Blackberrys

[j bizzle]

I was looking at buying my wife the blackberry 7105 t for Christmas. Im only 22 and money is tight. My question is, if I buy her just the blackberry would she be able to send and recieve e-mails on her yahoo account without having to buy or pay extra a month for another service? Does that make sense? Just buy the blackberry set it up and be good to go? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[Kristiano]

Blackberry is in the middle of a lawsuit with NTP over a patent. They could very well shut down soon...

[j bizzle]

Originally posted by Kristiano
Blackberry is in the middle of a lawsuit with NTP over a patent. They could very well shut down soon...

ok thanks for the info. but back to the e-mail question. do i have to buy a service from BB to use e-mail or can i just link up her yahoo e-mail address to the device and be good to go?

[iPoD15]

First of all, my dad has an iPod (he is 60) and he loves it. He sits at the dinner table on vacation reading/writing emails. Its annoying but i highly reccommend it. Second of all, that lawsuit wont shut down the whole blackberry system. They'll settle or it will go on forever. Third of all, I am almost 100% sure you will need to buy a plan for data. Or else you will have to spend money on each email sent.... btw cingular sells refurbished blackberrys for like $70 on cingular.com so you could buy her that and save money on the phone and use that for a plan if you need to. Good Luck

[mjmoonwalker]

Godd**n! Those things can get very annoying. My dad has one and he uses it all the time! I swear those things are way addicting...even more than my beloved iPod.

[Kristiano]

Originally posted by iPoD15
First of all, my dad has an iPod (he is 60) and he loves it. He sits at the dinner table on vacation reading/writing emails. Its annoying but i highly reccommend it. Second of all, that lawsuit wont shut down the whole blackberry system. They'll settle or it will go on forever. Third of all, I am almost 100% sure you will need to buy a plan for data. Or else you will have to spend money on each email sent.... btw cingular sells refurbished blackberrys for like $70 on cingular.com so you could buy her that and save money on the phone and use that for a plan if you need to. Good Luck

So you can tell the future now?

To be completely honest though, this is pretty much a precedent setting case so we won't really know. The good news is that the UPTO has called RTM to offer its support according to this. So it depends I suppose.

[Shadowpod]

There is very little chance of the service going down. It is not in the best interest of either party. NTB has a vested interest in keeping it up because they can keep upping the ante. RIM, well they just want to keep making money. In addition, the US government will probably come in to keep it running if the judge says take it down.

Not saying I can predict the future but with as many government employees both civilian and military, as well as elected officials relying on their blackberrys I cannot see this service going down. But hey there is a chance of winning the lotto so it just may.

To respond to the original question, you have to go through one of the cellulars to get a data package. T-Mobile charges about $20.00/month, I believe.

[mrdantownsend]

grrr... i despise the blackberry.

only because 'important' business people that you see at airports and office buildings and such think they're important because they have one.

not all people are like that, but all the ones I see are.

[papayaninja]

Not to make this a hardware war or whatever, but um.... *cough*TREO*cough*. Excuse me, I have a cold... But you will need to buy a data plan from the service provider, or charge per email. Which of those is a better deal depends on how much she will be sending emails etc...

[Macromedia]

I found blackberrys to be rather useless but thats just me......

[Bob]

I just got a SidekickII - neato....

[Emultion_Rawks]

Originally posted by MadPict
I just got a SidekickII - neato....

They're very snazy Bob. I do hope you got the pink one...?

[Jesse Hollington]

Firstly, the answer the original question, you will need at least some kind of a data plan. You would have to check with your specific carrier to see what costs that adds. With many carriers, their "Blackberry plans" are also distinct from their data plans. The short answer is to expect an additional monthly cell phone bill cost of anywhere from around $20-60 depending on what carrier you're with and how much you plan to use it.

I support a number of clients who are using Blackberries, and have used one myself, in addition to a number of other devices such as Palm devices and Windows Mobile devices. The important thing to keep in mind about the Blackberry is that it's mail capabilities are more limited than you might expect unless you're actually using it with a corporate system (ie, Microsoft Exchange or somesuch, with a Blackberry Enterprise Server). Connected to a back-end corporate mail server in this way gives you extremely powerful capabilities, including full two-way e-mail synchronization as well as address book, calendar, and tasks (which is why so many corporate people rave about the Blackberry).

However, if you're not a corporate user, the Blackberry itself does not connect to your mail account directly, but rather you get provided with your own mailbox (usually yourname@carrier.blackberry.net), and what you basically have to do is to either forward your Yahoo mail to it, or setup their "web connect" service to pull mail from your Yahoo mailbox into your Blackberry mailbox using POP or IMAP. Further, if you're pulling mail from your Yahoo account, you will not get return synchronization using a Blackberry.... Meaning items that you read and delete on your Blackberry will not be synchronized back to your live mailbox (meaning you'll have to deal with them manually).

To be fair, this probably sounds more complicated than it is, but it's important to note that there's nothing particularly special about the Blackberry's e-mail service unless you're connected to a corporate e-mail system with a Blackberry Enterprise Server.

For somebody's personal use, you may want to also consider a Sidekick (ie, what Bob just bought), or even something like a Palm Treo 650 or Windows Mobile Smartphone (depending on what you're trying to do). The functionality from an e-mail point of view will be virtually the same, depending on how you set it up, but some of these other devices may offer more features for you, both in terms of e-mail and other third-party applications.

If your wife is not an overly technical person and just wants to get e-mail on the go, then the Sidekick wouldn't be a bad choice at all (or the Blackberry, subject to the limitations mentioned above). I would stay away from Palm or PocketPC devices if she's not overly technical. If reading e-mail is all she wants to do, and she isn't particularly interested in replying to it, then I would even suggest looking at something simpler.... Even the Motorola RAZR can check your Yahoo account and show you your new messages.

I used a Blackberry for about a year myself, and while I absolutely loved the simplicity of it and the always-on e-mail capabilities, I decided that running my own Exchange Server and BES to support it wasn't really justified, and I also found that there wasn't enough third party software for it. In the end, I somewhat reluctantly went back to a Treo 650, which still provides me with virtually the same push e-mail experience that I had with the Blackberry.

[j bizzle]

Wow, thanks a lot. Great response. Thanks everybody else also.

[j bizzle]

Quick question regarding the e-mail address that blackberry gives you? Actually two questions. #1- Where would you set that address up at? Like in the store or could she do it online and #2- if she was to actually use that address would they just charge her for per e-mail used to that address or how does that work?