Re: [SLUG] Blackberry, Linux and (if anyone knows) Gmail integration
Thanks to everyone for their suggestions. My wife settled on the 'crack'berry which is now a permanent feature. :) Regards, Patrick Zhasper wrote: On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 3:29 PM, Sridhar Dhanapalan srid...@dhanapalan.comwrote: 2009/8/5 elliott-brennan m...@elliott-brennan.id.au: Hi all, My wife is setting up her own business. She'll need quite easy access to e-mail and is thinking of getting a Blackberry (not sure of which mobile provider yet, though we're currently with Three on our other phones). I don't have and haven't used a Blackberry, so am seeking any advice regarding syncing the thing with my desktop (8.04) and accessing e-mail (e.g.. by having a gmail account and then IMAP'ing that for the Blackberry). I understand gmail has an app for the Blackberry (and similar phones) so I'd be interested to know of people's experiences with that. A simple solution is for her to set her mail to automatically forward to the Blackberry's mail address. That way, the Blackberry will alert her as soon as a message comes through, and she can view it on the phone. The original message still stays in the main mail account. There's also the Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server coming later this month - http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/mobile.html I'm not clear on what that does though; it looks like it might need you to run your own BES, which is probably too much overhead for a one-person business (but I don't understand crackberrys well enough to understand how this works for small business anyway - I think it involves forwarding all your mail to Canadia and having RIM push it to the phone?). Oh wait: there's a system requirements section that says you need Windows 2003 Server SP2 (approximately 1GB of disk space per GAC for BES user) and BlackBerry Enterprise Server 4.1 Service Pack 6 Maintenance Release 4 - so I guess you do need to be running your own server somewhere. The best gmail integration I've seen is (not surprisingly) on the G1; it also has a physical keyboard, but the battery life is notoriously not even as good as the iPhone. The notifications on the G1 are quite nice though. Personally I'm reasonably happy with the iPhone; but I don't do a whole lot of message writing there, I mostly use it to catch up on threads while I'm out of the office, and anything more than a quick reply waits until I'm back at my desk. Any other advice or information would be most appreciated, including suggestions for other devices. She wants a full keyboard like the Blackberry, along with a reasonable screen size when typing and for reading e-mail. Other manufacturers have Blackberry-style devices now (with a keyboard). Take a look around and you might find another that suits her needs better. I've seen some companies standardising on the Nokia E Series or even the iPhone. I have a friend with the nokia E-series blackberry clone, and he's quite happy with it. I have another friend with a similar phone who prefers the mobile gmail app to the web app, and emails almost exclusively from his phone. Personally I think they're both nuts... But if you really want something nice (although I'm horribly biased), there are the Android-based phones. The only Android so far with a physical keyboard is the G1 though. I find the on-screen keyboard on my iPhone to be better than the G1s on-screen keyboard - but I hear that later devices have higher resolution touch screens, so the keyboard works better. -- Bring choice back to your computer. http://www.linux.org.au/linux -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html -- Registered GNU/Linux User 368634 www.youcantdothatinlinux.com -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Blackberry, Linux and (if anyone knows) Gmail integration
On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 3:29 PM, Sridhar Dhanapalan srid...@dhanapalan.comwrote: 2009/8/5 elliott-brennan m...@elliott-brennan.id.au: Hi all, My wife is setting up her own business. She'll need quite easy access to e-mail and is thinking of getting a Blackberry (not sure of which mobile provider yet, though we're currently with Three on our other phones). I don't have and haven't used a Blackberry, so am seeking any advice regarding syncing the thing with my desktop (8.04) and accessing e-mail (e.g.. by having a gmail account and then IMAP'ing that for the Blackberry). I understand gmail has an app for the Blackberry (and similar phones) so I'd be interested to know of people's experiences with that. A simple solution is for her to set her mail to automatically forward to the Blackberry's mail address. That way, the Blackberry will alert her as soon as a message comes through, and she can view it on the phone. The original message still stays in the main mail account. There's also the Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server coming later this month - http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/mobile.html I'm not clear on what that does though; it looks like it might need you to run your own BES, which is probably too much overhead for a one-person business (but I don't understand crackberrys well enough to understand how this works for small business anyway - I think it involves forwarding all your mail to Canadia and having RIM push it to the phone?). Oh wait: there's a system requirements section that says you need Windows 2003 Server SP2 (approximately 1GB of disk space per GAC for BES user) and BlackBerry Enterprise Server 4.1 Service Pack 6 Maintenance Release 4 - so I guess you do need to be running your own server somewhere. The best gmail integration I've seen is (not surprisingly) on the G1; it also has a physical keyboard, but the battery life is notoriously not even as good as the iPhone. The notifications on the G1 are quite nice though. Personally I'm reasonably happy with the iPhone; but I don't do a whole lot of message writing there, I mostly use it to catch up on threads while I'm out of the office, and anything more than a quick reply waits until I'm back at my desk. Any other advice or information would be most appreciated, including suggestions for other devices. She wants a full keyboard like the Blackberry, along with a reasonable screen size when typing and for reading e-mail. Other manufacturers have Blackberry-style devices now (with a keyboard). Take a look around and you might find another that suits her needs better. I've seen some companies standardising on the Nokia E Series or even the iPhone. I have a friend with the nokia E-series blackberry clone, and he's quite happy with it. I have another friend with a similar phone who prefers the mobile gmail app to the web app, and emails almost exclusively from his phone. Personally I think they're both nuts... But if you really want something nice (although I'm horribly biased), there are the Android-based phones. The only Android so far with a physical keyboard is the G1 though. I find the on-screen keyboard on my iPhone to be better than the G1s on-screen keyboard - but I hear that later devices have higher resolution touch screens, so the keyboard works better. -- Bring choice back to your computer. http://www.linux.org.au/linux -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Blackberry, Linux and (if anyone knows) Gmail integration
The Blackberry server (BES) can be gotten relatively cheaply, blackberry where in fact giving it away with one licence if you input you blackberry's imei. You still need lotus' or Microsofts mail server on another box though. Doesn't work with OSS mail servers, or Gmail natively. A better solution for single blackberry user small business may simply be the blackberry desktop redirector. You can set it up on a windows box in the network that has her mail being pulled down through imap and it will forward it on to her blackberry, push style, I believe you can even reply and it will put the reply in your computers sent items. Crazy johns also used to do a deal for small to medium for 5 blackberry's with 5 BES cals, don't know if they still do, but that can be feasable. On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 6:00 PM, Zhasper zhas...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 3:29 PM, Sridhar Dhanapalan srid...@dhanapalan.comwrote: 2009/8/5 elliott-brennan m...@elliott-brennan.id.au: Hi all, My wife is setting up her own business. She'll need quite easy access to e-mail and is thinking of getting a Blackberry (not sure of which mobile provider yet, though we're currently with Three on our other phones). I don't have and haven't used a Blackberry, so am seeking any advice regarding syncing the thing with my desktop (8.04) and accessing e-mail (e.g.. by having a gmail account and then IMAP'ing that for the Blackberry). I understand gmail has an app for the Blackberry (and similar phones) so I'd be interested to know of people's experiences with that. A simple solution is for her to set her mail to automatically forward to the Blackberry's mail address. That way, the Blackberry will alert her as soon as a message comes through, and she can view it on the phone. The original message still stays in the main mail account. There's also the Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server coming later this month - http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/mobile.html I'm not clear on what that does though; it looks like it might need you to run your own BES, which is probably too much overhead for a one-person business (but I don't understand crackberrys well enough to understand how this works for small business anyway - I think it involves forwarding all your mail to Canadia and having RIM push it to the phone?). Oh wait: there's a system requirements section that says you need Windows 2003 Server SP2 (approximately 1GB of disk space per GAC for BES user) and BlackBerry Enterprise Server 4.1 Service Pack 6 Maintenance Release 4 - so I guess you do need to be running your own server somewhere. The best gmail integration I've seen is (not surprisingly) on the G1; it also has a physical keyboard, but the battery life is notoriously not even as good as the iPhone. The notifications on the G1 are quite nice though. Personally I'm reasonably happy with the iPhone; but I don't do a whole lot of message writing there, I mostly use it to catch up on threads while I'm out of the office, and anything more than a quick reply waits until I'm back at my desk. Any other advice or information would be most appreciated, including suggestions for other devices. She wants a full keyboard like the Blackberry, along with a reasonable screen size when typing and for reading e-mail. Other manufacturers have Blackberry-style devices now (with a keyboard). Take a look around and you might find another that suits her needs better. I've seen some companies standardising on the Nokia E Series or even the iPhone. I have a friend with the nokia E-series blackberry clone, and he's quite happy with it. I have another friend with a similar phone who prefers the mobile gmail app to the web app, and emails almost exclusively from his phone. Personally I think they're both nuts... But if you really want something nice (although I'm horribly biased), there are the Android-based phones. The only Android so far with a physical keyboard is the G1 though. I find the on-screen keyboard on my iPhone to be better than the G1s on-screen keyboard - but I hear that later devices have higher resolution touch screens, so the keyboard works better. -- Bring choice back to your computer. http://www.linux.org.au/linux -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Blackberry, Linux and (if anyone knows) Gmail integration
elliott-brennan wrote: Hi all, My wife is setting up her own business. She'll need quite easy access to e-mail and is thinking of getting a Blackberry (not sure of which mobile provider yet, though we're currently with Three on our other phones). snip The alternative would be to consider a 3G Data, rather than phone plan and use a netbook. The 701 eeePC fitted in my handbag and I thought it was a good mobile device - and skype works well on it. http://www.ramin.com.au/linux/eeepc-aegean.shtml http://www.ramin.com.au/linux/eeepc-video-conference.shtml On Monday, I saw an even smaller Sony. Possibly the 6.5 one mentioned here, though I don't like the chances of getting it to run linux: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_netbooks Marghanita -- Marghanita da Cruz http://www.ramin.com.au Phone: (+61)0414 869202 -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Blackberry, Linux and (if anyone knows) Gmail integration
Hi all, My wife is setting up her own business. She'll need quite easy access to e-mail and is thinking of getting a Blackberry (not sure of which mobile provider yet, though we're currently with Three on our other phones). I don't have and haven't used a Blackberry, so am seeking any advice regarding syncing the thing with my desktop (8.04) and accessing e-mail (e.g.. by having a gmail account and then IMAP'ing that for the Blackberry). I understand gmail has an app for the Blackberry (and similar phones) so I'd be interested to know of people's experiences with that. Any other advice or information would be most appreciated, including suggestions for other devices. She wants a full keyboard like the Blackberry, along with a reasonable screen size when typing and for reading e-mail. Thanks in advance. Regards, Patrick -- Registered GNU/Linux User 368634 www.youcantdothatinlinux.com -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Blackberry, Linux and (if anyone knows) Gmail integration
2009/8/5 elliott-brennan m...@elliott-brennan.id.au: Hi all, My wife is setting up her own business. She'll need quite easy access to e-mail and is thinking of getting a Blackberry (not sure of which mobile provider yet, though we're currently with Three on our other phones). I don't have and haven't used a Blackberry, so am seeking any advice regarding syncing the thing with my desktop (8.04) and accessing e-mail (e.g.. by having a gmail account and then IMAP'ing that for the Blackberry). I understand gmail has an app for the Blackberry (and similar phones) so I'd be interested to know of people's experiences with that. A simple solution is for her to set her mail to automatically forward to the Blackberry's mail address. That way, the Blackberry will alert her as soon as a message comes through, and she can view it on the phone. The original message still stays in the main mail account. Any other advice or information would be most appreciated, including suggestions for other devices. She wants a full keyboard like the Blackberry, along with a reasonable screen size when typing and for reading e-mail. Other manufacturers have Blackberry-style devices now (with a keyboard). Take a look around and you might find another that suits her needs better. I've seen some companies standardising on the Nokia E Series or even the iPhone. But if you really want something nice (although I'm horribly biased), there are the Android-based phones. -- Bring choice back to your computer. http://www.linux.org.au/linux -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
