned with getting the right device that can do everything I need.

Thanks for any advise...

I have had a Palm and a Kyocera 6035 and 7135. Prefer the BB for all that kinda stuff and actually use a separate cell phone for the calls as the company has a cell deal with a local company, but no BB service, so I get that on my own. I have had my 7230 for almost a year now!

Jump in...you WILL love the BB!

Jeff

[arbos]

Get a Blackberry! I run a small buisness and tackle 200 e-mails (buisness and pleasure) a day. There are services that will push your AOL mail along but they are not worth it in my opinion. As far as the POP3 goes have your server forward the e-mails to your Blackberry account and INSTANT EMAIL.

[Eric5273]

Thanks for all the input. I was trying to figure out how I would go about all this. As I said above, one of my biggest concerns is to purge my mailbox of all the junk mail & spam. It sounds like the best thing to do is to have the blackberry web client pull all the email from my business POP3 account, and then use both the blackberry and my desktop outlook program to check the mail in the blackberry account. I would effectively be using the blackberry address as my business address. That way when I delete mail from the blackberry, I can purge these emails from the blackberry account & when I go to my desktop, I will not have to delete them a second time. Is this correct?

Then I could set both outlook and the blackberry to use my business email address for outgoing mail.

I'm guessing that while the blackberry can purge email from it's own email server, it cannot purge emails from the mailboxes of the different addresses it pulls mail from. Is this correct?

If this is the case, then I was thinking I would probably use the Reqwireless GotMailViewer program for my AOL mail, since I want to have the same capability. Also, this would allow me to send outgoing mail from my AOL address. The only disadvantage would be that I wouldn't get my aol email as push mail, but that wouldn't be so terrible.

[jeremy]

What finch said. The Blackberry will more than surpass your expectations. Not only that, there's a good chance it will end up owning you! They don't call it Crackberry for nothin'! :shock: