/bin/tim

I’ve been using my new Blackberry Curve for about three weeks now.  I have been pleasantly surprised with the experience.  Actually there’s nothing I regard as negative vs my HTC Excalibur except that it feels slightly more flimsy, and the trackball feels breakable.  I wanted a titanium coloured one but got silver

The good news is that it starts up and is ready to use as a phone in about 6 seconds, as opposed to the 10x delay with the Excalibur.  In fact any WindowsMobile device could only dream of starting that quick, most are just about finishing displaying the inital splash image.

The GPS is good and works well,  even with the limited Maps application, but at least it accurately shows you where you are right now, anywhere in the world.  I tested this in london and San Francisco and both have been very accurate.  Also, the battery life is better than any WindowsMobile device I’ve had so far.

The really good news actually shames WindowsMobile, and that is I can connect to more than one Exchange server simultaneousl.  Why Microsoft can’t do this is for WindowsMobile beyond me, they don’t even do it for the desktop Outlook client.  The Curve seamlessly manages multiple email sources whether they are Exchange, Hotmail, GMail etc.  The only downside is that whilst it provides separate source folders for each new mail service you add,  it doesn’t separate your original mailbox out, which is left in the consolidated view.  This is an omission I am sure they will fix as its done in some third party themes already.

Anyway, it my summary is it does what I need and it just works andshows how far Microsoft need to go to catch up with the BlackBerry experience,  and thats something I didn’t think I would say.

Some interesting updates on SQL Server 2008. FILESTREAM allows you to store large unstructured data items (BLOBS) outside the database in the native filesystem.  This is really handy as the BLOB no longer impacts the database itself for either performance or reliability.

However there are a couple of things to be aware of as Database mirroring and Snapshots aren’t supported.  Otherwise, FILESTREAM is implemented as a varbinary(max) and can be used as if it were a normal but importantly it is not limited to 2GB in size, rather to volume size (although thats no a good measure).  A cool capability is thta you can access the FILESYSTEM onject directly from the Win32 API,  you can’t delete or rename and object but you can read and write to it.  However NTFS security is applied and by default only the SQL Server Service has access permissions.

I tried hard to get on with spiritual successor (in my mind) of my HTC Excalibur,  but I have failed.  The problem is its just too quirky.

Firstly, the biggest problem.  For reasons which are impossible to fathom, Samsung decided to install WM6 Professional (PocketPC Edition) on to this device, despite it clearly being a WM6 Standard device.  This turns a perfectly good single handed device into a clumsy two handed version with none of the benefits of the PocketPC.  Unbelievably it ships with a stylus, and uses the wholly inappropriate Pro UI with drop down START menu and touch screen.  This is just craziness.  I recommend they make a WM6 Standard firmware update asap.

The GPS … what can I say?  Mostly it didn’t work,  when it did the accuracy offered was in the kilometre range, at one point offering me an accuracy of 5563 metres!

Now to put a tall hat on it they made it slightly too wide and made it with an ultra slippy shiny case that squeezes out of your hand like a wet bar of soap.

Completing my day, they use a non standard interface for power and connectivity instead of USB.

Funnily enough,  I got used to the trackpad, but not the cursor it drives which is all but invisible in sunlight.  There is a simple reason why WM6 Standard on a front facing keyboard candybar is the right OS, simplicity!

So, its gone back in the box, probably never to be used again.  What a disappointment!