Crackberry Issues Resolved
Feb. 11th, 2009 10:08 amYesterday was Not A Good Day at work, at least initially. For those not interested in the details, suffice it to say that everything ultimately ended well.
One of the bigger stressors was the partial failure of my Crackberry Storm: it was suddenly mute. It should have chirped when messages arrived, the music player wouldn't work and incoming telephone calls would only cause it to vibrate rather than ring. I don't feel the vibrate mode at all --digesting lunch usually can drown out any external vibrations from appliances on my belt-- so I was missing every call. Later in the morning, I realized I wasn't getting emails either which meant I was out of reach of my office.
The IBM field engineer I had scheduled for the morning to fix a blade CPU issue had been rescheduled to the afternoon so I looked up the nearest Verizon Wireless office and headed there to see what could be done for my toy. After checking the same settings I had, the techie was mystified but went for the old tried & true: pop out the battery to perform a soft reset. Sure enough, it worked: I have full audio back and 150+ messages were streaming in within minutes. I'll have to remember that trick for future.
Outside of learning the devices' quirks of thumb pressure for typing, the lack of a good desktop manager app (I'm using Palm's desktop with Companion Link as a conduit), the inability to use Bluetooth for file copy and the difficulty in setting up playlists, it's not a bad device. I use it 90% of the time for email, 10% for Facebook & instant messaging and 10% for GPS & maps and all of these work very well. I'll keep it.
Now to send in the rebate forms.
One of the bigger stressors was the partial failure of my Crackberry Storm: it was suddenly mute. It should have chirped when messages arrived, the music player wouldn't work and incoming telephone calls would only cause it to vibrate rather than ring. I don't feel the vibrate mode at all --digesting lunch usually can drown out any external vibrations from appliances on my belt-- so I was missing every call. Later in the morning, I realized I wasn't getting emails either which meant I was out of reach of my office.
The IBM field engineer I had scheduled for the morning to fix a blade CPU issue had been rescheduled to the afternoon so I looked up the nearest Verizon Wireless office and headed there to see what could be done for my toy. After checking the same settings I had, the techie was mystified but went for the old tried & true: pop out the battery to perform a soft reset. Sure enough, it worked: I have full audio back and 150+ messages were streaming in within minutes. I'll have to remember that trick for future.
Outside of learning the devices' quirks of thumb pressure for typing, the lack of a good desktop manager app (I'm using Palm's desktop with Companion Link as a conduit), the inability to use Bluetooth for file copy and the difficulty in setting up playlists, it's not a bad device. I use it 90% of the time for email, 10% for Facebook & instant messaging and 10% for GPS & maps and all of these work very well. I'll keep it.
Now to send in the rebate forms.