Last month my business partner and I had the opportunity to purchase 2 Blackberry Bold 9000’s. My 8800 was getting a bit long in the tooth and it did seem that the world had moved on, and so perhaps, should I. So, why the 9000 and not the latest and greatest Bold, the 9700? Because of the keyboard explained my business partner. He was much happier with the wider keyboard of the 9000 than the smaller and less well defined keys of the 9700. So, why not.
What ensued was a long and arduous struggle, and, a reminder to me as to why I still run Windows XP and still use Office 2003, they work, I know how to work them, and NO SURPRISES.
Upgrading to the 9000 seemed to go along rather well at first. Blackberry has this feature that enables you to hook your 8800 to one usb port and the 9000 to another, press a button, and everything moves over. So far, so good. Then I noticed that Blackberry was telling me that an upgrade was available for my device to version 5.0.xxx (xxx is short for whatever). It seems the 9000’s that we had purchase were installed with version 4.6.xxx. No problemo, or so I thought. Press the button and away went the Blackberry to check my system. Oh oh, seems I needed to free up 26Mb of memory in order to perform the upgrade. O.K., I’m still naïve. So, what do I do. I back up my Blackberry, reset it, and try again. Same error. Now I’m ready to give up. After all, why do I care if I run 4.6 or 5.0. So, I ask google if I care. Most crackberryers say no, I shouldn’t care. And so, I tell myself, I don’t care.
End of story, or so I think. A few days later, I notice that my device is running slower than Daisy, my 15 year old, just recovered from kidney failure, dachshund. This I cannot live with. Every time I add a new event to my calendar, I wait 60 seconds for my device to return to me. So, once again, I google for help. Low and behold, my Blackberry suffers from Memory leak. Thank you google for clueing me in. What do you suggest I do. NO GOOD ANSWERS.
Now, I’ve had it. I call Rogers, and while I’m at it, I mention my device software upgrade problem. Granted this is all occurring the last week in December where there aren’t too many of us at work or, I suspect, at the Rogers Blackberry help desk. What’s the answer? Turns out I get the same answer for both problems. “It’s a known defect”. For some reason, either too much egg nog or too many Christmas Carol derivative movies (this year I watched Alistair Sims, Reginald Owens, Bill Murray, and George C. Scott), I said o.k. and hung up the phone. It took me a day to realize that this wasn’t an acceptable answer, so, I put my head down, my fingers up, and started googling in earnest (note: I already knew there was no sense in calling Rogers). I can’t believe my eyes. I was told there was a “temporary” solution, pull out the battery and count to 30 whenever things get too slow. Why hadn’t I thought of that. Pull out the battery or the plug, and count to 30 is Roger’s answer to every know problem in the universe, and, it always works. Sure enough, no more speed issues, and memory leak is a thing of the past. Don’t ask me how it fixed itself. I don’t care, it works now.
Not to leave any stones unturned, I am still running version 4.6.xxx on the device, and frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.
Enjoy the frozen blackberry!
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