RIM BlackBerry pda is the ultimate wireless email connection tool, but not only

BlackBerry pda introduced by RIM (Research In Motion) continues to gain popularity. It has become a life saver for people who need time-sensitive email communication when they are away from their computers. And it is also a convenient life management tool for many other people.

So what makes a RIM BlackBerry pda so special, compared to a pocket pc, an iPaq, or a regular Palm pda?

The short answer would be that you receive your emails instantly at any time, just as they come (so called push email). But in practice, it is much more than that. One reason is that you need many other features to make that push email functionality work and be useful.

Integrates with almost any email account

You don't need to create a special email address and account for your BlackBerry pda. You just integrate your pda software with one of the accounts you already use (POP, IMAP, hotmail, and so on)

Vibrator alert

The fact that an email message arrives at your pda instantly, still does not mean that the messages reaches you at the same time. You need to be alerted, without constantly checking and looking at the screen. In a BlackBerry pda this is solved with a vibrator alert. A missing feature on most other pdas.

Extraorinary battery life

One necessity of an always-on wireless email is that your pda needs to be on more or less all the time. This would be a problem for most other handheld computers, like pocket pcs or palm or ipaq pdas. But not for a BlackBerry. Even with a screen turned on, its battery life is like up to twenty times better than other pdas.

Cost effectiveness

Even though proprietary push email solutions for other pdas try to catch up with the BlackBerry, those solutions are typically much more expensive.

Security

You would probably not like your pda email access to become an extra opportunity for uninvited guests to break into your main email account. What if your BlackBerry device is lost or stolen? What about eavesdroppers, hackers, and viruses? A RIM BlackBerry pda seems to give special attention to those security issues. There is a possibility for you to remotely delete the data on your BlackBerry if it is lost or stolen. All connections go through encryption. It is also much more impossible to create a virus for a BlackBerry than for a pocket pc or palm os pda. The reason is that BlackBerry operating system requires cryptographic signing by RIM (Research In Motion, the creators of BlackBerry phones/pdas) before any application can perform any potentially harmful actions.

Data loss protection

Unlike many other pdas, a BlackBerry phone or pda uses flash memory to store its data. So you won't lose your data if your device is accidentally out of power. A BlackBerry pda is also ruggedized, so it survives more drops than most other handhelds.

Disadvantages?

It seems that RIM BlackBerry pdas or phones are not meant to be strong on the multimedia side. There are many people who use a BlackBerry most of the time, but still have a pocket pc or palm handheld for cases when they want to listen to mp3 files or watch movies. In earlier days, blackberries used to be behind in the quality of their screens, but not any more. Traditionally, there were also less software applications available for the BlackBerry's operating system than, for example, for Palm Os. But this gap is getting smaller and smaller every year.

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