[Mark Rejhon]

Originally Posted by kajpkgeng

Thanks very much for your comments as they did provide some interesting insight. All in all I think I would still prefer my treo because of its form factor as a phone (I want to get one one device) but Im somewhat glad to know the capabilities have improved over what I have been seeing as of late (must have all been older models) and if forced to switch I'll have most functions.

Did you know that the 7100 series BlackBerries are the same size as a Treo now? Although not everyone likes the SureType keyboard. Understandably, a Treo user converting to 7100 is a hit-and-miss. Sometimes they get dissatisfied because of the SureType keyboard, and other times, they fall in love with the 7100 series. It's a lot safer for a Treo user to convert to, say, the 7250 BlackBerry because of the superior keyboard and the fact that it's the fastest BlackBerry at the moment. Although it's definitely true the 7250 is slightly bigger...

Originally Posted by kajpkgeng

I will say im not so sure about editing documents from the server side that has to be pretty slow if you need to navigate around a bit?

The document is not always stored serverside. You can cache a few dozen files on your BlackBerry for example, so you're editing locally, you just only need to upload it when done... I think that's how eFile works. Just remember your BlackBerry is limited to 32 megabytes.

Originally Posted by kajpkgeng

I also want to note that although I used to be a big grafiti and touchscreen person. with the 5way navigation button I am able to cruise all around the screen to what I need and rarely take the stylus out (might touch with a finger once a week).

Well, you understand my conversion from Grafitti to thumbwheel then.

The direction pad is similiar in the migration away from touchscreen, although I generally prefer the thumbwheel and hotkey shortcuts. You may want to know I was the fastest Grafitti writer in the "Dom Perignon III" contest operated by Fitaly, I went 40.1 words per minute with Grafitti ("Block Recognizer" on an iPaq really, but same thing as PalmSource's Grafitti1). I am now a thumb-touch-typist who can go up to 72.4 WPM on a BlackBerry thumb keyboard. I can't go that fast on the cramped TREO keyboard (or the 7100 BlackBerry keypad, for that matter). I do notice I type at roughly similiar speeds on a TREO 600 and the BlackBerry 7100 though (both same size devices). The Treo 650 keyboard has improved I heard, so I don't yet have quite an apples-to-apples comparision on 2005-era Treo's versus 2005-era BlackBerries, but this is a note worth mentioning, anyway...

Another thing I love about BlackBerry is shortcuts. For example, I can just type five keys "Crej<enter>" to start composing an email message to myself ("Mark Rejhon"). I can do this even when the email software is not in the foreground -- I can even do this right at the Main Icons (launcher) screen. The first C keypress instantly launches "Compose Email" and then jumps to addressbook which when typing "rej" finds the first match to a name containing "rej", hitting Enter finally puts me into editor mode. So there's a lot of poweruser keypress shortcuts on a BlackBerry get gets things done quickly. Keypress shortcut demons can fall in love with the BlackBerry if they take the time to memorize all of them. True -- some people hate doing things this way and prefer tapping at a screen, or slowly spinning the thumbwheel, or something else. People stubbornly more comfortable with a touchscreen, may take much longer to adjust, or might switch back to Treo...

Originally Posted by kajpkgeng

I would love to put the two head to head with someone like yourself that is more knowledgeable about BB and not Pig headed to see what it can do. For instance as a frequent traveler I have American Airlines full airline schedule onboard my treo at all times to check flight times, Or the use of encrypted password data bases for computer emails, frequent flyer info..., and as well I keep a couple dozen techincal PDFs onboard a 1gig SD card that I can email, pull out and stick in a memory stick type device or show/use for onscreen reference.

Unfortunately, that 1 gigabyte SD card is something BlackBerry won't have for a very long time, because the government is a major customer of BlackBerries, and the lack of a card slot improves security greatly, but hurts users like yourself.

The next best thing is ultra-highspeed wireless networks (Verizon EVDO wireless 2 megabits, which many sources here mention is coming as a software upgrade to the BlackBerry 7250 later in 2005), and gigabytes of safe server-based Intranet-encrypted storage, with the 32megs on BlackBerry behaving as a cache or temporary directory. Wireless upload/download of data between fully secure and fully audited Intranet, and your BlackBerry... The government don't want an unapproved SD slot on a BlackBerry for example (although a separate "BerryMedia" consumer line of BlackBerries would have been nice -- to keep multimedia SD users happier). Secure infrastructure is the direction BlackBerry is generally going in, for security reasons, keep things secure while making users happy, and this will gradually become less painful with megabit-speed VPN access to your corporate desktop computer, so you can edit documents stored on your corporate desktop. Expect things like this to be happening around 2006 as megabit carrier wireless such as EVDO and UMTS become widespread, although Dynoplex is making things like this possible already... This is why some corporations are somewhat uncomfortable with Treo units, because of less secure infrastructure...

Along the same lines, theoretically, you could play your MP3 music off your office desktop onto your BlackBerry, probably, eventually, in 2006 ;) ....Or maybe 2007 (hah). Time will tell if RIM *will* enable the ability to play MP3 files, but it's a matter of time, I think. We'll see... It's true TREO's far ahead in music playback capabilities at the moment, and BlackBerries are becoming more consumer-friendly, so eventually these two points will have to meet somewhere, RIM keeping consumers happy.

And shockingly, maybe RIM may decide to spinoff a consumer company for consumer-based BlackBerry phones with an SD card slot, full MP3 playback, 3D accelerated videogaming, etc. (Note: I have NO INSIDE INFO on this particular thing.... this is pure speculation!) I've donned this the "BerryMedia" idea in the past...

Although I think RIM is content to just sell "BlackBerry Connect" to PalmSource, and let PalmSource preinstall "BlackBerry Connect" on Treo's. So you may not have to give up your Treo. RIM has settled with NTP, so PalmSource should be finally doing something about this at some point, I'd think. Who knows... One of the two Palm companies (PalmSource or PalmOne, not sure which one) already has a licensing agreement with RIM, so anything's possible! However, this wouldn't have the advantages of genuine BlackBerry hardware (multitasking OS, ruggedizness, battery life, full end-to-end security, CIA-approved secure equipment, etc)