The Blackberry As A Laptop Replacement?

The other day, I posted about using file manager pro to handle email attachments on my blackberry. I also alluded to the fact that the need for this application came from my having forgotten my laptop at home for the first time in 2 years. It got me thinking, however, about how to manage entire days with only my blackberry in tow. So here’s the master list of what I would consider essential applications to best mimic the activities conducted throughout the day on my laptop:

1. Documents to Go: second only to emails, I spend a good part of my day creating and reviewing presentations, balancing budgets on a spreadsheet, and keying up agendas for meetings I am running. Now it’s difficult to manage the advanced functions of MS Office like excel pivot tables and the vast array of presentation formatting, but the basics are manageable in a pinch.

2. File Manager Pro: like I mentioned in my previous post, you will definitely need a way to manage your files if you want to use your berry like a laptop. Organizing your attachments and being able to unzip files you get from your colleagues is a deal maker.

3. Opera Mini: wikipedia is your friend. So is dictionary.com and about a dozen other reference sites (industry-specific or non). Back in 1999, I remember the organization I worked for was in the midst of a major initiative to set up a knowledge web. Well guess what? That knowledge web is the world wide web. I don’t care what you’re looking for: 9 times out of 10 you can’t beat the web for information. We are all just information traders these days.

So what’s missing?

1. Visio. I haven’t actually looked hard enough yet, but nothing has crossed my screen indicating that a handheld version of microsoft’s flow/mapping software exists at the moment. I use this often enough for it to be a problem if I intend to go more than a day or two without my laptop.

2. Printing. Ok, I noticed an application out there that’s supposed to allow you to print directly from your blackberry via Bluetooth, but that isn’t quite as useful if you don’t actually have your laptop to connect to the printer through. Nice idea for home use though.

3. Remote Desktop. This will allow you to get to your laptop if you are so fortunate as to have left it on and connected at home. Also closely related to this, there’s access to files on your corporate shared drive. I think this is built into BES 5.0, but I don’t know what my company is running (sorry – this is a relatively new Blackberry and I haven’t done my homework).

So why even try?

To be honest, I had a great day last week without my laptop. Every meeting I went to, I brought a pen and notebook. In between meetings, I got caught up on emails (on the blackberry, of course) and even spent some time getting caught up with my team in person, speaking to one another like proper human beings. It’s difficult to manage on a daily basis, but once in a while, it can be refreshing to go laptop free.

PSp

scu86tnh5i
Technorati Profile

Managing Files on your Blackberry – File Manager Pro

Let me start by announcing that I am officially retiring the Samsung Jack as my primary device. I was issued a Blackberry Curve 8330 by my company with full BES capabilities, which renders my Jack obsolete. This will require a separate post to discuss at length, but a segway was necessary to bring us to the reason for this particular post – what do you do when you forget to bring your laptop to work?

This is exactly what happened the other day – working from home in the morning, with my laptop plugged in and on the phone, I ran out of the house to catch the next train and brought with me absolutely nothing…except my blackberry. I managed the day ok due to the fact that i spend 96% of my time in meetings anyway, but there was one thing lacking in using the blackberry as a temporary laptop replacement: the ability to work with zip file attachments.

File Manager Pro

Here’s an excerpt from the developer’s website (www.terramobility.com):

**********

File Manager Pro

Version 1.1

Intuitively simple. Powerfully advanced.

Introducing the new file and Zip archive manager for BlackBerry. Now you can quickly and easily manage all the files and folders on your device.

• All standard operations on file and folders, including recursive copies, moves and deletes.

• Create, extract and append to Zip archives.

• Select and operate on multiple files and folders simultaneously.

• Modify file attributes and sort file lists by name, size, date or type.

• Favorites list for fast access to folders.

**********

This is a relatively new application for the Blackberry that allows you to manage your on-device files. To quote the developer’s description, this application offers advanced features like selecting multiple files, sorting files by date, type or size, and letting users make a Favorites list for fast access to frequently used folders. More importantly, it allows you to zip and unzip files which you can then edit or view in Documents to Go or other office application.

I tried this one out a while back on the Pearl when it was in beta; it worked as advertised but was a bit slow in it’s operation (probably the device, but worth mentioning just in case). Well, I’m happy to report that this application is blazing fast in it’s operation on the Curve. The field test went smoothly: moving and deleting files, and unziping attachments were executed without a hitch.

This isn’t much of a review, I know, but is meant to be more of the start of a running list of software that will help make your blackberry a suitable understudy to your computer or laptop.

Note: And in case you were wondering what the WinMo counterpart would be, there’s none better than Resco Explorer…