Exchanging Berries
Busy as a bzz bee. These last few weeks have been so busy. At work I have been dealing with annual budget requests, preparation for my presentation at the board of directors meeting, and then this past week and a half I worked with Adam to set the office up to use our new outsourced MS Exchange 2000 with BlackBerry Enterprise server solution. Fortunately, one can connect to Exchange 2000 via IMAP so we avoided alienating Outlook Express users.
The nicest thing about this little project was configuring the BlackBerrys. I have worked before with Exchange servers but this was my first time dealing with BlackBerrys. After researching all of the different options available I discovered that T-Mobile offers the best prices on both monthly unlimited data plans and on the devices themselves. The real perk comes in the devices themselves.
A brief history of T-Mobile: Deutsche Telekom grows weary of dominating the European market and yearns for the buckets of money to be made by unveiling a GSM network in the states. Instead of starting from scratch, they buy VoiceStream and absorb a decent size customer base in major urban markets. VoiceStream passes to the netherworld and T-Mobile is born.
As with any cross-border merger the different relationships of the two pre-existing companies must be reconciled and problems are inevitable. This returns me to my search for BlackBerry devices. Anyone who has seen these little things knows that they are, like old school Palms, black on green devices. Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and Cingular all offer the same lineup of devices with slight difference. A BlackBerry is a little screen with a little keyboard that connects to an e-mail server over a cell phone network. Some are also phones and all require a good digital network. This is way cool for people who need an always on connection to an enterprise grade e-mail server. With BlackBerry Enterprise Server 3.6 users have access to the Global Address book and calendaring. For our solution this will allow Barry to view, edit, and confirm changes made to his calendar by his assistant with only a four minute delay. This is, simply put, way cool.
The problem with this system is that a black on green device is hard to read. When I switched from a Handspring Visor (now discontinued) to an iPaq Pocket PC a big advantage was that black text (actually very dark blue) on a white background is very easy to read. Surfing for BlackBerry devices online brought me to the T-Mobile web site where I discovered the BlackBerry 7230 for sale. This device is small, light, and color! Perfect.
Not so perfect it turned out. If you visit T-Mobile today you will notice that the Handhelds and PDAs page does not list the 7230. The BlackBerry website only acknowledges its existence in a June 2, 2003 Press Release stating that "RIM Introduces Color and Tri-Band Features to New BlackBerry Wireless Handhelds in Germany and Austria" to be rolled out in those countries by T-Mobile International. Somehow this device popped up on the T-Mobile USA web site the day I visited and then vanished forever.
A few hours on hold and arguing with Customer Service later I finally talked to a Corporate Accounts rep who acknowledged the existence of the 7230 and agreed to sell three of them to AU. Persistence pays off. Our legislative department and Barry now have the latest color tri-band GPRS BlackBerry available anywhere in the world. It was something of a headache to get them configured but once they work these devices are perfect.
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Who is this guy?
Hmm, expensive new tech toys for a small staff. And Adam was involved in this project? Shocking!