[BB8100]

I have been waiting 11 months for Doc to Go with them saying that it is coming out next quarter every prior quarter. eOffice is not ideal and I hope the Data Viz folks are not yanking our collective chain. Announcing a product is coming and then not delivering really does less good than not announcing at all.

Very disappointed in the Data Viz information thus far, regardless of the robustness of their work on other platforms.

[gameboy213]

yeah.... the delay stinks. But I bet the app will be ever more stable at least.

[JLOJLO]

Hy.Please tell me how i add aplications on my device blackberry 8310.

[J-Mac]

Any specifics as to what is wrong with eOffice? I've been looking at it for a little while and of course it looks great, but one would have to use it a while to really know. Short trials do nothing in helping evaluate apps like that.

As for Docs To-Go, I'm beginning to give up on waiting for that. Plus, since RIM is a completely different platform with an API that is not nearly open as Palm's was, the BB version will most likely not be the same as Palm.

I got burned on that with Agendus when they released a version for WM. I had used it on Palms and it was pretty great. But the WM version has never really worked well. Completely different program on that platform.

Thanks.

Jim

[Alex Alexzander]

eOffice was the only app I ever had that caused me to have to pull the battery on my BlackBerry. How can I be sure of that? That's a good question, and here is a spectacular answer. I never had to pull the battery a single time prior to installing eOffice, and I have never had to pull the battery since removing it.

In the short 1 day that I had eOffice I pulled the battery 4 times in just about 1 hour. The application suite is too weird. The workflow for getting a document out of email was a mystery to me. Constant problems with getting a document to even open. I am sure others understand it well, and perhaps my being ignorant of how it works shouldn't count against it, but against me. But all of that seems moot when the darn thing constantly locks up my BlackBerry.

The last thing I want is some slow process for getting a document that I can't count on. The spirit of the BlackBerry is that is a reliable experience. eOffice was anything but with that spirit.

Now I too had Documents2Go with a Treo, and it's simply an app that every Treo owner owns I think. It's a must have. This issue also brings up the only point about the BlackBerry that is indeed odd to me. At this time there is no good way to deal with documents in email. DocHawk, RepliGo, etc, they are all so awful. I can't believe they won awards at all. I don't trust those awards one bit after reading their rave reviews of what I consider to be the worst written software ever to grace a mobile platform.

Ouch, you say. Pretty harsh you say. Well I can explain...

With each of these document viewers they merely take the attachment, snap show a picture of it, and send it back to you as an image to be viewed. Here is why that is so wrong. Say you have a very wide excel document. It will take an image of the entire sheet, and thus shrink the whole document to fit in that one shot. You can magnify all you like, you will never be able to read it. I personally can't believe anyone would release software that doesn't actually work in that situation. It's what I call, Half Baked. Grid Magic works well, and the built in Excel viewer from RIM is worlds better for viewing that DocHawk or RepliGo.

PDFs on BlackBerry are not perfect, and this is perhaps where RepliGo and DocHawk show some value in that they read those documents pretty well.

What Documents2Go brings to the table, at least on the Palm, is this. You get the whole document. You can read, save, edit, and resend any word or excel document. You can easily read any PDF. GridMagic is actually very good. If someone made a portable Word version which is as good as GridMagic is for excel, I'd say we're there. And if Adobe themselves made a RIM PDF viewer, I'd say Bingo. No need to wait. But shy of that, we really need what Documents2Go brought to the Palm.

The next award I see going to software had better be to TodoMatrix, and Ascendo DataVault. The garbage that wins these awards sickens me. It's time very good software actually wins the awards. Not that garbage like DocHawk and RepliGo.

Sorry to come down on those apps. I'm sure the vendors hate what I write here, but you guys are to blame. You handling of excel documents shows carelessness. Don't release software until it actually works. Until then, don't be angry with me, be angry with yourselves.

-Alex Alexzander

[J-Mac]

Thanks Alex. Your opinion - though a very strong one! - is very much appreciated just the same!

Though it is difficult and possibly not entirely fair to judge an application's performance on another platform against other apps on this platform. I mentioned in another thread how I loved Agendus on the Palm, but they completely botched both their attempts at implementing it on the Windows PC and on Windows Mobile devices. Doesn't even resemble the PalmOS version.

As for eOffice, this is the first I've read where someone has explained exactly what they didn't like about it. Most just say that it sicks or something equally "revealing".

Thank you for the mini-review.

Jim

[Alex Alexzander]

I didn't review eOffice at all. DocHawk and RepliGo have nothing to do with eOffice's Word and Excel applications.

Here is what I think I know of eOffice. I say I think, because I barely used it because it simply kept causing lockups.

The first time I tried it, even though I had about 10 MBs free, all the menus had nothing in them. That is to say, it had some kind of a GUI problem. I brought this to the attention of their support staff, and they said, likely memory was the problem. I got rid of my Oxford Dict program, which freed a lot of memory, but before I tried that, I had deleted eOffice. So after deleting it, I had to reinstall it.

So on my second install, I remember all the garbage that came with eOffice. You get eFile, and a spell checker, and a ton of other stuff. I just remember thinking, dang this is a lot of stuff. I just want excel, word, and that's really all. But you need all this other garbage.

Next, I tried eWord. The top menus are super tiny. I'm not sure, but I think you need eFile is some way to be able to save and retrieve the files. eFile constantly locked up. I got messages saying their server is busy, try again later. I thought, okay this isn't working for me.

I also couldn't see a way in which I could get a document from email into eWord to read it. I tried to save and see where they went, but saving and looking caused my BlackBerry to lockup again. So after 4 tries of barely using it for a few minutes and having to pull the battery, I simply decided this is garbage and gave up. I deleted it.

I later tried again, installing it, and trying it with excel. I asked if I needed eFile or the eOffice PIM in order to get attachments into eWord or eXcell. I don't even remember the answer, because I remember looking for some kind of integration between RIM's mail and eOffice and couldn't find it. And truth be told, I am not interested in switching from my email program to eOffice's PIM mail. Or perhaps you just had to use the application itself to email the document. I don't know honestly. eOffice might be a nice app, it's just that if it keep crashing while I am trying to figure it out, I will never know.

I also have to say, I don't like applications that completely change the way I work with the way I already work with the BlackBerry. What I mean by that is this. If I want to send an attachment, the software publisher needs to create a vehicle in which I use BlackBerry's own standard email to compose that email as that's how I already work. That is the most intuitive way to handle this issue. I shouldn't need to run eWord, or eFile, or anything else. I should be able to open a standard email, say attach, traverse the SD card and make a selection and send away. It has to be that way. Likewise, when I see an attachment in an existing email, I need to be able to send it to my SD card. GridMagic does this mostly. Not perfectly, but not badly either.

I seriously would love it if eOffice worked well for me. I'd be saying buy it buy it. I really want word and PDF on my BB.

You could always try it yourself. They have a demo, and great customer service. Try it and see what you think for yourself. Their support tells me that the OTA installer is much cleaner than the Desktop installer. The Desktop installer however will leave you with a few manuals, and you'll need those.

If others have got further in it than me, hopefully they will chime in and explain how it works, how it interacts with mail attachments, etc.

-Alex Alexzander

[sergeyd]

Alex,

Thanks for your review, even though it is far from positive. But it raises important usability comments and you had invited feedback, so I thought I'd answer . Couple of points:

1. Opening attachments. In BlackBerryemail client the actual attachment never arrives to the device. It actually lives on the BES or BIS server and using Open Attachment menu item you can view it through the built-in viewer. We as a third party app cannot be called from that menu. So we insert our own (View/Edit Attachment in our case) which causes the email to be forwarded to our server and then pushed to your device. There our special handler picks it up and makes it available to our applications. With slight variations, this is how all attachment handling apps work. There simply is no other way, so don't blame us.

2. Lockups. This was probably caused by you trying to same the attachment to the SD card from our attachment handling menu. We did have an issue caused by the OS bug there, and we put in a workaround in the 4.1.200 version, that unfortunaly sometimes caused the lockup when saving to the SD card. I know of no other reason for lockups in the last couple of years.

3. Sending emails with attachments. Here too, the native email client did not allow attaching files to an email you compose, so we had to build our own stuff.

As far as other things, like icon sizes etc - we are always collecting feedback and do appreciate your opinion as well as everybody else's.

I will be glad to explain further if needed. Cheers and happy holidays!

[Sith_Apprentice]

for eoffice is there a way to have part of the attachment downloaded, similar to the native viewer? it just seems for large attachments, it would have easily downloaded over EDGE or EVDO data, but still takes up to 10 minutes at times to view/save in Eoffice?

[sergeyd]

No, it has to be whole to be able to edit it. It takes time sometimes because of the attachment forwarding.

[Alex Alexzander]

This makes me want to try it again, but I just remember 2 things mostly. The crashes, and the hard time waiting for a document to process so I could use it. Both of which didn't work, or took so long I gave up. Granted this could have been a limited time issue, I did try the software several times over a week. I just felt if I was having so much trouble in a non pressure situation, how would it be if I wanted to recall something in front of a client. I need something that never ever causes me to pull the battery. That can never happen in front of a client. EVER.

I understand about having to write you own method around what BlackBerry has done. That makes sense, so thanks for clearing it up as I am sure a lot of folks are like me and don't know why it works the way it does.

RepliGo never had me waiting a long time for any document. I just didn't like the quality of the excel documents is all. What can be done to speed up getting documents from eOffice as someone els ejust chimed in about that. Taking 10 minutes to get a file. And I also waited so long I assumed it wasn't working at all.

What would be best is if you submit a task and then the program lets go of the process so you are free to do anything else, like close the app if you want to and do something else. Then when the file is on the DynoPlex server and ready, we get an SMS or email telling us we can now quickly grab it and save it to our SD cards.

You can't have someone staring at a seemingly dead blackberry wondering if the file is ever going to download. When that happens, we press buttons, and cause more problems, and next thing you know, we have a locked BB. Which again is against BlackBerry law.

-Alex

[Sith_Apprentice]

I agree, automatically having the program go to the background is a good idea. Also a progress indicator if you do keep the program running wouldnt be a bad idea. The one thats there now is just a bar that cycles colors. Something that gives percent done, or perhaps even an estimated completion time (although this might be difficult because of the forwarding to a server)

[sergeyd]

Funny enough, we did have a progress bar in the earlier versions, but gave up on it - because of the wireless delays it is very hard to estimate progress reliably and then it winds up as the one in MS Windows, having stuck at 10 seconds left for a minute. Sending it into background is a good idea.

[ravenspeake]

I agree with Alexander!

I really liked Docs-to-Go on palm when I had a Tungsten C. I love my blackberry. I bought E-Office nearly immediately after purchasing my BB and I NEVER got it to work right, and when it did work, it took forever to load up a document... and yes, like Alexander, I also had to pull the battery on more than one occasion- I finally deleted the program from my BB..... after 15 months, E-office was not a valuable purchase- their staff was helpful and responded quickly to emailed queries, but I just could not get the docs to work.

If you want to at least have a document VIEWER pending Doc2Go release, try BeamBerry

[John Gabrikh]

i have downloaded e-office trail version and its working fine but as per you guys Docs to Go is for BB is much better then e-office so i will also wait for that application!!

[arazu]

I use eOffice and like it. I've had no crashes. I must admit that parts of it took a bit of getting used to.

As previously mentioned, RIM OS is quite unlike Palm OS. They might not be able to get Documents to go to do everything they want. Perhaps that is the reason for the delays. I'm not trying to turn anybody off. I'm just saying that Santa may not bring that pony you've been asking for.

[SteveO86]

has their been any update on the release dat other then first quarter of 2008, I signed up at thier website and went threw their quick survey have their been any updates?

[Sith_Apprentice]

nothing specific released from RIM. but we are 1/6th of the way through the first quarter of 08 so it cant be long

[danbra]

Originally Posted by BB8100

I have been waiting 11 months for Doc to Go with them saying that it is coming out next quarter every prior quarter. eOffice is not ideal and I hope the Data Viz folks are not yanking our collective chain. Announcing a product is coming and then not delivering really does less good than not announcing at all.

Very disappointed in the Data Viz information thus far, regardless of the robustness of their work on other platforms.

If you ‘re tired of waiting for docs2go, here is the good news, we have a fully native version now.
No conversion is needed, you may open your Microsoft docs on BB from SD and manage them right away.
The version is available at: Downloads Productivity applications for RIM OS v4.0 Blackberry of DynoPlex

[RichinNJ]

Originally Posted by danbra

If you ‘re tired of waiting for docs2go, here is the good news, we have a fully native version now.
No conversion is needed, you may open your Microsoft docs on BB from SD and manage them right away.
The version is available at: Downloads Productivity applications for RIM OS v4.0 Blackberry of DynoPlex

I just bought the newest MasterDoc, and am presently asking for a refund. It will not give me any menu option on Word docs (Word 2000) other than "Save Native." The only way to view a Word doc is with the BB viewer, in which case why did I pay you guys $50?

I don't need eOffice. I only want superior attachment viewing. After DAYS of trying to figure it all out, I think your MasterDoc software - or the installer - is munged up. The only way to make it work was to install the eOffice trial. Why should I need eOffice to make MasterDoc work? MD must be using EO modules that the MD installer doesn't provide. (Hint: look at eCell.)

I'll grant that your PDF viewer is better than the BB viewer, but that's not worth $50 to me. Your tech support people are nice, but slow. E-mail took several days. My phone msg was never returned.

I stumbled into this thread searching for something better.

Rich
(unhappy customer)