So I'm a personal BB owner / user. I don't have unlimited usage, nor a corporate account. And up here in Canada prices for BB data users are pretty high compared to our USA friends. Oh I'd sell my left nut for an unlimited data use account that didn't cost $60+ (most in usa its $20?)

Anyways, long and short of it is this. I know that I can view 'Status' menu on my BB phone screen and see my consumed minutes of calling, reset the odometer etc.

Can I do such a thing for 'data' usage on a bb? Anyone know of a tool i can install on my BB to do this? I have not hade much luck in asking my carrier (Rogers) on this fact. I am trying, to use my base plan of 500k/month in data. I know its a stretch. I need to be able to meter my usage. Any rogers customers with feedback? My impression is that I have to wait until the bill arrives. Thats insane.

And yes, i'm a very, very light weight mail user on said device.

Secondly, i've read that BES users can set their units to 'not' receive email with a USB connection. Can I do this on my 7130 device with a BIS account? Is there an option hidden deep away to do this? Then I can further limit data usage when i'm home/work with a working pc/internet....

Any other suggestions on limiting data usage, fire away. Obvoiusly I won't be using any polling apps, push apps, or web browsering (I already turned off images, css, javascript etc etc) as well for the odd emergency when i need to lookup a phone #)

Thanks!

Here's a data point. I use Cingular and used to have the 4MB data plan. I rarely went over 2MB doing primarily email. (I got 75 - 100 emails each day, but don't pull down attachments etc.)

Web browsing didn't use up too much data if you use access websites designed for mobile devices.

Downloading programs, ringtones, etc. used up quite a bit of data.

Google Maps is a data hog. It's great stuff, but you'll want to avoid using it if you are counting the data bytes.

.5MB isn't enough... You'll be easily spending 30+ on every MB you go over on... I have to suggest that you disable web browsing if you want to be tight on your data usage...

I'm with Rogers and I broke down and went with the 60 MB plan and am using 13 MB last month...

Rogers sucks when it comes to data plans and they have no plan to create a better $25/0.5MB and $40/1MB plan...

So call Rogers and request that they update their data plans to something more realistic... I have been and without much luck.

Im looking at 10 emails per day at MOST, no web surfing, once in awhile use of gtalk (very little messaging). Not hard core at all.

What do you pay for your plan?

500k its very limited i got 2gb plan because thats the only rate the offert in venezuela still its 45$/month + Voice = so that's ends up being 100$ =(.. let me know if there is a shuch software to mesure how much data you send/recive

Then why do you want unlimited? what the heck would you do with it?

Rogers has a $100 200 meg plan.... but I could find a way to use all those 200 megs.. it would be hard, but not too hard on a Pearl with radio streaming..!

The only DATA USAGE you can possibly do is by calling rogers and asking.. or waiting until your bill comes in. As silly as this is, getting data usage off the BB is not possible right now, as well getting an answer out of your carrier is even worse..

Rogers often gives unlimited (true unlimited) for the first 3 months of your term so that you can get an idea how much you actually use..

Wait a minute!

Am I understanding what you are saying as I read this thread? You are charged for data ONLY when you actually receive an email or use the Internet?

I just purchased a BB 7130e from Verizon, desired their pay as you go plan rather than the $50 unlimited and was told that my bill would be astronomical because everytime my BB went out to check for an email (every minute???) that it was using data. At $.015 per KB, the salesguy said it would add up to approximately $9.00 an hour.

Can't justify the extra $50 for the unlimited so I had them shut data access off completely. Would still like to use it for email and internet but scared to have the crazy thing turned on.

Was the sales guy just feeding me a line or was he correct?

BB is a push device, its not pulling a POP3 account. Salesdroid sounds partially full of SH*T.

I was told by my carrier to exact 1k of data for every 30 works in an email. Thats their basis. 500k/month they said would do 'average' 10 messages per day per month.

I complained over the lack of tools to track my usage, so my carrier offered me three months of unlimited usage so i can track my usage bill to bill, and choose a plan that best meets my needs.

So far, no usage tools exist. Seems rather stupid to me. We can track MINUTES of talk time on a Phone/BB, why not have a similar counter that adds up data send/received and can break it down (phone, email, network traffic). Why are common sense tools not put into these things. JEZE!