Tuesday, August 14, 2007

The Crackberry

Here is a shot from my new Blackberry Curve 8300 which I recently bought. My previous job required that we have one and now I am fortunate to have a job that I can actually afford one. The Blackberry is basically mobile internet included with a cell phone along with PDF, Excel, Word document viewing. The cost of the monthly plan is pretty steep for just a personal user because you pay for talk time and data, with the later costing a fortune if you web surf on it regularly.

I have been debating for awhile to get the new Curve or the Palm Treo which is pretty much similar in ability but also has the ability to edit Word, Excel files. Also, Pilatus creates an Aircraft Flight Manual which includes performance computations for the Treo and not the Blackberry which at first swayed me until I rationalized how much I would actually use it.

The Curve like the Treo offers the full QWERTY keyboard which means it is laid out like a regular keyboard unlike the Blackberry Pearl or regular cellphone that has 3 characters per digit.

The Curve also has a 2.0 MegaPixel camera which is a bit up on the 1.3 MP camera on the Treo. It allows you to convert a picture to a 4"X6" without causing a poor image to be printed (provided you took a good shot to begin with !).

So far my experience has been really positive (minus the freeakin bill!) and the screen is just great.

The picture above was taken at about 130 km/hr as I headed north on the 416 towards Ottawa. It had been brutaly hot the last few days and these were clouds left over from the front passage and made for a truly beautiful sight.

Safe flying !

FD

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I just traded in my Crackberry after almost 4 years for the iPhone. I have been really happy so far with the decision. The pictures from the camera are very clear, and the phone itself is like carrying around a small laptop.

I think I even wrote a little review of it on my site somewhere. I'll try to post some pics from the camera shortly.

nec Timide said...

So did your old Blackberry have the wheel or the ball? If the former, what do you think of the difference.

Flyin Dutchman said...

I watched the demo movie on the Iphone and it looks pretty sweet indeed, will just have to wait for 3 years for my contract and the price to go down a little :)

As for the old BB it was a 7290 with the wheel. I had quickly test driven a BB Pearl and hated the ball.

I have had the new one here for about 2 weeks and just like anything else I got used to it can operate at the same pace as before.

I don't like having to push the BB logo button to pull up the full menu and it would be nice I guess if the ball would be able to pull up the menu, and a second hit activate the command...

Battery life is good but any use of the camera seems to bring it down quickly. I get about 2 full days of use with it on a single charge with about 40 percent left...charges back up in about an hour to two hours.

I used to have the belt clip for the 7290 but have to pull this leather case out of my pocket each time which is a pain, but will have to look into something better in the future.

Cheers