Have to say I somewhat share herrbohnen's frustration. My 8800 arrived last Tuesday and as of Saturday night I am still using my Razr and wondering whether the BB is really the right tool for me after all.
This is not to say that BB isn't a great product, it clearly is!
But as I think a couple of the people on this thread have agreed, the learning curve is pretty steep. Mine went something like this:
Day 1: Find the SIM card and figure out how to swap it. The nitwit at AT&T customer support was less than zero help, he was reading from a help screen (which was probably just a reproduction of the user manual) and was giving me the wrong instructions - telling me to put the SIM card in what turned out to be the media card slot. I finally hung up on him because I was afraid I'd break something. Ended up googling "blackberry sim card" and found, I think, this forum, which explained the whole thing.
Day 2: Learn to navigate the screen. I found the use of the "back" key somewhat non-intuitive but eventually got the hang of it. Learned that "NUM" on the keyboard does not produce numbers, you use "ALT" for that.
Day 3: Successfully logged in to my AOL e-mail account. YAAAY! Even managed to save it as a bookmark. Installed desktop software on my computer but not yet sure what to do with it.
Day 4: Learned how to save address book contacts from old unit (my Razr) to the SIM card and access them on the BB. YAAAY!! Began figuring out how to link to computer via Bluetooth.
Day 5: More futzing around with Bluetooth. Got my Google Reader working on BB but lost both the bookmark and login information.
As of Saturday night, I am still unable to do the following:
- Bookmark my Google Reader and save login info. The "back" button on the BB seems to wipe out the saved login data even when I have checked the "remember me" box. (Can anyone confirm if this is true?)
- Download my prized Wolfram Ringtones (
WolframTones: An Experiment in a New Kind of Music) to my BB. The impression I get is that some kinds of audio files can only be downloaded with the addition of that media card.
- Receive text messages or access old text messages saved on my Razr. (Could not find an equivalent to the "save on SIM" process that works for address book contacts.)
I bought the BB because I wanted to be able to easily access my e-mail and the internet while moving about; the big screen and QWERTY keyboard were big draws. (And, I'll cop to it, the fact that the BB looks cool as hell and I was green with envy when I saw other people with them!!!)
That said, I am wondering at this point whether it wouldn't be easier just to stick with my Razr and go back to schlepping around my PowerBook when I need to hit the 'net. But I want to give the BB a fair chance.
So that's my main reason for being on this forum: I want to get a good idea of what my BB can do, and how to do it - as well as its limitations. Then I'll be able to make a better decision on whether to keep it, and I'll get the most out of it if I do.
