Amazon Rocks

As I have mentioned before, I recently got myself a shiny new Blackberry Curve. I got it for what I thought was a good price, $99.99 with a two year contract with AT&T/Cingular. The same Blackberry Curve is $199.99 from AT&T's web site.

To my dismay, Amazon dropped the price of the Blackberry to $44.99 a couple of days after I ordered mine. Fortunately, I learned about Amazon's Post-Order Price Guarantee, with this guarantee, if the price of an item purchased through Amazon drops in price within 30 days of the purchase date, Amazon refunds the difference. I contacted Amazon and they agreed to refund the difference.

The story doesn't end there, a few days after the initial price drop, Amazon dropped the price of the BlackBerry curve again, this time to only $0.01 (you read that right, a penny), again with a two year contract agreement. I contacted them again and they once again agreed to refund the remaining difference.

I can't believe I got such a nice device for only one cent.

If you are in the market for a new phone, I highly recommend you get one of these, much, much, much better than the phones that can typically be obtained for free with a contract.

Transferring Files From The Blackberry to Linux

As I mentioned in my previous post, I just got a BlackBerry curve from Amazon. As those who know me are aware, I am an avid Linux user, therefore the CD that comes with the Blackberry is useless to me, since it includes software for Microsoft Windows.

I was wondering if there was a way to transfer pictures and other files between the Blackberry and my Fedora Linux laptop. Out of curiosity I plugged in my Blackberry to one of the laptop's USB port To my surprise, shortly after plugging it in, a window popped up in the Blackberry asking me if I wanted to turn mass storage mode on. I answered yes and, lo and behold, the Micro SD card in the Blackberry was automatically mounted by Fedora.

By having the card accessible in my laptop, I can easily copy files, for example pictures taken with the Blackberry, to my laptop and vice versa. This way I can copy music files to the Blackberry as well to listen with its built in media player. What a nice surprise this mass storage mode was.

BlackBerry Curve

Three days ago I got my first Blackberry, a curve, also known as the 8300.

This is my first "fancy" phone, the ones I've had before are the ones that come free with the plan.

The reason I decided to get one is because I might be traveling more often in the near future, and BlackBerries allow you to stay connected while on the road. In addition to being a phone, a BlackBerry can be used to send and receive emails while on the phone. It also includes a browser to surf the web wirelessly.

To be able to take advantage of the email and browsing issues, a data plan is needed. Cingular/AT&T offers several data plans, and it is not entirely clear what the advantages of one plan over the other might be. For personal use, their $29.95/month plan is the best, since it offers unlimited data access. Cheaper plans limit the amount of data transfer, and more expensive plans are meant for corporate users with a Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES).

The curve is the newest BlackBerry model out, the reason I chose it over other models is primarily because it features a full QWERTY keyboard, making it easier to type emails. It also didn't hurt that when I was doing my research, all reviewers in Amazon had given it 5 stars.

After a few days of having it, I can say that I like it very much. I can snap pictures with the built-in camera and immediately send them as an email attachment to family and friends. The only complaint I have is that the web browser is a bit slow, it kind of reminds me of my dialup days.