[r0k]

I'm a long time VZW Treo 650 user and am ready to move on.

I have been looking for 3 main things:

No camera
Bluetooth
Smartphone
*


On Verizon, this leaves me with the oldie moldie Palm offerings and the Blackberry 8830 world phone. Has anybody made this particular switch? Any advice? I've heard there are issues importing Palm stuff to Blackberry and I want to learn more before I make the "leap."

* I know. Email isn't on my list. I'm not known for buying a device purely for the intended market or simply because of the thing it does best. The push email sounds neat but might actually be a detriment if I really had all my email pushed. I'd probably reconfigure my BB account so only email from specific senders would make it to my phone. I simply don't need all those jokes from the guys at the office and their 5.6 meg wmv files crammed into my smartphone.

I usually hang out over at Brighthand, but I thought this question needed to be asked here.

[BigJB]

I made the switch from Treo to 8830 with no problems about 3 months ago. I never used Palm Desktop so syncing the new BB with my current Outlook was easy. I was concerned about the trackball, but after about an hour I was hooked. I really liked my Treo, and I must say the thing I miss most Doc's to Go, Dataviz is releasing the BB version 1st quarter 08. Good luck

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[BigJB]

I made the same switch with no problems. I did not use Palm Desktop, and resyncing w/Outlook was easy. I was like you, the email was not a big deal, but I use it more on the BB than the Treo. Good luck with the switch!

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[eShawpm]

I also switched over from Palms to BB with no problems. I synced with Outlook and everything went smoothly. I too miss docs2go but 1Q isn't too far away. It's almost as though BB is like Palm 10 years ago with vendors and activity. Time will tell in the end but the BB is doing it's thing these days.

- E

[r0k]

browser
What about that browser? I went to Circuit City last night to the VZW booth. I pulled up Brighthand.com on an 8830, a Pearl and a 700p. The 8830 was ready to go first but navigation was near impossible. There was no option to reformat the page so I could see it all and the overview was a joke. The 700p seemed slower but it was ultimately more readable.

I also tried google and the search field was OFF THE LEFT EDGE OF THE SCREEN ?!?. I typed hhhh hoping the focus would snap to the search bar. NO it did not. Instead, I got a google search for hhhh. Only after a frustrating 10 minutes did I finally get a google page with the search bar in the middle where I could see what I was typing. Was this a fluke or is this behavior common for the Blackberry browser?

calendar
There was no year view. How the heck to I get a year view? I depend on that feature a lot.

Posting from BB
BTW, I'm impressed that some of you are posting from your devices. My 650 is so slow I gave up on posting from the thing a long time ago.

[mcb]

I made the switch from a 650 to the 8830. I switched because the Treo locked up, or had some type of communication issue with every bluetooth head set I ever connected to it. The only reason I would switch would be that one. I like some of the functionalities of the BB but I still miss some of the things my Treo could do that the BB doesn't. Like real time sync with the exchange server, my BB doesn't do that but the Treo did. We're about to implement a BES so I am hoping that takes care of that. I still can't get over not having a touchscreen too. I don't care for the calendar views. I can handle the way the documents are viewed. I use the BB to screen emails (I also have a Sprint card with unlimited data for my laptop, and it goes everywhere I go) and really only view documents when I am very interested in the attachment. The 8830 isn't built as good as the Treo. It just doesn't feel like it will withstand what I put the Treo through. So I am always carefull with it. I had been using Palm Desktop since it first came out but it wasn't difficult at all to migrate over to Outlook. I may get blasted here for this but I think the Palm is ahead of RIM in a lot of areas. The Treo keyboard was easier to read and use. The touchscreen is a big issue to me. RIM has major software issues, but they do at least work on them. Palm never did address the BT problems. And friends of mine that still use Palm still have their problems with lockups. The 8830 does lock up every once in a while but not as often as the Treo did. You'll hear a lot of complaints here about the GPS not being enabled on VZW, or having to use VZ Navigator. I don't care, I didn't buy it for that. I have a GPS in my car.

If it were me, I think I would wait and see what VZW released next. Good luck.

[demoran]

Just swapped last week from a 650 to 8830. I didn't really dislike the 650 I was up for contract and net cost was about $99 after rebates.

I finally got my contacts over, had to use Outlook as the mediator between Palm Desktop and the BB.

One thing that was great is that I had Tom Tom on my 650 and the Palmone GPS works with the BB Maps .

The trackball takes some getting used to, I do kinda miss the touch screen a bit. But its not all bad.

The 650 would comm with my Exchange for work and keep my calendar in sync. Since I have to use OMA with the BB it doesn't do that. I am sure I can manually sync somehow. Just need to figure that out yet. I wish we'd use BES but all our IT use PocketPC's.....

All and all I guess I am neutral, the 650 had its advantages and the BB does too.

I hope I can figure out how to turn off email sync in the middle of the night. On the Palm I could schedule when it would and wouldn't sync. That way spam or weird email won't alert all night long.

[mcb]

I hope I can figure out how to turn off email sync in the middle of the night. On the Palm I could schedule when it would and wouldn't sync. That way spam or weird email won't alert all night long.

I set the sound to phone only at night to keep it from alerting all night.

r0K, That is something else I forgot to mention. The 650 would alert you to missed calls, etc., the 8830 does not. There is a great utility called BB Alert that you can configure to alert you to missed calls, emails, SMS text until you view them.

[r0k]

I set the sound to phone only at night to keep it from alerting all night.

r0K, That is something else I forgot to mention. The 650 would alert you to missed calls, etc., the 8830 does not. There is a great utility called BB Alert that you can configure to alert you to missed calls, emails, SMS text until you view them.

The alerts are kind of a pain, but I suppose I would miss them if somebody called about something important so I will have to look into BB Alert at some point.

That browser experience was very memorable and a real deterrent. Until I picked up the 8830 and the Pearl and tried the browser, my browser expectations were as good as blazer or better. To me the BB browser is a lot worse than blazer which is a real turn off.

I don't want my phone vibrating, lighting up, or making even the slightest noise on my nightstand. I would have to relegate the BB to a different room if it didn't behave itself at night.

I'm still sitting on the fence about this, but the BB 8830 is still in the lead as the most updated camera-free smartphone available to me right now. I'm not a world traveler so the world phone thing seems like a waste to me. Has anybody tried an att or tmo sim in the 8830? The problem is there are probably no places in North America where you can get GSM signal that the VZW signal isn't stronger but I thought I'd ask. If you could use an att or tmo sim, I could help justify this purchase based on the ability to switch a gsm carrier and keep my same phone. Kind of a thin excuse as the att and tmo phones are always a lot nicer than anything sprint or vzw sells.

[mcb]

Did you make decision yet? I thought of something else. The BB doesn't have the battery life the 650 had. I am on the phone all day and receive a lot of emails, though most of the time I wait to reply from my laptop. I don't surf the web much except my home page to see weather and stock activity. I charge it constantly throughout the day when I can so it will last for me. If you do decide to get one let us know. There are some tricks we can help you with in the beginning.

[dorafang]

ok. i've been running palm desktop for 10 years. tips on how to get the data cleanly over to my bb8830?

thx
D

[midlifez]

ok. i've been running palm desktop for 10 years. tips on how to get the data cleanly over to my bb8830?

thx
D

While the BB can sync with Outlook it does not do so as elegantly as Palm devices do with Outlook or the Palm Desktop. Palm is much more intelligent about it, whereas BB simply overwrites not synchronize. For example, if you change a contacts info on the BB and then sync it will, during the sync process, pop up a dialog box asking you to accept or reject the change. Of course you can set so these dialog boxes do not come up.

To answer your Q, as long as your Palm data is in Outlook you are fine, just follow the instructions when you install BB desktop manager.

[FF22]

I don't know if this was specifically answered: There is a setting where you can get the 8830 to turn-off/on at preset hours. Mine goes off a 11pm and on at 7am. You can override that by just pressing the ON button.

In the Browser, you can change the "view" and this gives you a mouse-like cursor and you can move about the page and actually click on a link and go there. Press the Options/Menu button (left of trackball) and pick either PageOverView or DesktopView.