I have never been tempted to buy a hand-held computer.
I sometimes laugh to myself when I see people poking away at their personal digital assistants (PDAs) with a plastic pen or using the clumsy built-in phones. I find mobile devices to be a largely unsatisfactory collection of expensive gizmos that do not do what I want, or do it so badly I would rather do without.
But I have always wanted an affordable, easy to use device that would let me send and receive e-mail away from my desktop.
Needless to say, I was pleased to hear Canada's Research in Motion was finally going to bring its BlackBerry products to Asia, three years after they appeared in North America.
Hutchison Telecom is marketing the Rim BlackBerry 5810. For those unfamiliar with the product line, the device provides always-on access to e-mail via general packet radio service (GPRS), a wireless Web browser, a mobile phone and basic PDA features.
There are no bells and whistles on the BlackBerry, and that was fine with me. There are no expansion slots, limited internal memory, the screen is monochrome and there are no speakers or handwriting recognition capability. For those wedded to the idea that more is better, the BlackBerry will seem barren against the iPaq or other high-end devices.
But when used for what it does best - send and receive e-mail - the BlackBerry is fantastic. The always-on GPRS connection has messages arriving as quickly as they would if you were sitting at your desktop. When you return to the office, you can synchronise your e-mail account using a docking cradle that plugs into a serial port.
