Request for help

[venta]

Further to my BlackBerry enquiry the other evening:

What would you recommend as a small (ie BlackBerry sized), portable device for someone not massively tech-savvy to use to pick up their email from wherever they happened to be ?

I've got this idea that BlackBerries are somewhat on the "it's a turkey" list, but just now really can't remember why. Opinions (with or without vitriol) welcome.

Comments

[neilh.livejournal.com]

I use my S60 phone (7610) which is reasonable for reading but fairly poor for writing email - just by the nature of the phone keypad, but I'm not sure blackberries are any better, they've got more keys but thats not necessarily a usability advantage.

[narenek.livejournal.com]

Is your opinion formed by the fact that Microsoft are just about to release an addition to one of their mail server products which will mirror much of the funky Blackberry functionality (IIRC it'll push email to the client rather than waiting for the client to ask if the server has any)?

[diffrentcolours]

Hasn't that been a well-supported IMAP extension for years?

[narenek.livejournal.com]

Can't really comment on the features/extensions of IMAP as it's not my field.

I was thinking of articles like This one from The Register which there have been enough of recently to stick in my mind.

[shrydar.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine swears by his mobile phone - it's one of the higher end Sony Erricsons. May be a bit pricey though, and he is an astronomer with a fairly high geek quotient, so I'm not sure what it'd be like for the less tech savvy.

OTOH my project manager from my last job thought his BlackBerry was great, and I wouldn't rate him as massively tech-savvy. Our creative director used one as well, and he definately wasn't.

[uitlander]

I'm guessing that'll be one of P800 (couple of years old), P900 or P910 (all Symbian phones). Apparently the P910 is the best of them all, of so people who use those things say. It has the UIQ interface (i.e. touch screen).

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

The P910 also has a full but tiny keyboard on the reverse of its flip open pad. I'm not a great fan of this, but other folks seem to like it.

[uitlander]

*nods* I always find them impossibly small to use. The one on the P800 has the keys on the outside of the flip. The buttons just pressed down onto a soft keyboard on the interface. I did have a P910 to play with for a week when I worked at Symbian, but I didn't like it much and found it too bulky, particularly as I didn't really want any of its non-phone functionality.

[shrydar.livejournal.com]

Have checked with owner - it is indeed a P900.

[brrm.livejournal.com]

I quite like the Sonyericsson P900 that work provided me with (even if they did eventually decide they couldn't justify footing the bill, so I had to bung my personal SIM in it :( ). The UI is great, and the screen is huuuuuge.
We also got a couple of Blackberries for the less technical in the department. I really couldn't get on with the UI on them (no touchscreen on the ones we had, which drove me nuts trying to tap things), and as far as we could tell, there was no way to set up 'proper' IMAP email without having the Blackberry Enterprise server (expensive) do it, and push it to the client, or installing a third party ($10) email client, which in the end we did.
The Sonyericsson K750i (?) is another possibility, which I've seen in passing. Seems to have a very nice 2Mpixel camera with proper auto (rather than fixed) focus. Didn't get to do more than take a photo with it, though. I still have the P900 in my mitts, so feel free to ask questions about it.
I too am waiting for the Nokia 770 tablet, though its obvious omission is the fact that it only has wifi and bluetooth (i.e. no mobile phone transmitter), so you'd have to bluetooth-couple it with a phone to pick up mail on the move. It runs Linux, though, and looks very slick. I've read rumours that it's slow, but that could just be the development versions, it's not due out for a month or two.

[mr-tom.livejournal.com]

I use a Palm Tungsten and a Bluetooth phone. Works fine.

[voratus.livejournal.com]

Our company can print from blackberry.

Not that it answers your question in any way, I just felt like sharing.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

As I understand it, the critical feature of a Blackberry is that it's push-based email. This has two perceived advantages:

* Speed. You get your email sooner if you don't have to explicitly check for any having arrived. As soon as some is delivered, it alerts you.

* Security. If you're a business of some kind, you don't have to allow your executives to tunnel in through your firewall to collect their email.

It strikes me that neither of these features is particularly important to a non-business user.

That said, I would be wary of every recommending anything to a "non-technical" user. If they take a random dislike to some aspect of whatever device you've recommended it'll be "all your fault". And you might get asked to make it work.

My "I wasn't here, I didn't say this" recommendation would be an XDA device. Big screen, has a stylus as well as a keyboard and supports a better range of software.