Rich's Tongfamily (Richtong.net add-on)

We just upgraded to Blackberry 4.0 clients at “Ignition”:http://ignitionpartners.com. Works for everyone but me. Here are my problems:
* I can’t keep more than 50 or so emails. They just scroll off the bottom. I have never expires set, but it keeps happening. I’ve also noticed that I have only 100KB or so of free memory on the Blackberry whereas with Blackberry 3.8, I always had a couple of megabytes free. I turned off Automore and turned on compression, but this doesn’t seem to help much. I’m guessing this is because the 4.0 client is bigger (it won’t run at all in 8MB Blackberry’s and mine is a 16MB 7230).
* Sync Issues/Local Conflicts explosion. I don’t know what happened, but we are getting a zillion sync issues right now and things just disappear. Also, on the Blackberry, I am now syncing all of our spam folders which isn’t real helpful when I can’t keep enough messages as it is.
* Contacts are broken. Right now we can’t used shared contacts, there is no longer a way to set which folders you use for Contacts that we can find. A big problem for us because we can’t really share contacts anymore. Also, now when I choose new contact in Outlook on my PC, I get a cryptic, can’t find form message, so something else has changed as well.
* Calendar entries created from the blackberry get double created on the Outlook calendar. This actually happened in version 3.7 as well and we’ve never found a fix.
On the plus side, “Blackberry Forum”:http://www.blackberryforum.com and “PDA Street”:http://www.pdastreet.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=fd310be1724c41ecba0e85356e147af1&forumid=7 seems to have finally arrived as a public resource to help. Given that Blackberry technical support is charge for and the server itself is so opaque, maybe they can help:
* “Getting More Memory”:”Blackberry Forums”:http://www.blackberryforums.com/showthread.php?t=5440&highlight=4.0+memory folks have the same problem and there is not enough memory in a 16MB device since 4.0 is fatter and email gets whacked as described by “Blackberrycool.com”:http://www.blackberrycool.com/2005/03/18/00288/. You need to have at least 50-100KB free otherwise, start deleting applications, everything you can.
* “4.0 Only for 32MB Blackberry’s”:http://www.pdastreet.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=56226&highlight=slow+handheld Remember 4.0 is a bit more memory intensive so be wary of installing them on 16MB series models of the BB. It will work very slow if you have a lot of emails, phone logs, contacts and calendar data. The 7290 and other 32mb BB?s are best suited for v4.0. 7290 runs (4.0.274) As usual you can choose what applications are installed saving more memory. Sigh, the T-mobile 7290 isn’t here yet, so I’ll have to wait.
* “Or, Downgrading”:http://www.blackberryforums.com/showthread.php?t=1871. Now if you wish to downgrade your device to a previous version, many of the above steps will apply. First, you will have to remove the newer OS from your PC. Do this by going to add/remove programs in the control panel and removing the software for the new BB OS. Make sure desktop manager is not running when you do this. After complete, restart the Desktop Manager. When you plug in your device, if everything went well, the Desktop Manager should tell you that your PC has an older version of desktop tools than is installed on the device. It will give you an option to keep the version on your BlackBerry or downgrade to the version on your PC. You will want to select downgrade and let apploader do the work. The trick now is finding an older version of Handheld 3.7.
Here are some other tips.
* BlackBerryForums.com : Your Number One BlackBerry Community – BlackBerry Internet – MSN/chat/web/telnet/TCPIP – No BES!. This post is all about how applications can now directly access the Internet, so a bunch of third party applications like a real web browser vs. a wap crap one can get used. You essentially have to go to Options/TCP and type in a valid apn (e.g., a proxy server) and a magic username and password that is carrier dependent. T-mobile is wap.voicestream.com and the username and password are what you use to logon to tmobile.com
* “Shortcuts”:http://www.blackberryforums.com/showthread.php?t=19. ALT – Cancel (or back button, whatever it’s called – the one under the scroll wheel). This is the same as ALT – TAB on your computer. It let’s you navigate between open windows which is pretty cool and very hard to find. Means that you can in one command jump from the phone to look at your email and contacts.
* Rearrange the ribbon: In the Home screen (ribbon), hold the ALT key and click the thumb-wheel to bring up a menu. You can then select Move Icon, Hide Icon, or Show All. If you hide an icon, to show it again click Show all and it will appear with an X over it, bring up the menu on it and uncheck hide icon.
* While in a message, ‘r’ replies and ‘f’ forwards a message.
* All you need is to copy C:\Program Files\Common Files\Research In Motion\USB Drivers locally to get a 7230 to charge from a laptop via USB. Just copy it to your flash keyfob and you are set.
* This use to be known as BB Demo Portal. check it out http://mobile.blackberry.com/ it has some nice content on it.