No.
I have a device that I use for work, and with my Bold 9900 we had to use BES to get our corporate email (Bell Canada). With my Z10, it was as simple as putting my new SIM into the device, and setting up Exchange ActiveSync.
However (I haven't 100% confirmed this yet) BlackBerry Balance (BBB?) doesn't work unless yo use BES. I can't for the life of my figure out how to split the device into two work environments.
I have three of that exact drive in a box in the basement. The first two get used to rip, the other gets used to write.
Best drive I have ever owned, hands down.
I'd been using Debian and its various derivatives since Woody was the unstable distribution, and I had always been happy with it (so I thought)
Then, in April it was time to buy myself a new laptop, and I bought a 13" MacBook Pro on a whim, knowing that I could install Debian if I wanted to with no issues, but I figured I would try OSX out to see what the deal is.
5 months later, Debian has been relegated to running in a VM Ware Fusion instance that takes up 8GB of disk space, and gets booted once a month or so, and I am really wishing I had just bought a Mac back in '99 when I first started pissing around with Debian.
2 year, even if you own the hardware? Don't you have the option of just going month to month? I'm in Canada (land of the 3 year contract!), but I will gladly sign a person up month to month if they own hardware, or are willing to purchase it at retail price.
The credit check I totally understand, the carrier needs to know that you have a habit of paying the bill. That parts makes sense, and shouldn't be a problem.
No, I don't deny the short comings, I'm actually fairly objective on this, and very consistent.
It's not a perfect platform, it's a very, very far way from it, but it is FAR better than WinMo or WinCE ever were. It has a clean and consistent interface that I have personally found to be lacking from other platforms, and that is something that I like.
I love that the OS, honestly, just gets out of the way and lets me get to what I want quickly and efficiently.
I use my phone for very specific things, I don't load it down with a bunch of apps (regardless of what phone is in my pocket, this is true) and I use it as a tool to get a job done.
My Optimus Quantum is essentially a spare phone, that sits in the glove box of the girl friends car with a prepaid sim in it. She has a bad habit of leaving her phone at home, and wants to be able to call 911 in an emergency.
That was poorly said. I had used it device as a personal line for 3, maybe 4 months before I replaced it with my HD7. The features have been used, just not since I reset the data on it and gave it to her to use for her back up.
No, I have a couple of the older devices and they were complete abominations. It wasn't until 7 that I ever used it for more than a week with out giving up on it. Even 7 took me a good 6 months of playing with it in store to get my hands on a device, and drop Android for my personal device.
80% of his so called "facts" were simply made up and false, and the 20% of things that he was bitching about also happen to be present on every other phone I have ever used.
iPhone covers about 40% of Bell Canada's sales right now, it is hands down the most popular platform available, and in my particular store, it covers 28% of our sales mix.
Windows phone has never once cracked the 5% mark for our sales, and yes, in a LOT of ways, it has been an abysmal failure. I am the first to admit that.
I use it, because for what I need (again, need, not want. I don't care about wants, it's a work device after all. A tool to get the job done, no different than a hammer.) it's one of the easiest to use, most reliable, and elegant solutions I have found.
Sitting upstairs I have at least 30 Android handsets that have been "seeded" to me for testing purposes, as well as won in sales incentives and contests, more than a dozen BlackBerries, an iPhone 2, and an iPhone 4S. I can use literally any phone that I want, and I keep going back to my HD7, because despite it's short comings, it's simply the most enjoyable of them. I can just use it. I don't have to relearn how to use it every time I go back to it.
I'm a "reformed" Linux user, who has recently adopted OSX, I simply got tired of constant small issues with Linux that lead to what seemed like constant headaches. I left Linux (on my laptop mind you, everything else is still Debian) for the same reason that I left Microsoft in 2001. I wanted something better, and Apple seemed to fit that bill. If not, I can nuke the disk and install Linux, so it was a win all around.
At the end of the day, my demands for a mobile device, are pretty simple:
I want my email. That means Exchange, or BES. It also means gmail integration for my personal email.
I want web browsing for quick google searches
I want my social networking / media. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn
I want my RSS news reader
I want all day battery life, with heavy usage. That means 9-9, 12 hours. I get that with my HD7 and my BB9900. I have never once gotten that with an Android device, and have gotten it once or twice with an iPhone.
I don't care about a camera. I'll get one, because it's included, but it's not on my list of must have features.
GPS and Maps are handy. Bing sucks, I use a wrapper for google maps on my WP7 phone.
Call quality matters. I can spend up to 3 hours a day on the phone, on a bad day. An hour is more typical.
I'm probably the most "software agnostic" person you can meet. Give me a phone, a computer, a tablet, whatever, I will use it, and I will make the most out of it. I just want it to work. I love how good Android is getting, between it and iOS, 99% of most peoples needs are covered. That leaves BlackBerry over for the 1% that truly need BES (need, not want) and WP as a niche product.
WP is not perfect, far from it, but it's not nearly as bad as the GP made it out to me.
WP7 is FULL of short comings, I am the first to admit that, but the reality is it is a ver nice OS, and what it does do well, it does better than anything else I have ever used.
I can't wait to see how WP8 is. If it offers a continued improvement, I will gladly put one in my pocket. If not, I will go back to my iOS devices.
I just wasted 3 mod points, but this pisses me off...
For the record, I sell these things for a living, and have had a WP7 (now 7.5) phone in my pocket for nearly 24 months. It's not perfect, but I like it, a lot, and I really expected not to when I received my first device.
Er, would it make you feel any better if the summary said it costs 450 dollars to make people pay the upfront cost of $49 for a Nokia Lumia? The point still stands. Windows Phone 7 is a failure. People have been calling it since the beginning yet the fanboys kept saying wait 'til NoDo, wait 'til mango, wait 'til Nokia, wait 'til Lumia 900, blah blah blah. It failed. Accept it. And it failed for quite a few reasons. Here, I'll list them. All of them.
OS LIMITATIONS
1. No true multitasking for 3rd party apps - they re frozen in the background.
So what? It's a phone. I don't understand the desire to run 30 apps at once, one a phone.
2. No Divx/Xvid video codec support. Zune will convert with loss of quality.
I've never once watched a movie on my phone and expected amazing quality, it's a mobile device with a 4.3" screen, it's not going to be immersive no matter what the codec used is.
3. No mass storage mode.
Yep, same can be said about iPhone....
4. No micro-SD card support.
Yep, same can be said about iPhone...
5. Only support up to 16GB storage .
Yep, same can be said about iPhone (depending on the device chosen, it can also be said iPhone only supports 8GB...)
6. No filemanager. Directory system is totally opaque.
Yep, same can be said about iPhone (noticing a trend yet?)
7. Need Zune to transfer files. Zune will only transfer photos, videos & music. All other files need to email/upload to yourself.
Yep, sounds like iTunes...
8. Your contact details are automatically uploaded to cloud service whether you like it or not.
Wrong, this can be disabled. I don't have a single contact stored in the cloud on my LG Optimus Quantum. It's actually never had a data features used, 3G or WiFi.
9. Limited to 800x480 resolution.
Yep, for now, and I admit this is a pain.
10. Voice search is hardwired to Bing.
Yep, and it still works better than Siri if you live outside of the US.
11. Cannot use any MP3 file as ringtone except those with strict constraints.
Damn, I won't sound like a douche when my phone rings. Defaults ring tones aren't a bad thing.
12. Cannot set static IP address so no connection to ad-hoc networks.
I haven't used an ad-hoc network in a decade. Does this really matter?
13. No VPN support for this âoecorporate enterpriseâ phone.
WP7 had been aimed at the consumer market since day one, make up your mind about what matters more, consumer or corporate. My corporate BlackBerry has ringtones locked to a single tone (Classic Phone I think it is called, and I can't change it. I'm fine with it.)
14. Cannot sync directly with Outlook without syncing to Cloud
Just like BlackBerry and Android or iOS, using either BES or Exchange ActiveSync
15. Totally closed OS, cannot sideload apps outside MS Marketplace.
Again, sounds a lot like an iPhone and iTunes....
16. System font size cannot be changed.
Mild pain in the ass, I have never felt the need to change it, it's not like my BB where the font is too small to read by default.
17. Images and photos cannot be renamed in the phone.
Sounds (again) like my iPhone, which I admit I haven't used for a while.
18. Windows Live ID account cannot change country once set.
Can your gmail account for Android be region changed? I honestly do not know.
19. No centralized notification page.
THANK GOD. I don't want every thing in one place. Discrete notifications are one of my favorite features.
20. Alarm clock cannot work when phone is turned off. All Nokia Symbian and Meego phones can do this.
Symbian is dying and starting to smell bad. Meego was D
I'm a *lousy* programmer. In theory, I understand the basic concepts, I get the jargon, and I can talk the talk, but I will be damned if I can walk the walk though.
I got into sales while I was suffering through school, not enjoying what I was studying, but loving what I was doing at work to put myself through school, so I made a career out of sales, and I'm currently the Sales Manager for a pair of Bell Mobility Corporate stores in Canada. My staff give me all the geeky clients, the nerds who are trying to hack out a living as app developers, and I love it.
So, purchase a current device and hold off on the QNX upgrade path?
The QNX devices don't even launch for several months, so talking about them now is nothing more than pure speculation, which in my not so humble opinion, is fucking pointless.
If you indeed NEED the security (I do for work, which is why I have a BlackBerry) why not just go the tried and true route of BlackBerry? Security is built in, everything except SMS (to my knowledge) can be encrypted, and you don't have to worry about updates from a 3rd party firmware (CM) breaking your apps or security model.
Other things I LOVE about my BlackBerry...
Every key is a speed dial, I have about 20 of them mapped to the people I call the most. Very intuitive.
The keyboard is wonderful of hammering out mid to long emails. Swype helps, but I still find the keyboard faster.
Kick Ass Speaker Phone.
Full day battery life. Don't underestimate this.
It's easier to decipher who an email comes from, as it uses the same display info as my phone book does. On anything that uses active sync, my email is addressed in the same format as the Exchange server, which means every shows in my list as come from "Lastname, Firstname (EMPLOYEE#)" On my Berry, is shows as "Dad" or "Jeff (Regional)" instead. This is invaluable, as I can name people in my phone book in regards to my relationship with them, and I don't have to go digging through the exchange directory to find out what a persons job title is if I only correspond with them twice a year, and have forgotten who they are."
You can encrypt the device, as well as any memory cards.
This is a sincere question. I carry two devices (BB 9900 for work, and a CM9 rom'd SGS2 for my personal phone) and I personally cannot stand the exchange email client on Android, it just seems slow and clunky, and CM9 helped a little bit, but not much. Use the right tool for the job, instead of trying to shoehorn a tool into the job you want it to do.
Context is key....
Carlin said it best.
There's a different group to get pissed off at you in this country for everything your not supposed to say. Can't say nigger, boogie, jig, jigaboo, skinhead, moulli, moullignon, schvartze, jungle bunny, greaser, greaseball, dago, guinea, wop, ginzo, kike, zebe, hebe, yid, mocky, hymie, mick, donkey, turkey, limey, frog, zip, zipperhead, squarehead, krout, hiney, jerry, hun, slope, slopehead, chink, gook. There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of those words in and of themselves. They're only words. It's the context that counts. It's the user. It's the intention behind the words that makes them good or bad. The words are completely neutral. The words are innocent. I get tired of people talking about bad words and bad language. Bullshit! It's the context that makes them good or bad. The context. That makes them good or bad. For instance, you take the word "nigger." There is absolutely nothing wrong with the word "nigger" in and of itself. It's the racist asshole who's using it that you ought to be concerned abkout. We don't care when Richard Pryor or Eddie Murphy say it. Why? Because we know they're not racist. They're niggers! Context. Context. We don't mind their context because we know their black. Hey, I know I'm whitey, the blue-eyed devil, paddy-o, fay gray boy, honky, motherfucker myself. Don't bother my ass. They're only words. You can't be afraid of words that speak the truth, even if it's an unpleasant truth, like the fact that there's a bigot and a racist in every living room on every street corner in this country.
- George Carlin.
I've been through the hard times, and was looking for work in the hard times, and, walked out of an interview during the hard times because a company wanted access to a password protected area of my personal website.
when I refused the job, I told them exactly why, and thanked them for their time, and went to work for a competitor.
But I just can't help but think that any company who's core values are so completely fucked up that they request this, is someone who I just simply wouldn't want to work for in the first place?
“Subsonic cruise missiles, aircraft, fast-moving boats, unmanned aerial vehicles” — Mike Deitchman, who oversees future weapons development for the Office of Naval Research, promises Danger Room that the Navy laser cannons just over the horizon will target them all.
I'm confused. Surely the one thing a laser canon can't do is target things from over the horizon.
I think he is using the word horizon as a metaphor for "coming soon" not a target on the literal horizon. Sloppy wording for sure, it took me a moment to process as well.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder if we simply haven't deployed BES 10 yet. I'll have to inquire about that.
Thanks!
No. I have a device that I use for work, and with my Bold 9900 we had to use BES to get our corporate email (Bell Canada). With my Z10, it was as simple as putting my new SIM into the device, and setting up Exchange ActiveSync. However (I haven't 100% confirmed this yet) BlackBerry Balance (BBB?) doesn't work unless yo use BES. I can't for the life of my figure out how to split the device into two work environments.
correct, It crashed Chrome, Safari, itunes and text edit on my MBP w/ ML, but the F does have to be capitalized.
I have three of that exact drive in a box in the basement. The first two get used to rip, the other gets used to write. Best drive I have ever owned, hands down.
so, plug it into a wallwart, instead of a computer?
I remember hearing about this, but I have never been able to find the claimed footage. Wasn't this debunked as a hoax?
This is exactly what happened with me.
I'd been using Debian and its various derivatives since Woody was the unstable distribution, and I had always been happy with it (so I thought)
Then, in April it was time to buy myself a new laptop, and I bought a 13" MacBook Pro on a whim, knowing that I could install Debian if I wanted to with no issues, but I figured I would try OSX out to see what the deal is.
5 months later, Debian has been relegated to running in a VM Ware Fusion instance that takes up 8GB of disk space, and gets booted once a month or so, and I am really wishing I had just bought a Mac back in '99 when I first started pissing around with Debian.
2 year, even if you own the hardware? Don't you have the option of just going month to month? I'm in Canada (land of the 3 year contract!), but I will gladly sign a person up month to month if they own hardware, or are willing to purchase it at retail price.
The credit check I totally understand, the carrier needs to know that you have a habit of paying the bill. That parts makes sense, and shouldn't be a problem.
No, I don't deny the short comings, I'm actually fairly objective on this, and very consistent.
It's not a perfect platform, it's a very, very far way from it, but it is FAR better than WinMo or WinCE ever were. It has a clean and consistent interface that I have personally found to be lacking from other platforms, and that is something that I like.
I love that the OS, honestly, just gets out of the way and lets me get to what I want quickly and efficiently.
I use my phone for very specific things, I don't load it down with a bunch of apps (regardless of what phone is in my pocket, this is true) and I use it as a tool to get a job done.
I have a blinking notification to inform me of missing messages, but the screen stays off.
I am sure this could be changed with an app of some kind, but I have never looked for one, as that is not a desired feature for me personally.
My Optimus Quantum is essentially a spare phone, that sits in the glove box of the girl friends car with a prepaid sim in it. She has a bad habit of leaving her phone at home, and wants to be able to call 911 in an emergency.
That was poorly said. I had used it device as a personal line for 3, maybe 4 months before I replaced it with my HD7. The features have been used, just not since I reset the data on it and gave it to her to use for her back up.
No, I have a couple of the older devices and they were complete abominations. It wasn't until 7 that I ever used it for more than a week with out giving up on it. Even 7 took me a good 6 months of playing with it in store to get my hands on a device, and drop Android for my personal device.
WP7 is FAR from perfect, and yes, there are certain apps (Skype is definitely one of them) that would truly benefit from proper multitasking.
Angry Birds, which is by FAR the most common App that I am asked about, doesn't care one way or the other.
my point is the guy is a troll.
80% of his so called "facts" were simply made up and false, and the 20% of things that he was bitching about also happen to be present on every other phone I have ever used.
iPhone covers about 40% of Bell Canada's sales right now, it is hands down the most popular platform available, and in my particular store, it covers 28% of our sales mix.
Windows phone has never once cracked the 5% mark for our sales, and yes, in a LOT of ways, it has been an abysmal failure. I am the first to admit that.
I use it, because for what I need (again, need, not want. I don't care about wants, it's a work device after all. A tool to get the job done, no different than a hammer.) it's one of the easiest to use, most reliable, and elegant solutions I have found.
Sitting upstairs I have at least 30 Android handsets that have been "seeded" to me for testing purposes, as well as won in sales incentives and contests, more than a dozen BlackBerries, an iPhone 2, and an iPhone 4S. I can use literally any phone that I want, and I keep going back to my HD7, because despite it's short comings, it's simply the most enjoyable of them. I can just use it. I don't have to relearn how to use it every time I go back to it.
I'm a "reformed" Linux user, who has recently adopted OSX, I simply got tired of constant small issues with Linux that lead to what seemed like constant headaches. I left Linux (on my laptop mind you, everything else is still Debian) for the same reason that I left Microsoft in 2001. I wanted something better, and Apple seemed to fit that bill. If not, I can nuke the disk and install Linux, so it was a win all around.
At the end of the day, my demands for a mobile device, are pretty simple:
I'm probably the most "software agnostic" person you can meet. Give me a phone, a computer, a tablet, whatever, I will use it, and I will make the most out of it. I just want it to work. I love how good Android is getting, between it and iOS, 99% of most peoples needs are covered. That leaves BlackBerry over for the 1% that truly need BES (need, not want) and WP as a niche product.
WP is not perfect, far from it, but it's not nearly as bad as the GP made it out to me.
It's not over, it's evolving.
WP7 is FULL of short comings, I am the first to admit that, but the reality is it is a ver nice OS, and what it does do well, it does better than anything else I have ever used.
I can't wait to see how WP8 is. If it offers a continued improvement, I will gladly put one in my pocket. If not, I will go back to my iOS devices.
Er, would it make you feel any better if the summary said it costs 450 dollars to make people pay the upfront cost of $49 for a Nokia Lumia? The point still stands. Windows Phone 7 is a failure. People have been calling it since the beginning yet the fanboys kept saying wait 'til NoDo, wait 'til mango, wait 'til Nokia, wait 'til Lumia 900, blah blah blah. It failed. Accept it. And it failed for quite a few reasons. Here, I'll list them. All of them.
OS LIMITATIONS
1. No true multitasking for 3rd party apps - they re frozen in the background.
So what? It's a phone. I don't understand the desire to run 30 apps at once, one a phone.
2. No Divx/Xvid video codec support. Zune will convert with loss of quality.
I've never once watched a movie on my phone and expected amazing quality, it's a mobile device with a 4.3" screen, it's not going to be immersive no matter what the codec used is.
3. No mass storage mode.
Yep, same can be said about iPhone....
4. No micro-SD card support.
Yep, same can be said about iPhone...
5. Only support up to 16GB storage .
Yep, same can be said about iPhone (depending on the device chosen, it can also be said iPhone only supports 8GB...)
6. No filemanager. Directory system is totally opaque.
Yep, same can be said about iPhone (noticing a trend yet?)
7. Need Zune to transfer files. Zune will only transfer photos, videos & music. All other files need to email/upload to yourself.
Yep, sounds like iTunes...
8. Your contact details are automatically uploaded to cloud service whether you like it or not.
Wrong, this can be disabled. I don't have a single contact stored in the cloud on my LG Optimus Quantum. It's actually never had a data features used, 3G or WiFi.
9. Limited to 800x480 resolution.
Yep, for now, and I admit this is a pain.
10. Voice search is hardwired to Bing.
Yep, and it still works better than Siri if you live outside of the US.
11. Cannot use any MP3 file as ringtone except those with strict constraints.
Damn, I won't sound like a douche when my phone rings. Defaults ring tones aren't a bad thing.
12. Cannot set static IP address so no connection to ad-hoc networks.
I haven't used an ad-hoc network in a decade. Does this really matter?
13. No VPN support for this âoecorporate enterpriseâ phone.
WP7 had been aimed at the consumer market since day one, make up your mind about what matters more, consumer or corporate. My corporate BlackBerry has ringtones locked to a single tone (Classic Phone I think it is called, and I can't change it. I'm fine with it.)
14. Cannot sync directly with Outlook without syncing to Cloud
Just like BlackBerry and Android or iOS, using either BES or Exchange ActiveSync
15. Totally closed OS, cannot sideload apps outside MS Marketplace.
Again, sounds a lot like an iPhone and iTunes....
16. System font size cannot be changed.
Mild pain in the ass, I have never felt the need to change it, it's not like my BB where the font is too small to read by default.
17. Images and photos cannot be renamed in the phone.
Sounds (again) like my iPhone, which I admit I haven't used for a while.
18. Windows Live ID account cannot change country once set.
Can your gmail account for Android be region changed? I honestly do not know.
19. No centralized notification page.
THANK GOD. I don't want every thing in one place. Discrete notifications are one of my favorite features.
20. Alarm clock cannot work when phone is turned off. All Nokia Symbian and Meego phones can do this.
Symbian is dying and starting to smell bad. Meego was D
I can't even stress how much sense this makes.
I'm a *lousy* programmer. In theory, I understand the basic concepts, I get the jargon, and I can talk the talk, but I will be damned if I can walk the walk though.
I got into sales while I was suffering through school, not enjoying what I was studying, but loving what I was doing at work to put myself through school, so I made a career out of sales, and I'm currently the Sales Manager for a pair of Bell Mobility Corporate stores in Canada. My staff give me all the geeky clients, the nerds who are trying to hack out a living as app developers, and I love it.
So, purchase a current device and hold off on the QNX upgrade path?
The QNX devices don't even launch for several months, so talking about them now is nothing more than pure speculation, which in my not so humble opinion, is fucking pointless.
Just a question, but why Android?
If you indeed NEED the security (I do for work, which is why I have a BlackBerry) why not just go the tried and true route of BlackBerry? Security is built in, everything except SMS (to my knowledge) can be encrypted, and you don't have to worry about updates from a 3rd party firmware (CM) breaking your apps or security model.
Other things I LOVE about my BlackBerry...
This is a sincere question. I carry two devices (BB 9900 for work, and a CM9 rom'd SGS2 for my personal phone) and I personally cannot stand the exchange email client on Android, it just seems slow and clunky, and CM9 helped a little bit, but not much. Use the right tool for the job, instead of trying to shoehorn a tool into the job you want it to do.
Context is key.... Carlin said it best. There's a different group to get pissed off at you in this country for everything your not supposed to say. Can't say nigger, boogie, jig, jigaboo, skinhead, moulli, moullignon, schvartze, jungle bunny, greaser, greaseball, dago, guinea, wop, ginzo, kike, zebe, hebe, yid, mocky, hymie, mick, donkey, turkey, limey, frog, zip, zipperhead, squarehead, krout, hiney, jerry, hun, slope, slopehead, chink, gook. There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of those words in and of themselves. They're only words. It's the context that counts. It's the user. It's the intention behind the words that makes them good or bad. The words are completely neutral. The words are innocent. I get tired of people talking about bad words and bad language. Bullshit! It's the context that makes them good or bad. The context. That makes them good or bad. For instance, you take the word "nigger." There is absolutely nothing wrong with the word "nigger" in and of itself. It's the racist asshole who's using it that you ought to be concerned abkout. We don't care when Richard Pryor or Eddie Murphy say it. Why? Because we know they're not racist. They're niggers! Context. Context. We don't mind their context because we know their black. Hey, I know I'm whitey, the blue-eyed devil, paddy-o, fay gray boy, honky, motherfucker myself. Don't bother my ass. They're only words. You can't be afraid of words that speak the truth, even if it's an unpleasant truth, like the fact that there's a bigot and a racist in every living room on every street corner in this country. - George Carlin.
I've been through the hard times, and was looking for work in the hard times, and, walked out of an interview during the hard times because a company wanted access to a password protected area of my personal website.
when I refused the job, I told them exactly why, and thanked them for their time, and went to work for a competitor.
But I just can't help but think that any company who's core values are so completely fucked up that they request this, is someone who I just simply wouldn't want to work for in the first place?
or call customer service and get it suspended? or port your number? or buy a new phone and do an equipment change?
“Subsonic cruise missiles, aircraft, fast-moving boats, unmanned aerial vehicles” — Mike Deitchman, who oversees future weapons development for the Office of Naval Research, promises Danger Room that the Navy laser cannons just over the horizon will target them all. I'm confused. Surely the one thing a laser canon can't do is target things from over the horizon.
I think he is using the word horizon as a metaphor for "coming soon" not a target on the literal horizon. Sloppy wording for sure, it took me a moment to process as well.