stuff inside my little mind

Let me back up a little.  I just had an online conversation with a man who couldn’t afford the 8900.  Well, neither could I!  AT&T wanted 200 bucks, somewhere else wanted 150.  When you want the phone, and want it NOW, then you are really in a jam.  I got a Dell Perks ad last week, where “Blackberry” was listed.  So, off I went.  I found that the vendor, Wirefly, was one I had looked at before.  Their only options were new, 8900 for FREE, and renew, 8900 for 40 bucks.  Yeah, 40 bucks!  But – the online options for what you get were not at all what I wanted.  Lo and behold, there was a phone number.  I called.  And sure enough, you can call Wirefly, get a phone at the advertised price, and that’s it.  Seriously, somebody is making money on the phones!  It took three days to get mine.  I ended up buying a one year warranty via Wirefly.  This particular warranty covers a complete loss of the phone up to 3 times.  In a year.  Amazing for 50 bucks.  AT&T has a warranty, usually added to the monthly bill.  I might have paid a little more, but I should have some reassurance.  I got the insurance info in 5 days.

Kudos to Wirefly and their very helpful sales department!  Until the “major” vendors can drop their price, this is a good option.

On to the BB 8900!  I touched on some pluses in Part 1.  Here, I’m going to hit a few minuses.  You might think these are minor, but after using the Curve 8300 for almost two years, these items stuck out.

Problem #1 – the Curve series has gotten rave reviews for using a full size keyboard.  The 8900 is no different.  However, with the 8900 I found that the alt-shift keys were a little farther apart.  This causes a little difficulty with typing, which can be overcome with usage, but the alt-shift-H combination requires two hands unless you get really lucky.  I use this for phone status rather than going through the menu.  Same for the alt-shift-del combo for rebooting.  It’s kinda ham-handed, simply by moving the keys 1/8 of an inch.  You might think these are minor, and they might be, and I am adjusting.  It’s still tough.

Problem #2 – the back cover is not a tight fit like the 8300. It clips on rather than slides, and the actual connections are good.  The problem is, when I grip the phone, my hand makes a little push in the back cover, right above the clip.  I will try using a little electrical tape on the inside of the cover to make it feel more solid.  The “solidness” of the original Curve was a plus.  Having a “flimsy” phone isn’t very “manlike”!  Or very secure, actually.  The dentable cover is a real minus.  A tiny bit more engineering here would have solved this problem.

Problem #3 – the 8300 took a few knocks, but was never knocked offline or lost its battery via abuse.  The other night I set the 8900 on my nightstand (what?  you say you don’t take your BB to bed with you? LIAR!) and bobbled it a bit.  The phone actually rebooted when it hit the table from a distance of about three inches.  I’m going to give this a good try, but so far this looks like a phone that won’t take much abuse, and there are people who will abuse their phones, either on purpose or by accident.

Paying the full price and having no insurance would be bad.  Right now, I am feeling a lot better about taking out the extra policy.

I am not a review site, nor do I pretend to be one on TV.  There are scads of Blackberry sites, too.  I actually only use one of them right now, Crackberry.  I was monitoring a bunch of them, but really, it usually filters down to one site that “has it all”.  I did the same for the Dell Mini 9, my Nissan Frontier (nearly defunct now), and pretty much anything I own that I can “mod”.  Hmm, that sounds like another thing to study.

Anyway, I got the Blackberry 8900, as I noted before.  This week, I did a few things that might be helpful to others with the 8900 (or any Blackberry).  Thing #1 – I inserted my original 2gb memory card.  That isn’t much, but I have 14 CDs on it, plus a picture folder.  The plan is to move to a larger card soon.

Thing #2 – I downloaded the latest Blackberry software.  (Look in the Crackberry forums for your latest version!) Now, while upgrades are normally a good thing, I had some trouble with this one.  I found an OS upgrade online.  Now, if you know me, you know that I just can’t have the last version.  I downloaded the latest copy, from Italy no less, and proceeded to use the Blackberry software to load it onto the 8900.  I’ve used this software before, in earlier versions, to upgrade both the 8300, the Pearl 8100, and another model of which I forget the exact number.  Never, never had a problem.  With this software, the upgrade simply blows.  It doesn’t happen.  I reverted to using the loader.exe file in the program files/common/RIM folder.  That worked like a champ, in about 10 minutes.  I have the latest version from RIM available.

Now, if you question why you should use a version from Italy, or Southeast Asia, or anywhere else, keep in mind that the software is the same for all of the Blackberry phones.  English is always available in the languages.  The latest is the latest, whether it comes from your carrier or not.  Upgrading the OS will not change who your phone connects with.  Thank SIMs for that!

Thing #3 – GPS.  I have heard the GPS is a little funky.  Sadly, that seems to be true.  To keep the GPS active, you have to keep the “maps” active, such as using google maps, my preference, or the AT&T paid service maps.  The GPS is used as a place marker in the photos, if you select that option. The info is stored in the file data, extractable by an EXIF reader.  I downloaded EXIFRead, pulls out everything.  I tested a few pictures, and it works pretty well.  I assume this option is available on other Blackberrys with GPS, but it’s new to me.  If you don’t want people finding out where all your valuables are, turn off the location stamp BEFORE you take a picture!

…more to come…

OK, I got the 8900 in the mail today.  After a little effort, I got it set up.  Later in the day I had to undo an “oops” by AT&T, but no big effort.  The utility to transfer all your stuff from one Blackberry to another worked like a charm!  Still maneuvering stuff around, but it is really working well.  No big surprises – I still have to try out the camera, which has the same resolution as my digital camera, 3.2 mp.

Seems good!  It’s a good replacement for the 8300.  I deleted some applications from that one, and Brenda is more than happy with it.  As long as it stays out of the bathtub, I’m sure it will be fine.

More to come!  It’s charging…

I’m still looking!  The interview I had scheduled for this morning is postponed.  Hopefully that will be rescheduled soon.  Sirius Tech is looking at a couple of contracts that might work for me, but so far nothing is coming up.

It looks as if the house note will be paid this month;  the car note sent us a “skip a month” notice, so we did that.  So far we are not in any bind, but you can sure see the checking account dwindling.  I’m sure something will come up.  I’ve been in correspondence with a man about the possibility of contract work.  That might happen, would be nice!

So, today, I am battling the slight depression that the cancelled interview gave me.  I was really, really hoping to talk to them today.  In order to fight that nasty emotion, I made some homemade jalapeno corn bread.  Nothing like the smell of fresh bread to make you feel happy and young!

Tomorrow is another day, so they say!  We’ll see what happens…

(according to the shipping track, the new blackberry will be here tomorrow?!  Yay!)

Well, almost.  I got so sick of shopping AT&T, that I pretty much gave up.  My last BB was purchased by my boss, so I wasn’t out any money.  This time, I was set on the 8900, the newest Curve.

But, AT&T?  $199?  Seriously?

I did a little shopping, and found it for $149 somewhere else.  Whoo… So, today I got a Dell Perks email, and found a link to “Blackberry” on there.  Following it, I found a link to Wirefly, which seems to have really good deals on new plans, and similar deals on existing… however, they don’t give you an option online to just get a phone.  So I called.  I found the Blackberry 8900 for $40!  I bought insurance too, just because.  Caught a little flak from Brenda about that, because my current Curve 8300 is in great shape after almost 2 years of use.  After the fiasco with the Iphone (sitting in parts, in a bag, right here), I didn’t want to take a chance on a new phone.

I’ll let you know in a few days how it works, picked free shipping of course! First time with Wirefly, so I have the normal anxiety.  Brenda gets the old Curve, she will like it!  I’ll have to pretty much wipe it, probably do a fresh OS install on it.  That will make it good as new!  Looks like I’ll have to invest in another memory card.  Wirefly tried to sell me a card, a car charger, and who the heck knows what else, I was on automatic “no” for a bit.  There’s a 2 gig card in the 8300, might leave that in there.  Or not.