I was reading through the article on the USAToday website convering the RIM/NTP "discussion" on Friday when I came across this little snippet of information...

Anyone have any details on this or is this just a worst case scenario?

Switch to a Treo.

Click this... look at BB's future.

They are taking into account that every user of BlackBerry in the United States would have to take 15-30 minutes to upgrade the OS on their handheld. When they say man-hours, they are simply meaning every single individual user - not actual implementation by their engineers on their systems (it is likely already in place within their network infrastructure). These hours could be concurrent, as a lot of users will likely install the OS update within minutes/hours of it being released.

Carterofmars, consider this a warning. This is a forum for BlackBerry technology not Palm/Treo promotions and sales. If you want to promote what your pharma company is doing as an alternative, do it once. If someone questions you about it more, then it is fine to pursue that avenue of answers. However, badgering our users with whatever reasons you have for promotion of the 700w is going to lead you to an early dismissal from this community. If you have no other business aside from harassment of our users, then please do not return to this forum.

Amen jibi

Thanks for the constructive input Jibi. We just spent about a week or so updating all our users to the latest handheld OS as well as getting our BES up to date. I just wanted to make sure that I was not going to have to go through it all over again.

I met with Ken Dulaney in October and we spent an hour discussing the future of RIM (devices, software, NTP, alternative push email sources). In the last two months his words have changed dramatically. I wonder if that is his position or Gartner's position that has changed.

Nomis - I am fully expecting to have to push a new version of the handheld OS to almost 1000 customers.

You mean Palm's future is to fail miserably at OS development, split into two companies and have one half absorbed into a Linux development consortium while the other schisms into Microsoft? Sorry, I don't think so.

The Treo: Been there, done that, chucked it when it started randomly crashing and rebooting on me. I then grew up and went to a stable platform, and now here I am.

And frankly, every Palmophile should be ashamed of the fact that Palm had to resort to using a Windows OS for the 700w. What, no Cobalt?

Palm HAD a good idea, and blew it. And the great thing is, RIMM appears to be planning to pick up where Palm left off:

http://www.blackberrycool.com/2006/02/27/001432/

And it'll most likely be reliable, too. THAT is BB's future.

Palm/Verizon/MS blew it by not having the push update ship with the Treo. Push on a treo, at least without third party is nothing but vaperware.

You may not be totally out of the clear, I was under the impression that the workaround updates for the handheld software haven't been released yet. Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but if that IS the case then you may just have to push another OS update before this is through...

BigJohn

You should thank NTP for that, too.

Wrong forum, you should have posted that at www.treosucks.com

Been there done that...kid's toy.

I find it interesting that 4.1 OS is not out yet for Rogers 7280/7290 etc. - I wonder if they are holding back pending the NTP decision, given that US roaming BBs will need the firmware update.

If a workaround is implemented, you will have to install a new OS on all of the handhelds, as well as a patch on the BES ... so brace in for doing it all over again

jibi, that's an excellent point. The man hours is based on work, not duration. If one person was going around upgrading everyone, yep 2 mil hours, if 2 mil at the same time, 1 hour, etc..

First off I don't think 4.1 will run on devices with less than 32MB second Rogers is pretty anal when it comes to sofware testing and releases. They're usually one of the last to release new handheld software. If you want the 4.1 OS for your 7290 install the Hong Kong CSL vers.