Another thing. RIM is fighting a patent infringement lawsuit currently (filed by a company called NTP) that might force RIM to shut down Blackberry service in the US or pay a billion dollars in damages. However, about 50,000-200,000 US government employees use Blackberry devices as part of their jobs, so the Feds are trying to ensure that their devices will be usable whatever happens with the lawsuit.
There’s apparently already a technical workaround of some sort.
I was planning on picking up that new “batberry” 8700 when my Sprint contract runs out in Feb.
I’ll defend myself in this thread at that time. 
Oh, so your a firefighter? That puts out fires through e-mail. From your Blackberry.
I’ll be honest, I don’t understand this obsession with constantly being accessible by e-mail. It rather sounds like hell to me. And I’m relatively confident that this constant e-mail banter surrounding modern offices and professionals doesn’t increase productivity, but hey, it’s your choice. The fact that it interupts others is kind of annoying.
You can take the boy out of Weokahatchee AL but…
When I read the OP I honestly thought “Why are you so worked up over blackberries? I like them, especially as a cobbler or in jam. True, rattlesnakes often nest in the bushes which makes them dangerous to pick but as long as you’re careful…”
Must now go flagellate. :smack:
It does give an indication of the quality of the radio, although not necessarily its price. Bose stuff has a high markup and a mediocre reputation.
The FM broadcast band is 88-108 MHz. Most Blackberry devices transmit in the neighborhood of 900 MHz. A decently designed FM broadcast receiver will have front-end filters that reject signals outside of the FM broadcast band, shielding to prevent external signals from sneaking in to the receiver’s circuits, and filters to prevent radio frequency signals from getting into the audio amplifier and speaker via the speaker wires or AC cord. This isn’t rocket science, but it adds a few dollars to the cost of the radio. Most manufacturers would rather cut costs and keep that money for themselves.
The average user blames those “assholes with their RF transmitters” rather than the shoddy engineering of their own equipment. This is extremely frustrating for anyone who has invested time and money in designing and building high-quality transmitter hardware.
The founders are graduates from my alma matter, University of Waterloo. While they were students they used to talk about what they would do if they ever struck it rich. One of their ideas was to start a theoretical physics institute. They kept good on their promise and the result is the Perimeter Institute. The place is absolutely awesome, stocked full of some of the top brains from around the world (such as a poached Lee Smolin from Princeton). They are gunning for some big prizes at this place and it has really captured the imagination of the city you see advertisements all over the place for things like the “Einstein fest”.
So to all of you: C’mon, try the crackberry, the first email is free! You know you want to!
Jesus, I’m glad I don’t have a job that would make a Blackberry seem useful. I don’t want to be doing my job whilst commuting, or worse yet at home. I want to leave the fucking job behind when I walk out of the office.
(Okay, right now I’m unemployed and temporarily disabled, but if I had a job. . .)
You’ve never heard the term “putting out fires” regarding solving problems at work?
Anyway, I don’t know that it’s so much an “obsession” as a convenience. If you do work on the way in to work, while not having to drive, that is LESS stuff you have to do at work and you get to go home EARLIER.
And/or, you handle problems before you get there, and don’t have to walk in to work into some frantic mess. I don’t have one, but one of my coworkers does, and it is awesome to be able to get answers from him when he’s say in London on vacation or something.
It was especially nice since at the time, I was new to the job and had 500 questions a day (okay, maybe three). It saved him from having to come back to a stalled project. With a few taps of his stylus he was able to set me straight within a few hours of me emailing him, keeping the project ahead of schedule and saving him from having to come back to a frustrated newbie and not as much done.
Since he wasn’t always somewhere where he could call right back, the email thing was great.
Me too Mangetout, although I’d gone a bit further and figured there was a subset of kids who, for some newfangled medical condition, needed blackberries to overcome their behavioural symptoms. Y’know, like ritalin and ADD and stuff?
Blackberries are feral here in Australia…but they don’t ripen until late Jan/Feb in my part of the country. Too fucken bad for the kids that needed them NOW was my initial response. 
But anyway, despite this thread, I still don’t know what a Blackberry is. All the jargon and abbreviations here are making my head hurt. I too must be getting old. Damn-well near death I reckon
Oh, really, because I was under the impression that Urban Chic was literally a firefighter that actually put out fires through electronic communication. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much, Canvas, for popping in with your extensive knowledge of idiomatic language and a nice healthy side of, “whoosh.”
At any rate, to each his own, and people are welcome to pay for these things if they really feel it’s necessary, but from the cell-phone conversations I overhear and e-mails which get tossed around because they’re free and so easy to send, I have to guess that a full 75% of these communications are totally useless. If your boss really wants to answer e-mails on vacation, whatever, but perhaps a more elegant solution lies in sending fewer e-mails.
Perhaps this is built up resentment on my part against all the dumbasses that feel compelled to send me a constant stream of, “FYI’s,” and, “e-mail me back ASAP to tell me what color you think Shelly’s card should be!” e-mails.
Goodness girl, you’re either up too late, or you need to switch to decaf. It’s not unheard of for someone to not know a saying or two, especially on a board where there are a lot of people from different countries. I certainly was NOT implying that you had no knowledge of english or whatever., It was a straightforward honest question.
Why are you chopping MY head off? Take a midol and stop reading evil intent from people’s posts.
You made a statement to the effect that you “didn’t get it” and that it sounded like “hell” to you. I merely, and quite reasonably, offered another viewpoint. The guy with the blackberry isn’t my boss, just the former task manager for that particular project. And I was quite grateful that he was willing to take a few minutes from time to time to help me on the project.
I’ve personally never found emails to be useless. Particularly being so far from the lower 48. I talk to our vendors and subs on them all of the time. It took me about 10 minutes to send out RFQs to six potential subs. We need to have the RFQs finished and back by the end of the month. Had I mailed them, it would have taken two or three days (yes in town, lovely post office), and a good half a day delivering them by hand (not to mention keeping me from other stuff).
Our lab is in the lower 48 as well, I can easily send questions and then go ahead and go out on the job and come back later to the answer, rather than phoning and phoning. People answer emails a lot more concisely and quickly than they do voice mail, at least from my experience and in my industry.
I haven’t ever had that many dealings with that sort. Most folks whom I email and receive emails from are specifically addressing one or more issues.
It’s nice to get a bulleted list of items rather than a garbled voice mail. And to be able to deal with it all from your computer, especially since at least one item is probably asking for a report, or update of some sort.
And again, I wasn’t arguing against your opinion, you were wondering, at least in your post you seemed to, I merely and reasonably answered.
On second thought. It would have been so much better had you not known that it was a saying.
Then one could at least give you the beneift of the doubt, as it is, what the hell is wrong with you that you come in swinging at Urban Chic for no reason other than that you don’t like her choce of electronics.
That’s not a whoosh, that’s just pure assholery for assholery’s sake. What is your problem? She didn’t say anything at all that warranted that kind of response on your part. Sheesh if that’s how you act toward those who haven’t even addressed you, or who respond reasonably to you, heaven help those who do make an error in your exalted presence.
Forget the midol, forget the decaf…do yourself a favor and have a bottle o valium with a Tequila chaser.
There is a certain type of person who will use a device such as a blackberry or a cell phone to absurd lengths, acting as though being out of electronic contact with the rest of the world for any period of time (for example, long enough to go to the bathroom) is some kind of terrible hardship. These people are annoying.
There is another type of person who assumes that anyone else who uses one of these devices must be one of the communication-obsessed people of the aforementioned type. These people are idiots.
First off, not a girl. Second off, loosen up babe, it’s the Pit. I didn’t even call you a flaming fucktard, hamster felcher, or anything. I thanked you for your rather obvious comment. I didn’t take any swings at Urban Chic, I was using her metaphor to point out that, well, she isn’t a firefighter and her ability to access e-mail is likely not overly time sensitive. If she really wants a Blackberry, she’s welcome to her Blackberry, but I get the distinct impression from my own interaction with similar devices is that people don’t tend to use them that effectively.
Good for you. I’m glad you aren’t one of those annoying people, and like I’ve said in every post so far, it’s your decision, so I’m glad you’re happy with it.
galt, I think that the former far outnumber the latter, but for people that really do get some benefit out of them, well good for them.
Hint: the latter are often characterized by making statements such as “[urbanchic’s] ability to access e-mail is likely not overly time sensitive” which are based on nothing but their bias.
Oh, well there you have it folks. I’m biased against Blackberries and their owners. I walk to the other side of the street, give them dirty looks, and I roll my eyes at them. What does this make me, a Berryphobe?
Ok, then, what did you base your statement on?
Again, my typical interctions with people via e-mail, the cell-phone conversations that I hear on a daily basis (even those that are, “work related”), and when people tell me what they’re e-mailing about with their Blackberrys don’t leave me impressed. I don’t know UrbanChic, I can’t tell you what her profession is, I’m not in a position to judge her specifically, so I’ve always left the door open that they were appropriate for any individual person.
Congratulations, you’re a real critical thinker. You’ve managed to conclude that since you (and possibly nobody you know) don’t use email for anything important, most others don’t either.
but regardless, you’ve decided that it’s “unlikely” that her email could be time-sensitive enough that reading it on the bus on the way to work is a good idea. Bizarre.
Personally, I get a tremendous benefit out of reading through my inbox before I get to work, whether there’s anything “time-sensitive” in there or not. I weed out the junk before I get there, so I just have important things to focus on. If some issue comes up that I need to ask someone about, I can send the question ahead of time, and the answer will often be waiting for me when I get to work, rather than having to send the question then and wait 30 minutes for an answer. It’s not about urgency, it’s about using some otherwise dead time for a useful purpose to decrease the amount of stuff I have to do later. Unfortunately, I usually drive to work, so I don’t do this as often as I’d like, but when I do, it helps. Even if you sneer at me on the bus while I do it.