Hello everyone! --- oh boy!
This is my first blackberry and I got it from a promotion through the bank. I had it only for a week and so far it has been working fine as a phone and as an email machine. Browsing is ok for being wireless - meaning I can use the 411, the newspaper, this forum, and misc non WAP sites. Reception is as good as it could be expected for my particular location, but compared to my wife's BB - one of those with the full keyboard - the signal is roughly 2/3 of the possible strength.
I got the 7100T to work as a decent modem - even with the weakish signal - running like a high quality dial up.
The ultimate goal for this apparatus is to be my connection for virtual terminal on paypal, homephone, etc.
Signal: yardstick #1 : works well if I get out of the forest where I live, at home on a stone house with small windows - think of a castle
- it works fine but it could be better.
Battery life: that is where I measure all gadgets. Battery life is my yardstick #2: Short of horrible. One hour of hard browsing and the poor thing is roughly 1/3 of its juice.
Keyboard or input devices: Since I cannot use it as a virtual terminal, the keypad requires multiple strokes to get some of the characters. I guess since I never played nintendo - only pc games - It will take me a while to get fully used to. What I do for training is to use the MSN messenger with the most needy and annoying of my friends so to be forced to type furiously for ten minutes and create some muscle memory. I would not mind using an external keyboard and punch away in some kind of Word document. I loved that feature with my PalmV, but battery died and I never bothered replacing it.
Overall ... this technology is still in its infancy. Now that the lawsuit regarding copywright is settled, I am anxious to see new developments
Something smaller than a notebook screen with a swivel full keyboard and at least 10 hours of battery for heavy wireless use would be wonderfull. External CD rom application so to have GPS - on the road again - even an external one so to have navegability that sometimes road warriors require in rented cars.
Maybe I am pushing it too far .... or too little depending on who is reading. Corporate road warriors seem to like the higher end models due the shortcomings that compact size had to surrender in usability.
But I am keeping my dear clamshell small compact Samsung phone - so far I have to charge it once in a while, light, small, and works every time .