Pretty freakin sad that every application you need on a BB is not available without purchasing extra software.
I bought the 8830 as a PDA phone and half the abilities are crippled.
This is true. I got ripped by others when I told them that I felt like the Blackberry was pathetic in comparison to my Treo. The fact is that it only has a few advantages right now and, if they work for you, then it's great. Blackberry's apps are woefully pathetic as a whole with the exception of JiveTalk (best IM, period), straight email (editing replies is a nightmare) and the fact that it usually is more stable than the Treo. But ever since upgrading my 8830 to 4.3 as instructed by Verizon, I've experienced more crashes running media player to play mp3s than I ever did with my Treo. I've also always hated some of the things you just can't change on the BB (no snooze of different lengths for reminders, accidentally deleting emails thanks to push, a ridiculously awkward launcher, no doc handling at all other than basic video and pictures, etc.) But it is getting there.
I have mixed feelings with regard to the BB and am feeling a little more love for the Windows Mobile devices, despite their own stupidity in making those. I'm trying to remain patient with BB because, if you rely solely on email, it does handle it nicely in general and the battery life is pretty good. But little stuff like this can be frustrating with regard to PDFs. There is absolutely no excuse why this stuff isn't out and, perhaps it's more difficult than realized. It has taken dataviz numerous months and their Docs to Go still isn't out in 2008! Perhaps the BB OS needs some serious reworking.
Crazy as it seems, all this seems to open the door to Palm if its Linux OS (Access) is any good.
Hi, iamlukethethird, welcome to CrackBerry. It would be great if you shown your device and carrier in your info. That'll help us help you if you have questions later. For good general information, be sure to check out the Getting Started Guide and the BlackBerry 101 Lecture Series under the Newbies tab at the top of the page.
Documents to Go Premium edition allows you to read PDF files. I don't know if there is anything about an ebook that is different to an ordinary PDF. Here's a link to the app site: Documents To Go for BlackBerry Smartphones
I can't agree more with the comemnts about this horrible lack of vision by RIM. I just got a BB; main reason was that Virgin Mobile has a non-contract plan for only $35 a month with unlimited text, browser and 300 minutes of talk. Best phone they have is the Curve 8530. Because we'd rather retire early than have the best Smartphone, we opted for this. As an employee of the financial services industry, I figured BB was more geared for business users anyway.
Having said that, I do not normally use the phone for work (try very hard NOT to use the VPN or remote access or anything like that). However, virtually every document I have saved on my home PC that's worth anything is a PDF. How on God's earth can RIM NOT have a PDF reader? Sending an email to yourself? Are they totally friggin kidding? And NOT BEING ABLE TO SAVE AND REFER TO PDF's ???? What moron neglected this? PDF has been the accepted standard for most documents, business and otherwise for over a decade. EVERY business user would need to be able to store and retrieve a PDF. Even the LG Rumor Touch had an awesome PDF reader (we tried that phone also because it was offered by Virgin for only $25 a month).
Having flipped through the forums, I am absolutely appalled at this major flaw and will even consider ....shudder..... giving it back and paying AT&Greedy for an IPhone. There MST be others that share this sentiment. What can we do about this collectively?
If you have OS 4.5 or later on your 8830, you can use Documents to Go Premium. See my post just before yours. That's a solution. It's not free. I don't know a free reader.
