Friday, July 11th, 2008
I think I mentioned in my last post that I wanted to get broadband for my laptop while we are out and about or on vacation.
Basically, I had two choices…either I get the wireless card to connect to the wireless broadband network or use my new Blackberry to do it. Both options give me broadband access on my laptop, but the wireless card route would have required a two year contract, plus the purchase of the card. Also, the access charge was like $59.99 per month or something like that.
I decided to go with the VZAccess software that came with the Blackberry. I called Verizon Wireless support and had them turn on the broadband feature. It is $15 per month with no contract in addition to my existing one. Since it is a feature, I am able to turn it on and off as I please. The guy was like, “Ok, give it 15 minutes and you should be good to go.” That’s it. I installed the software, plugged the phone in and hit connect. It works great.
Both plans are limited to 5Gb per month. I think that should be ok for sitting on the patio of the Spring House on Block Island. I suppose I could occasionally look over to see the waves in the ocean.
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Thursday, July 10th, 2008
Well, I decided to upgrade my old Treo 700w for a nice, new BlackBerry Curve 8330 Smartphone. I thought it was about time to jump on the email-on-your-pda bandwagon. We are planning some activities and vacations this Summer, so this will cover one base.
So, let me tell you about my experience.
I have many email addresses, all forwarding to one Gmail address. It makes life a bit more simple. When I got the phone, I went through the quick setup. After that, I went in and configured an email address. It was basically inputting the email address and password. After that, I logged into Gmail and clicked “settings.” I clicked “Fowarding and POP/IMAP.” There, I enabled POP.
Then, I sent myself an email. Low and behold, I received it in my Gmail account and my Blackberry. Truly, I thought this was amazing. Then, I clicked delete on the Blackberry. I had the option of deleting the message from just the phone or both the phone and the Gmail account. I deleted it from both the phone and the Gmail account. A few seconds later, I noticed it disappear from Gmail. Again, I was stunned.
After that, I did the whole thing again, except this time, I deleted the message from Gmail first. I waited and waited for the message to disappear from the Blackberry. After a little research on the web (and customer support), I found out this is not possible. The messages stay on the Blackberry until they are deleted from there. Why? I have no idea. This is going to be kind of a pain in the butt, but I’ll figure something out. I did a search for “blackberry curve won’t reconcile” and I think I read somewhere that if you are using the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (or something like that), you can reconcile your messages with your email client. Until I find some information, I don’t know how to reconcile the email on the Blackberry with Gmail, or Outlook for that matter.
The other issue I was having was that whenever I would send an email from the Blackberry or from Gmail, I would receive a copy of that email on the Blackberry. I needed to find out how to stop that. I called customer support and, while on hold, did a search for “blackberry getting copies of sent email” on Google. I found a nice website that instructed me to login to the Verizon Wireless Blackberry Internet Service (BIS). No one seems to tell you these things from the company. At this point, customer support picked up and we both created an account and created a filter for my email address. Basically, the filter stops my own email address from sending me email. This forum post will tell you exactly how to do that.
Otherwise, everything is very smooth. The Blackberry syncs up with my Outlook 2007 so I can have my tasks, contact list and calendar on both my PC and the Blackberry. This is not too much different from the Treo 700w.
I’ll let you know how it works on the streets when I have had it for a while.
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Saturday, November 10th, 2007
That’s the question.
I have Outlook 2002 installed on my computer and it’s time to upgrade. I can get the newest version for $89 – $129, but I would like to use something else if available. Oh, there’s one thing…I don’t use it for email. I use it to sync up my Verizon Wireless Treo 700. I use the contacts, tasks and calendar.
If anyone knows of anything, please let me know.
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