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Excite reports on yesterday’s BlackBerry outage, which caused tremendous headaches lasting from yesterday and into today. As a fairly recent convert to the world of BlackBerry, I can attest to how bad it was.
I’m in St. Louis, speaking at the NACA conference. It’s a wonderful seminar but there’s no wi-fi access in the seminar room. Usually this isn’t a problem because I’ve got a Sprint wireless card for my laptop, allowing me to go online even in the absence of wi-fi.
Problem number two is that power sources are scarce in the conference room, so my laptop died in short order.
No problem, sayeth Fleischman. Hit the BlackBerry and all is well.
Well, not so much. No email from my trusty device for the entire afternoon. Completely shut off from the world, I was in a panic. Was something important going on? Did I miss a court notice, a message from a client, or a fax? Remember, all of my faxes and voicemail messages come to me by email so this was a HUGE deal for me.
I’m pleased to say that I’ve found a power source, my BlackBerry is humming along, and the world is a happy place again. But it makes me wonder whether as Research In Motion pushes further into the consumer market these glitches will become far more prevalent. And if so, what is the mobile professional to do?
FutureLawyer suggests that the Treo and a reliable ISP is the way to go; to that I respond that this problem could have occurred with any ISP and at any time. In addition, the Treo is unreliable and, in my experience, subject to crashing at random times. I spent many hours cursing my Treo as it refused to do what it was supposed to do.
My solution? Aside from carrying multiple smartphones and routing email to all of them at once, I don’t have a viable one. But what this issue does underscore is the need to always realize that the electronic universe is far from a perfect one, and not always fully functional.
Take a deep breath, shut off the phone/BlackBerry/laptop, and go on about your life for a few hours. A forced vacation isn’t always a bad thing.
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iPhone my good man. iPhone!!!!!!!!! It is like carrying my trusty MacBook in my pocket. I can access my email either on the AT&T Edge network. Which by the way, is faster than my Treo was. Or if wifi is available, I use its built in wifi ability. Not only that, with some of the great web based applications available, I can access my Mac Mini from anywhere and get into client files from anywhere. I can also check my Grandcentral voicemails with my iPhone. I can receive faxes too. And yes, I can read documents and edit them with ZOHO. So take that Treo users.