I am a gadget junkie. I admit it. I love gadgets. My house is filled with them. I love my Sony universal remote. I even have a brookstone light remote, a meat grilling electric thermometer (which doesn't work), and a gadget to tell me when to water the plants (it is actually easier to keep them outside and let the rain water them). When the Blackberry 957 PIM came out, I was heartbroken to learn that you needed an Exchange server for it to work. So I anxiously awaited the arrival of a third party vender that will sell this PIM to the masses. Two months ago my waiting paid off. The local Staples was selling a service through www.goamerica.net. When I travel, I usually carry around my laptop just to check emails. The Blackberry allows you to link up all your POP3 accounts (I now have 5) and will download your emails into the GoAmerica service. This should free up a lot of room in my suitcase for more souvenirs!

The price for the service is pretty hefty. It runs about $40 a month with a one year commitment. This is almost as much as I'm paying for digital cell service through Sprint PCS. If the system works, it will allow me to cancel my MSN account that I set up for traveling.

While purchasing the device, I was informed that it would take up to 5 days to set up the service, "Due to the overwhelming popularity of the promotion." After 2 days I decided to call to check on the status. GoAmerica said it will probably take 7 days to set up the service. I was told it is a very complicated and intricate procedure. COMPLICATED? Each 957 has a serial and PIN number, much like a cell phone. Cell phones take less then an hour to turn on. I know, I keep running over mine by accident with my Jeep and need to buy a new one (I'm going to buy #3 today). The Blackberry is no more complicated than the cell phone. MSN and AOL take about 15 minutes to turn on. There are probabably 3 services involved, GoAmerica, Blackberry, and BellSouth. My guess is that there is redundant red tape involved in each stage. Staples may even be involved in the red tape somewhere. To wait seven days to set up a wireless service is LUDICROUS. If it is due to the promotion, then GoAmerica should fire their Operations manager. "Gee, we ran a promotion but were not prepared for the promotion to be successful." Has anyone ever heard of automation?

So I purchase the system nonetheless. The install onto my hardrive goes easily. Unlike my Franklin Planner Palm 3, the Blackberry does not come with any desktop application. This is understandable. The purpose is to link it up directly with your mail and calendar program. But the mail and calendar program were not made with this PIM, or any PIM, in mind. They were made for MS and only MS in mind. Surely, there are going to be some changes I am going to want to make for the Blackberry.

The install creates a folder with 3 icons, application loader, backup and restore, and intellisync. So I start with the application loader. I install the calendar, calculator, and memo pad. I then go to Intellisync. Prior to the install, I spent some time converting to Outlook from Outlook Express.

After a week, I call GoAmerica for the status of my account. I was leaving town on Wednesday and wanted to just bring my Blackberry instead of my laptop. They inform me the paperwork was not followed through between BellSouth and GoAmerica. They apologized profusely and said it would be on by Friday. FRIDAY? Five days to expedite service? I wonder how long the non-expedited service would take? So I had to lug my laptop with me to Atlanta. I brought the Blackberry along just in case. Atlanta is the heart of BellSouth territory, so I shouldn't have to worry about network range. The following Monday I was pleasantly awoken by the email notification alarm on my Blackberry. Service has been activated! Now the fun starts. The first feature I looked into was the POP3 mail access. I have 2 main POP3 accounts - work and personal. I was looking for a way to implement both onto the Blackberry. To access the POP3 mail, I had to access the GoAmerica icon and enter in the account, server, and password. To my disappointment, the POP3 mail was not integrated with the Blackberry mail. This creates 2 problems with the system. First, the mail notification is not "active" for POP3, you have to go in to retrieve your mail. Second, it will not store those messages in your email folders. The other major difficulty with the POP3 mail is that it only holds 1 account at a time. Even though the sales people and the customer support reps stated I can use unlimited number of POP3 email accounts, I would have to enter them in each time I wanted to check my mail. To get around this, we forwarded my work mail to the GoAmerica account, and kept the POP3 account programmed to my personal mail account.

The mail feature does not include any folder options. I downloaded a freeware program called Sparrow which promised to fix that. Fix it it did. I could move messages into folders, I just couldn't delete anything. Each time I decided to delete something, the system re-initialized. Luckily, unlike Windows, uninstall is very easy. Once I uninstalled Sparrow, the system was working very well.

The mail system allows you to view attachments if they are in text or HTML format. Any large attachments such as databases or spreadsheets will probably not be useful on the system.

Web searching has its benefits and drawbacks. As with any wireless system, it is not very fast. The browser won't take any pages with frames. If you're using it to look at sites with left navigation bars, the system will treat those bars as a column and not get to the main content until after those bars are all displayed. This causes the system to reach a maximum display error occasionally, most notably when I go to the Boston Herald gossip column Inside Track.

GoAmerica allows you to go online and customize the PIM homepage. That saves some time, but the choices are still limited. One feature that seems to be lacking is the ability to view your emails through the GoAmerica website. This prevents me from giving out the GoAmerica email account as my primary email. If someone were to send me an attachment, I would need to forward it to an additional account before I can read it. Then, if I want the address to correspond with that sent, I would have to reply to go america and then forward it back to the originator. A little too confusing. Synching the system is very easy. Placing it in its cradle will automatically update both your Outlook and the Blackberry.

I've been using the Blackberry for about a month now and have come to like it. While sitting in the airport, I was able to log onto CNN to get the latest in election information. Instant email access is really a luxury that once you get it, it is hard to give up. There are some neat freeware programs out there, such as hockey pong (don't ever play against the russians) and a 10 key piano simulator. Given time, I'm sure more programs will become available.

Next week: An Old man gets a PS2