Stu Downes

After almost a month of using my corporate BlackBerry 8800 now some thoughts.  After a couple of weeks instant messaging was enabled on the device.  So what do I find useful and why?

Email

Great for checking things before meetings, when travelling or generally at times the laptop isn’t connected or available.  Nothing earth shattering there.

Calendar

Now for me this is superb … I’ve got lots in my head.  Work, home, kids, bottles, nappies, voluntary work, blogs, rss … oh and the calendar always seems to be stored in that grey area of the brain where memory isn’t that great.  For me the ability without booting a laptop up to check what I have on this morning or this afternoon is superb.  Can I attend that meeting next Thursday afternoon, do I need to make sure the kids are in nursery as the doors open to make an early call?  Really, really useful for me.

Contacts

No more useful than on my old telephone.

Instant Messaging

For instant messaging it isn’t my tool of choice.  Hey I’m either available to chat to you at my laptop or I’m away and hence can’t.  What I am a fan of is do-not-disturb.  We use Sametime which doesn’t allow any notes to be stored against your presence icon, so when offline thats it, no information.  There are times for example when I’m driving from A-to-B and want to display my presence information.  Can’t do it with the laptop as its powered down with no network.  The BlackBerry is superb in these situations.  The power of “hey I can’t talk to you now but expect me back online in 2 hours” is superb.

Telephone

Hmmm….bottom of the list.  The telephony experience is good, the voice commands to dial people really get tied up with my northern accent   But on the whole the phone part of the device is the least used feature (bet I’m not alone there!).