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

[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.