Blackberry Curve KashFlow Accounting Software

Blackberry Curve 8310 Tips and Tricks

November 19th, 2008 by Duane Jackson

After my little episode with the Blackberry Storm, I’ve now got my Blackberry Curve back. I wont be unfaithful again!

I’ve actually had a bit of a result. I managed to fry the firmware on my old Curve by using the Desktop Manager Software to migrate my settings from the Storm. So Vodafone promptly sent me a brand new one the next day (yesterday). Vodafone may cost a little more than some of the other providers, but I’m happy to pay the little extra for the great service they’ve always provided us.

The thing that makes the Curve so great is that it has so many buttons, which means lots of shortcuts.

Listed below are some I’ve discovered over time, along with some other little tricks. I hope you find them useful

Dealing with Messages

[T] Move to the top of a list of messages
[B] Move to the bottom of a list of messages
[N] Move to the next date in a list of messages
[R] Reply to the selected message
[F] Forward the selected message
Holding the [Shift] key and scrolling the ball will select multiple messages
Press the menu key whilst you have a date row (instead of a message) highlighted will give you the option to “Delete Prior” or “Mark Prior Opened”

Typing

Holding a letter key for a second will give you the uppercase version
Pressing [Space] twice will put in a full stop and capitalise the next letter

Other

When in the Calendar, you can quickly jump to the next page by pressing [Space]
To move to the previous page press [Shift]+[Space]
To turn on standby mode hold down the [Mute] key (embedded in the top-left of the handset)
To quickly set up a speed dial, hold down a letter when on the home screen.
Start typing a name on the home screen instead of a number
To set a custom ring tone for a contact, highlight the contact in your address book, press the menu button and scroll down. You’ll see the option there.

Tags: Blackberry Curve, Tips, Vodafone
Posted in Technology | 2 Comments »

My Blackberry Storm Experience

November 16th, 2008 by Duane Jackson

I’ve been a happy user of the Blackberry Curve for a good year or so now. But recently I was tempted to “upgrade” to the new Blackberry Storm that Vodafone started shipping last week.

The Storm arrived on Wednesday and initially I was quite impressed. It certainly looks very stylish and the screen has a very good resolution.

It’s nice to have support for HTML emails but what I was mainly interested in though was this “tactile feedback” from the touchscreen that Vodafone had been raving about.

Essentially the whole screen is one big button – it’s like there’s a micro-switch behind it. So you highlight something on screen by touching it and you then click on the highlighted item by pushing the screen. It takes a bit of getting used to, but it works. Unless you’ve got fat fingers like me that is. It’s very annoying trying to press one of the buttons at the very edge of the screen – ie, the Q or P on the keyboard. It’s also very easy to mis-type. I’m sure with enough practice I’d get the hang of it.

The killer for me though was the web browser. It’s awful. On virtually every page I visited the web browser seems to be zoomed out. You can zoom in by tapping the screen though. So this means when you are trying to click a link, you end up just zooming in on it. We have a web-based support ticket system for KashFlow and using it was a nightmare.

So I guess you can guess my final verdict. If you want a Blackberry Storm, go and bid on mine on eBay (it looks like I should make a decent profit from it – they’re going for upwards of £500).

Tags: Blackberry Curve, Blackberry Storm
Posted in Technology | No Comments »