Crackberry Issues Resolved

[bjarvis]

Yesterday 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.

Comments

[wescobear.livejournal.com]

I think it's the OS; my GSM Blackberry pearl flip locks up about once a week and requires a soft reset.

Don't forget to install the Blackberry Desktop software on a PC and download the phone updates, too.

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I have the Desktop software installed but it's pretty useless save for performing backups and activating the Companion Link conduit. No new updates for it or the Storm lately.

[snowboardjoe.livejournal.com]

Yep, the old battery replacement does the trick 99% of the time. While you may turn the phone off, it really does not turn it off. All it does is put it to sleep. You have to remove the battery to get a full reboot of the phone. I normally have to do this about once every 1-2 months, so not too bad.

Desktop software is useless except for updates and backups. Have a look at The Missing Sync for BlackBerry. I use it on my Mac and it has worked pretty well. The new 2.0 version has several enhancements that were just released for the Windows platform (including enabling BT for syncing) and soon to be released for the Mac platform.

[trawnapanda.livejournal.com]

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.

does it come with a calculator? I'm doing this in my head, but 90+10+10 = 110, and I'm not sure what "110% of the time" actually means.

Is it warping time on you? Careful, down that road lies eight days in a week, with only two of them on the weekend, for a six day work week.

I'd give up on any device that tried that trick on me.

[urbear]

You might want to consider Google Sync. The Blackberry version continuously syncs the Blackberry's calendar and contact list over the air with Google's equivalents. This would free you entirely from the tyranny of the cable, ensure that everything is always backed up, and allow you to access your Blackberry stuff from any machine with a web browse.

[weekilter.livejournal.com]

You should've gotten a "normal" BlackBerry instead of the iFone wannabe model :)