JamesX

I mentioned the other day about my latest gadget and now that I’ve had a few days to get accustomed to it, I have to tell the world about it. It is THE gadget of my collection. That says a lot, and probably sets the poor little thing up to fall, but seriously, this thing is totally awesome. In case you are completely unaware of what I’m referring to, because you perhaps didn’t read the title, or you had to look away from the picture because you felt inadequate, I’m talking about the BlackBerry 8100. It’s otherwise known as the BlackBerry Pearl because of it’s pearl-like scroll wheel in the centre of the keypad.

This thing is no ordinary phone, it’s a serious machine. It does all the usual things like making calls, and sending drunken text messages to your mates at 2am when you realise you have to work the next morning. But it goes further by combining real-time email, contacts and calendering to your corporate network (in this case GroupWise) and on top of that, throw in web browsing, server management, helpdesk management, instant messaging, full speech recognition, a 1.3 megapixel camera, and a whole host of other smaller knick nacks - it even plays DivX natively. What more do you want? If it had a hard drive, it could quite easily replace my iPod (hmm did someone mention an iPhone?)…

The phone itself is compact and extremely light - it’s much lighter than my Sony Ericsson k608i. Of course you don’t need a corporate server to connect it to, you can get it to check any old email account if you so desired. Anyway, for it’s price (something like $700), it’s a good piece of kit to have. It’s certainly going to come in handy over the coming months when I’m going to be working all those odd hours. I’ve already clocked up a high score of 8,090 on BrickBreaker (the built in game) which offers something else to do when you don’t have something to do.

Thanks Dean!