Digital Meanderings
Meanderings of a coder

The BlackBerry Pearl has just been released for Verizon Wireless. I know I’m not alone when I exclaim “Hooooray!” I received my phone on 11/7, after five days of using and playing with the phone I feel competent enough to write a review.

First, let me give you a background on where I’m coming from. I’m a Mac user since March 2007 and I’ve been a Palm user since 1999. As far as Palm’s go I’ve had the Handspring Visor, Handspring Visor Edge, Palm m500, the Palm m515 and the Palm Treo 650. This has been a long way of telling you that, in the past, I’ve been a heavy Palm OS user and this is my first BlackBerry.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Treo 650, let me give you a brief history. It’s a brick (-), its battery weighs more than my Pearl. It has a QWERTY keyboard (+). It has a touch screen (+). It has a large screen (+). It does email (+) but not very well (-).

Right out of the box the Pearl started to impress me. The size of it is simply amazing! It fits comfortably inside the palm of my hand and my thumb easily reaches the trackball. And, as I mentioned earlier, it weighs less than the battery of my old Treo 650.

The phone is also very stylish. The pictures I’ve seen on the internet do not give it justice. If you’re interested, go to the Verizon store and see it for yourself.

As far as the phone goes, I was a little apprehensive of even ordering it. The lack of a touch screen and a QWERTY keyboard really worried me.

On my Treo I could type amazingly fast, my fingers flew over the keyboard like a pianist’s fingers do over piano keys. On the other hand, the Pearl does not have a QWERTY keyboard. Instead it has two letters per key. In order to make typing easier the phone uses something called SureType. In short SureType is a Predicitive Text application that guesses the word you are typing based on the keys pressed.

In the past I’ve used T9 (another predictive text application) and quickly turned it off in favor of tapping each key in order to get the letter I wanted. So far I haven’t turned off SureType as it works rather well. One of the first things I did was type up an email with some of the words that most people don’t use - a co-worker’s last name, “Java,” “Lodgenet,” and some other things. It was able to guess all of them. But I found one problem - me. I worked against the application. In order for SureType to guess what you want, you have to type. I would type three letters, see that it was being displayed wrong so I would try to fix it. Instead, keep typing. Most of the time it will guess what you’re looking for.

If you’re a Mac user, beware of software installation. In the Palm world you would download a PRC file and tell the HotSync Manager to install it next time the Palm was synced. In Windows land this paradigm applies with BlackBerry as well. Unfortunately for us Mac OS users this simply isn’t possible - neither PocketMac nor Missing Sync support it. This is a major buzzkill for me. Thankfully OTA installations work but this is a major hassle.

As far as other Mac-centric things - I can’t find anything wrong. The Pearl integrates well with iCal, Address, etc.

BlackBerry has long been known as an email device. The Pearl is no different, it falls in-line with all of the other crackberries that have been released.

In order to get my email up and running, all I had to do was login into BlackBerry’s Verizon-Branded website, give them some information regarding my accounts and off it went. Within five minutes personal and consulting email (both hosted by Google) was being pushed to my phone. I didn’t have to enter in any technical information - just my username and password.

All in all the Pearl has been a rock solid device. I love using it, I love carrying it and I have love/hate relationship with instant access to my email.

Do you love or hate my post? Are you thinking about the Pearl and have questions? Do you have the Pearl and need to vent? Would you like to tell others how much you like your Pearl? Leave a comment!

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The BlackBerry Pearl 8130 is available from Verizon Wireless for $199 after two-year contract and on-line discount.

It has been a long ride but here we are smack dab in the middle of “iPhone Week” and I couldn’t be happier. No, I’m not happy because the iPhone will finally be available for purchase, I’m happy because it means an end to all the annoying stories.

At first I was very intrigued with the iPhone. I would eat up all of the hype and all of the rumors. After over six months of this I am ready for an end. It seems that all of the Apple related blogs I read cover the iPhone more than anything else. On the front page of Mac Rumors there are eight different iPhone stories. On Arstechnica’s Infinite Loop there are thirteen different posts. Technorati is reporting over 300k iPhone posts! Even my favorite podcasts are filled with iPhone news. The utterance of the word “iPhone” makes me want to puke blood.

Thankfully I’m not the only one who feels this way. Do a search for “Sick of the iPhone” and look at the number of results that are displayed.

There’s a great articled titled “Anyone else sick of the iPhone?” on Shallow Thoughts that discusses how Apple seems to be losing focus. Even the Fake Steve Jobs hates all of the iPhone news!

Sure, the iPhone is going to be a huge hit. Yes, it looks like a wonderful phone. Yes, I would purchase one if ATT has service in Sioux Falls. But all of the hype is getting to me.

In the end, I’d love to have an iPhone or even just drool over one for awhile. But for now, I wish every one would just shut the hell up.

I recently made the switch from Windows to Mac OS. I’ve really been enjoying my new Mac unfortunately it seems that companies who make financial software haven’t realized that they are missing a huge market.

Before I switched I used MS Money to manage my personal finances and Quickbooks Simple Start to manage my business finances. Unfortunately both of these arenas have poor counterparts in the Mac world. Below are some quick reviews of some of the software I’ve found and evaluated.

Business Accounting

• Connected

  This is my least favorite of all. The UI is lackluster to say the least and none of the reports can be user modified.

  The UI looks like it was designed by Software Developers or by someone with no idea about UI design. The menu is filled with acronyms and instead of drop-down menus the user must click different buttons to bring up the menus they need.

  The reports included in the application are sufficient but they can not be customized. They seem to be designed for people that sell actual items, and not services. In itself this is fine, but the other programs I used allowed me to modify the reports to fit my needs and the needs of my customers.

• MYOB FirstEdge

  This has been my favorite application to play with. The UI is superb, the application is extremely easy to figure out and the reports are customizable.

  MYOB definitely spent some time designing the UI. The application is easy to navigate which makes it easy to learn even for us non-accountants.

  Although the reports are customizable the tool for modifying the reports could use some work. Resizing boxes and fields is difficult because you must click in exactly the right spot inside the “resize” icon or else you’ll move the whole box or field.

  It also seems that snap-to-grid is always on when using the arrow keys and I couldn’t find a way to disable it. Snap-to-Grid is a great feature for lining things up, but in some instances I needed greater flexibility and the mouse (the only way to move an object without Snap-to-grid) wasn’t accurate enough.

  There are two features I wish this had. One of them is the ability to group transactions with the same account number. I do consulting work and, as per the clients wishes, I charge to certain account numbers depending on the work I perform. It would be nice to see these transactions grouped together so both of us can see how much is being charged to each account number.

  The other feature is one that would allow me to track Sales Tax without charging it to the customer. The hourly rate I charge includes all taxes so I can’t charge it to the customer, but I would to print a report at tax time that shows me what I owe to each agency.

Personal Accounting

• Liquid Ledger

  Another great piece of software I just didn’t find it worth the price considering I already own Money and Parallels.

  Unfortunately the application is missing two things that are important to me - a Palm application and the ability to automatically sync with my bank account.

• iBank

  This is my favorite out of the personal finance software I tested. The UI is slick, and importing from MS Money was a breeze once I formatted the date correctly.

  Just like Liquid Ledger, it is missing a Palm application and the ability to automatically sync with my bank.

• Money Dance

  Another great personal finance application. It has a slick UI and is pretty easy to use. Unfortunately it has the same flaw as the other two - lack of Palm support and limited ability to sync with my Palm PDA.

For now it looks like I’ll be sticking with doing every financial using Windows running on Parallels. I was really hoping to switch everything to Mac OS unfortunately that seems impossible given my requirements. If anyone has a suggestion, please email me or post a comment!

I’m slowly becoming an Apple Fan Boy (yea I know, I’m disgusted by it too) but their hardware is just so sexy. If they someday come out with a video game system I’d be very tempted to get it - as long as they also have the games to support it.

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