[sleepngbear]

Say what you want about the PlayBook and its supposed shortcomings. From about 12 noon last Sunday until 9:30 this morning (Saturday), I've been without electricity, thanks to that miserable b!tch Irene. Being that I live in a rural area of RI, that meant no water and no conventional communications in addition to all the rest of the amenities we've all come to take for granted. At one point, 344,000 of about 480,000 RI utility customers were without power.

For six days, with no juice and no internet, every hour spent at home had only one means of obtaining information: my BlackBerry and my PlayBook. And when I wasn't bridging, I was enjoying a few games on the PB. The last micro-USB car charger at the local Target I managed to grab just after the storm ended enabled me to keep both charged enough in between full recharges at work. Through all this, both devices performed flawlessly, while the rest of the house was basically a big dead empty box. My BBs were there when I needed them. Maybe they didn't exactly save my life, but they sure did help preserve what precious little was already remaining of my sanity.

[kill_9]

Glad to hear you survived Hurricane Irene and once again BlackBerry products prove that in a real crisis they just work. Well except when a "software problem" knocks out the entire wireless carrier network leaving a lonely SOS indicator on the smartphone. Bad, bad Rogers Wireless (in Canada).

[joshua_sx1]

Not really want to start anything, but I've read almost the same story from another forum... the only difference is, he is only using one device to keep him inform from the rest of the world including communication to his family not affected by the hurricane...

Well, I guess that should "technology" do for us...

[jvictor77]

Glad to hear you survived Hurricane Irene and once again BlackBerry products prove that in a real crisis they just work. Well except when a "software problem" knocks out the entire wireless carrier network leaving a lonely SOS indicator on the smartphone. Bad, bad Rogers Wireless (in Canada).

When and where did this happen?

[kyopo]

I had almost the exact same situation except for a shorter time. Irene knocked our power out on Saturday night/Sunday morning and it was out for about 2 and a half days. Internet was out for a week. We also had no transportation - roads were blocked by downed trees and rail lines were out. I had a 9930 with 2 fully charged batteries bridged to my PlayBook. Other than my 4 D-cell maglite flashlight, they were the only things I had working. (I have a 4G LTE hotspot too but it was too flaky to rely on and burned through batteries too quickly) They kept me informed about storm conditions, recovery progress and allowed me to communicate with everyone including the utilities. Even after we got power, they were my only connections to the internet for the remainder of the week.