Posted on 12/02/2005 7:12:51 AM PST by COBOL2Java
Todd Boulanger's day starts when his BlackBerry's alarm rings at 7:15 a.m. He rolls over and checks the wireless device for e-mail. The Washington lobbyist checks it 30 times a day, sometimes at two-minute intervals. He e-mails Hill staffers, co-workers, friends, clients and his wife, all of whom check their own BlackBerrys just as religiously, and respond within minutes.
Such devotion has brought lots of money to BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd., but courts have repeatedly decided the underpinning technology belongs to a tiny Northern Virginia patent holding company, NTP Inc. In coming weeks, a U.S. District Court judge in Virginia may issue an injunction that could shut BlackBerry's U.S. operations down, altering the lives of many adherents.
"A lot of firms are assessing options and looking at alternatives," said Todd Christy, chief technology officer for Waltham, Mass.-based Pyxis Mobile Inc., which manages about 6,000 BlackBerry devices for financial service companies such as American Express, John Hancock and Pioneer Investments.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
BUT... the Fed Gov has expressly requested that THEIR Blackberry users be spared the inconvenience of a service shutdown.
The "tens of thousands" of Fed Gov Blackberry users...
Isn't THAT precious?
Todd, meet me. I had the original Blackberry in 2001. I gave it up a year later. Not so much because I was tired of having a cellphone holstered on one side of my waist and a Blackberry on the other (that was solved not long after with relatively bulky Blackberry cellulars), but because when I'm not in the office in front of a computer, I'm either near my computer at home or have a Wi-Fi enabled laptop with me if I'm traveling. Any other time I can wait for my frickin' e-mail. TODD, IF IT'S THAT IMPORTANT, THEY WILL CALL YOU. I promise.
Meanwhile, Palm stock went through the roof after the announcement that the judge disapproved the settlement with RIM.
Some are more "equal" than others.
Beat you, I worked for a company that was doing the gateway software for the really original Blackberry (then merely called a RIM Device) which did two way paging of e-mails back in 1997. One of my co-workers sent a test message that read "this thing sucks on one end and blows on the other" a couple hours later our manager received a phonecall informing him that the test system was monitored by staff of Research in Motion and they'd prefer not to see messages like that. The thing sucked horribly, it was about the size of two Altoids tins glued together and flip-up part with the screen wouldn't secure for crap so people that actually carried them around rubberbanded it closed. Then I left that company and text paging died as PCS phones came in with the same capability as a checkbox feature, boy was I suprised when Blackberry hit the market, I was sure RIM had gone out of business.
I still laugh when I see the 20-somethings walking around the street talking on their headset devices like some schizophrenic panhandler conducting dialogues with people that noone else can see.
They don't call it "crack-berry" for nothing.
The buggest user in the Federal Goverment of Blackberries is DOD..So this is important.
The really scary part is that the government expects these blackberrys and cell-phones to work during a crisis.
The thing I don't get is that RIM is being punished for patent violations, but the US Patent Office has rejected the patents that are at the heart of the case. How can RIM usurp patents that haven't even been granted? That makes no sense at all.
It must be a generational thing. When I tell the under-30 crowd that I don't carry a cell phone around, they look at me like I've got two heads. "You don't text message?" they ask me. "Nope!"
It's not that big a deal. I have a Palm Treo. Does everything a Blackberry does, and more, if you install the Good(TM) software.
Nothing looks as dumb as one of those 20-somethings running around the gym with one of those blue tooths on their ear.
Schizophrenic panhandlers conversations make more sense, I listened to quite a few of both last month in LA.
I Guess Microsoft pickd the right time to introduce push email capability to it's SmartPhone OS, My HP 6500 does everything Blackberry can do, and so far, does a better job of it. So many thumbs will be breathing a sigh of relief if Blackberry gets the heave-ho. :)
Blackberry users, cellphone users, They are all pathetic addicts.
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