Sorry, but the Blackberry's treatment of this is indefensible
I realize this forum is old, but I'm new to BB and just found it after what turns out to be the standard frustration of new users. I've read lots of stuff here. I appreciate the explanation of how the BB works and why it gives you the choice of screwing up your calendar or your time display when you travel. But I don't appreciate the repeated suggestion that folks who have this problem are bringing it on themselves by entering the "wrong" time for their appointments.
The reason new users have such a problem with this is that all of them have the completely reasonable and normal assumption that you want your calendar to show the time of an appointment in the local time at which it will take place rather than time of the place you happen to be at two months before or after it took place. If I have an appointment in New York at 5, I really don't care that it will be 2 in California where I was before I left for NY. The airlines, and apps like Worldmate, also make this reasonable assumption. So, when the airline tells you that your flight home from NY leaves at 5, everyone--everyone--understands they mean 5 pm NY time. It does not occur to anyone but the programmers at BB that before you leave California, you ought to enter the time for your 5 pm return from NY as 2 pm because that's the time it will be in California when you take off.
Some people who have responded have focused on the need of folks who are making telephone appointments to have some single time reference that will be good in all their locales. This is, of course, not a problem for each individual person, who will enter the appointment for the time it is where they are. And it's not a problem for the person setting up the appointment, who can specify a time zone--this call will be at noon eastern time, or whatever--and let every participant enter the appointment in their calendar at the appropriate time for them. An administrator who is entering the appointment in multiple folks' calendars may have a problem, but it's nuts to solve their problem by making the BB nonfunctional for the rest of us.
What I have learned from this forum is that there are some people out there who have lived with this idiotic system long enough they have come to think it is normal. On that count, weigh the reactions of newcomers more heavily. That's what user-friendly means. You shouldn't have to drink the BB Kool-Aid to appreciate it.
I do like my phone, actually, but not this feature. At a minimum, BB needs to offer people the option of decoupling the phone time from the time of the appointments in the calendar. I don't need BB (or Outlook) to try to change that for me as I move around, and it won't need changing if every appointment is entered in the local time at which it will take place.
Ok, got that off my chest.