Do I need a Blackberry?

jobbingmusician

I used to have a Blackberry in a previous job and didn't expect to love it, but I did.

What I loved about it was receiving and sending emails all the time. I was and am happy to carry a mobile phone as well - I have a very good deal on my mobile which means that calls to hubby (90% of the calls I make, which would probably increase to 100% if I could email people on a Blackberry) are free. My mobile is on OneTel and OneTel tell me they can't provide a SIM for a Blackberry.

Work set up the previous Blackberry for me, so I have questions if any of you are kind enough to have read this far....

1. Do I really want a Blackberry, or are there other identical(ish), cheaper things I could use which might run on OneTel?

2. If I do want a Blackberry, what service should I be on (remember I am not using it as a mobile, just for emails). How much will this cost me per month?

3. Once I've decided what service to be on, what's the best way of getting a good value Blackberry? Ebay unlocked model? Walk into a shop (e.g. Vodaphone shop if you tell me Vodaphone is the best deal.)

4. Am I asking the right questions?

TIA

Darksun

If you can stand the small screen and numeric keypad, you can get email on your phone, provided it has wap/gprs. If you have a POP/SMTP account (usually your ISP will give you one of these), you can access it by going to pop.mail2web.com on your mobile and filling in the details (you'll need to know the address of your mail servers).

Usually however, wap costs a few pence a minute, and if you're writing emails it can take a while if you're not fast at entering text on a mobile.

tryingtosave_3

jobbingmusician wrote:

1. Do I really want a Blackberry, or are there other identical(ish), cheaper things I could use which might run on OneTel?

As mentioned above, a lot of mobile phones have some email capability, but it can be frustrating due to the keyboard / screen size.

Also keep in mind most mobiles won't act like a Blackberry. Blackberrys actually get the email "pushed" out to them - usually from an office email server. Anything using POP (which is normal for home email) will need to connect to the server and get the email, i.e. once an hour it'll connect and find out if there are new messages. Whilst you could get a very similar service with POP, i.e. through checking (automatically) every 2 minutes or something, it'll just cost more – you pay something even if there are no messages.

There are other devices that use the "push" system, but they typically will also need a dedicated server or specialist system as well. Other systems, i.e. pdas etc. are also like to cost about the same, so if you like the Blackberry concept, might as well stick with it.


2. If I do want a Blackberry, what service should I be on (remember I am not using it as a mobile, just for emails). How much will this cost me per month?

3. Once I've decided what service to be on, what's the best way of getting a good value Blackberry? Ebay unlocked model? Walk into a shop (e.g. Vodaphone shop if you tell me Vodaphone is the best deal.)

I don't know enough about buying them to offer any advice. I would personally try a few of the well known high street shops and find out more / prices and compare. Try and estimate your usage (i.e. How many emails) and price that on the various plans. Some will offer a “all you can eat” deal (unlimited) but unless you're surfing the net as well, that might be too much (remember, emails without attachments are usually quite small in KB terms).

I wouldn't recommend buying an unlocked model on Ebay because part of the magic of Blackberry is in the backend systems, so until you're sure about them ... if you have a friendly neighbour techie they might be able to help.


4. Am I asking the right questions?

TIA

You really need to make sure that the shops you speak to can explain how the email would work without a corporate system backing you up. I really don't nkow myself. I don't know how you get email at the moment, but this might be important for the blackberry service - or indeed, you might have to change email addresses to use their service (I have no idea how they operate for "the public").

Hope this is a little useful - I've thought about it myself in the past but always have concluded that it works great with a whole IT department helping you out, but won't be the same at home on POP ...

Good luck!

(PS. Consider a PDA ... Dell so some nice ones which do lots of things, plus you can also check your email using Wifi ...)

gizmoleeds

Bearing in mind this is a money saving website,

jobbingmusician_(Thread_Title) wrote:

Do I need a Blackberry?

If you're not sure whether you need one or not, then you don't.

jobbingmusician

Hmmm, yes, thanks Gizmo - I suppose what I really mean is 'do I need a Blackberry or something else'

jobbingmusician

Tryingtosave - thank you for making this point. Yes, I am sure that my emails will be OK to float over to BB. But can you tell me more about wi-fi and how it is costed?

I did some research today as I unexpectedly had some time to kill. I can get a (free!) BB which will cost me £20 a month in rental for 6m on the 'always on' system, for up to 5meg downloads and I don't think I'll have to download many attachments - will this be enough to download 30-40 regular emails a day? (It costs £1 per meg after this) Then after 6m I can transfer to another rental system which is £15 per month. Damn - I forgot to ask what the minimum rental period is!

Good deal????

tryingtosave_3

It sounds like a good deal, although I've got no basis for comparison (for a mobile - even a high end one - it would "be easily beatable"!). 5 mbs is a lot, but then email files are quite small (having a look, without attachments they seem to range from 2-25kb).

Try posting in this deal in the mobiles forum with a link / details of the deal and see if people can "beat" it or not? Good luck!

Re. WiFi there are a lot of different pricing models, and of course the coverage is confined to hotspots, i.e. in cafes or pubs. I think you can get an unlimited deal for around 25-30 per months. It would be many more MBs but only with one provider in their hotspots!