My Blackberry Storm Review

Before I begin I want to give a word of thanks to Arnie who dropped me a line to see if I was OK and why I haven't been posting. It's funny how life gets in the way sometimes. Yes Arnie I am still alive and kicking and thanks for checking in on me.

Back to the Storm review. About a month ago it was time to get a new phone. Up until that point I had a Motorola Q and was very pleased with it. Based on everything I read, I had decided to get the new Motorola Q9c. But when I arrived at the Verizon store I was informed that the Q had been discontinued. I had a hard time believing it so I called around and verified that it was indeed being discontinued. This left me in a position where I was uneducated on just about every phone in the store. A friend of mine had the HTC Touch Pro and for several reasons, I won't go into, I had decided against it.

Because I have an Exchange server, I had a pretty specific set of requirements that my phone needed to have. With no Q available and not wanting the HTC, that left 2 choices. The Blackberry (which I have had bad luck with previously) and the Samsung Omnia. This is when the salesman at the store went to work on me.

The Blackberry Storm was the best thing on the planet AND it was on sale. If you bought one storm, you got the second one for free. What a great deal right? I told him that I was extremely happy with the Q and wanted the SAME functionality and Exchange integration. I was absolutely assured that everything about the Blackberry Storm would integrate seamlessly with our existing server environment. After repeated clarifications on this matter I ended up getting the Storm. I have never had a touch screen phone and, after all, it WAS kind of cool.

This is where the misery unfolds. Despite all assurances, it turns out the Storm doesn't integrate with an Exchange server like a Window Mobile device. You have to purchase additional software from RIM (Blackberry), set up separate admin accounts, create additional databases on the server and purchase additional enterprise licenses for each Blackberry in use. 3 days and countless hours of tech support later, the Storms were functioning. OK, it was a headache to get the Blackberry Storm working but after all that it has to work great.

NOT the case. As I started playing with my new Storm, I was excited about the number of apps that were available for the device. You know, the whole "kid in the candy store" thinkg got the best of me. I immediately proceeded to install a bunch of apps that were either handy or fun to use. It turns out that the OS on the Storm kind of struggled with some of the apps that were available. YouTube, Google Maps and others seemed to create some minor conflicts with power management and other areas in the phone. Pretty soon my phone started crashing and rebooting on a regular basis. I began reading some forums in an attempt at troubleshooting my issues. In the end, I uninstalled all of the apps bringing the phone back to the original configuration. This should have fixed it.

Again, not the case. Touch screens are cool, no doubt. However, I soon realized that I like buttons. About a week ago I went to dial a phone number and the touch screen number pad had crashed. I couldn't dial a phone number. I had to take the phone out of the case, remove the back cover and take the battery out to force the phone to reboot. I did this twice and the touch screen number pad began working again.

Aside from the technical problems, the email and SMS organization leaves a little bit to be desired. You can customize it a bit by separating the SMS and email messages but all of your sent messages go into your main message folder. Not the end of the world, you just have to sift through more lines to get at what you want.

I have talked to people that are pretty happy with the Storm. My guess is that they are simply a casual user. Below are some additional negatives as well as positives.

The WIN: The Storm's browser is fast and loads websites quickly, the voice dialing works reallly well and the screen size is outstanding for browsing, viewing pictures and reading emails. The camera on the Storm takes really good pictures and the threaded text messaging is great. The Storm has a TON of on board memory with the option for additional memory via the memory slot.

The FAIL: Touch pad dialing and typing is MUCH slower and cumbersome vs. a conventional keyboard, the Storm OS app conflicts and the horrible integration and setup. Even though the camera takes great pictures, it crashes frequently and takes FOREVER to "snap" the picture. Sending pictures is also a tedious venture at best.

Bottom line? I don't think I can recommend the Blackberry Storm to anyone. There are a variety smartphones out there that seem to function much better.

UPDATE: I was just on the Verizon website and discovered that the Motorola Q9c IS available again. There's a little salt in the wound!

 

The New Can-Am Spyder

I decided to take a break for a little bit and wandered over to a client's motorcycle shop. They just happen to be a Can-Am dealer AND they just happened to have the new Spyder by Can-Am in.



Oh yes cowboys and cowgirls, it is one primo ride. 2 wheels in the front and one fatty in the back, the Spyder is all business. It has so much power that you can effortlessly roll that rear tire over in gears 1 through 3.

It's almost like a snowmobile/sports car. You sit on it like a snowmobile but it has all the handling of a fast and low performance machine. Anti-lock brakes, stability control, traction control and more acceleration than you can handle all add up to one impressive package. And did I mention that it had all kinds of power?

There are some things that take some getting used to. Since I have been riding motorcycles for years, I quickly had to learn that you don't have to put your feed down when you stop. I was instructed that there are no hand brakes, yet I still found myself reaching for the brakes with my fingers when it came time to stop. All the braking is done but ONE foot lever. And let me tell you, the brakes are unbelievably good.

I was concerned about the cornering too. Having spent some time on ATV "3 wheelers" as a young chap, I knew how tippy a 3 wheeler could be. Not the Spyder. The only reason you need to lean into the corner is so you don't fall off the other side. This thing corners! AND it sticks to the road.



The version I rode was the automatic version. There's no clutch and the "flappy paddle" shifter on the left grip works great. You can open the throttle up and run through the gears without having to let off. Oh, and if you do that, you will be going 100 before you can say, "holy crap this thing is..."

If you ever get a chance, I highly recommend you test drive one of these 3 wheeled roadsters. It was well worth it. Who knows, you may even put a deposit down on one.

 

Review Of Rock Band On The XBox 360

It's no secret that I like video games and have been "rockin' out" to Guitar Hero 3 for several months now. I have about 6 or 7 songs left to beat on hard and it's NOT going well. I can't seem to get my pinky finger working. My poor unused digit starts to ache and then it begins clicking and it's all down hill from there.

The other day i decided to go out and pick up Rock Band and see what it was all about. I started to unpack everything and began the assembly. The Guitar was the fist thing out of the box. After some assembly, I immediately noticed that the new black and white (corded) guitar was really flimsy. It was lighter than my normal "Explorer" guitar and the fret buttons appeared to be a lot cheaper. Also, the "strummer" didn't have that familiar click that the explorer had, it was more, well uh, "musy." It did have a couple of cool features, there was an effects selector to determine sounds during solos and a second set of fret keys down closer to the body of the guitar. The general feeling I got from the guitar is that IT WAS CHEAP.

The drums came out next and went together very nicely. The only thing I noticed was that the cord for the bass pedal seemed short. I tried out the drums on the training mode in an attempt to get the hang of it. After about 40 minutes of playing, the drums quit working. Yep, they just quit working. NO, not just one of them as indicated on so many discussion boards, but the entire set. No power, nothing! Well, that was disheartening to say the least.

Next out of the box was the mic. I plugged it into the supplied USB powered hub and guess what? IT didn't work. Great! I was afraid to plug in the guitar and see if that would work. What do you know, it did! I ended up playing the game with a friend for about an hour.

I have no complaints about the game play. The concept is fun, the graphics are OK, (the are better on GH3) and the music selection is outstanding. However, it seemed like you had to play a bunch of the songs over and over as you went from city to city. Now that I think about it, it's just like a real rock band I guess.

The next day I took it back to target and got my money back, even though the box said not to do that. Yeah right. Target took it back and simply asked the question, "was there anything wrong with the product?" To which I responded, "yep, 2 out of the 3 items don't work."

Today before writing this I went out in search of information about the Rock Band peripherals and it seems that the quality is suffering across the board. Initially, I was thinking that I got a lemon, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Evidently there is a 3rd party vendor getting ready to launch some peripherals. I may wait for those.

Bottom line - It's not worth it, YET! I will probably go out and get the game by itself and maybe an extra guitar, but that's it for now. Give it some time and you should be able to build your band set with some quality pieces from other manufacturers and have tons of fun with 3 other friends. It should be worth the wait.

 

Halo 3: The Review

After playing it for the first time the other night, I just have to say something about it. Halo 3 is simply awesome. If it weren't for the XBox 360 crashing all the time I could waste even more countless hours playing the stupid thing.

OK, here's the Skinny. The game play is fantastic. New weapons, new vehicles, and even better maps for the player vs. payer mode. The story line is well thought out and the cinematic interludes are a welcome break. Your character has some new abilities. You are now able to carry special extras like bubble shields, flare, deflectors, power-drains and all kinds of other things.

There are all kinds of new vehicles. A 4-wheeler "ATV" type thing, a new "chopper", a new flyer for the good guys and a new tank. This is what Broadsideonline had to say. "Halo 3 is unique in that almost anyone can easily pick up and play. The control scheme is straightforward and solid, making even the most First Person Shooter-inept players feel right at home, while instantly enjoying taking out the monstrous hordes of alien Covenant forces and the disgustingly zombie-like Flood. Players run through the campaign or story mode as Master Chief, the last surviving member of the elite Spartan military group. Able to run faster and jump higher with abnormal human strength, players can be all they can be while running the gauntlet of enemy forces as Master Chief. The campaign mode offers a wide variety of locations to go through, each extremely detailed and beautiful to look at."

If you have a 360, I would highly recommend checking picking up a copy. You won't be disappointed.

I know, I know - this doesn't have anything to do with marketing, but then a gain maybe it does. There was so much hype about Halo 3, game store literally had tens of millions of dollars in pre-launch deposits. There were excellent pre-release trailers on TV, and the gaming magazines were giving Halo 3 their full attention. The Canadian press reports, "...over $170 million in sales on day one and calling it the biggest entertainment launch in history... $170 million works out to, at most, 2.83 million copies of "Halo 3" - a fraction of the 8.3 million "Harry Potter" books that sold in the United States on their respective premiere days."

The Halo 3 buying frenzy had an unpredicted side effect. The week that the game launched, Microsoft enjoyed a doubling of the previous week's sales to the highest level yet for 2007.
And in addition, the return of Master Chief meant the system outsold the Nintendo Wii for the first time in 26 weeks.