cazh1: on Business, Information, and Technology

Rare event: Design problems with my Blackberry Pearl

I've finally found a design issue or two with the Blackberry Pearl. That's an accomplishment of a sort - I've written about how I like this thing, it's been quite handy.

However, today I was calling for technical support for something (not the Blackberry ...), and I was prompted by an Automated Voice Response (AVR) system to enter my name using the numbers on the phone. You know the drill ...

Unfortunately, these aren't the letter patterns that appear on the Pearl's keys. Oops, er, ummm ...

Luckily, I was in my office, and could look over to a desk phone and do the translation. If I was on the road, however, I'd be out of luck; looks like I'll need to add an item in my MemoPad, in case this ever comes up again.

The second issue is just an annoyance. Our corporate Blackberries must be password protected with forced changes every 90 days. I have no problem with this approach, it's just that the Blackberry software gives no warning when your current password expires. On the regular network, we get a warning that our password will expire in a few days - this lets me schedule a time when it's convenient to think of a new password and note the change. With the Blackberry, I am dead in the water with no warning, and must makeupanew password on the spot. This is not always convenient ...

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posted by James P. MacLennan at 10:01 PM | Permalink | 0 Comments