Why I killed my BlackBerry

I had great fun with my BlackBerry when I bought it 2 years ago ...

• Reading and sending email anytime everywhere, even while sitting on the can
• Docking it beside my bed so that I could monitor the overnight batch jobs. I programmed the batch job to send me hourly updates, summarised into a short email title so that I could see the status from my inbox screen.
• Programming it with J2ME, exploiting it for location-based services

But it wasn't long before I stopped using it...

• You have to keep clearing your mailbox or it would stop working. Often a single email with a large attachment would bomb out my BlackBerry.
• You can't purge your mailbox from your BlackBerry, you have to use a PC-based web browser because of the silly way that the BlackBerry Web Client uses frames.
• You can't properly edit Word and Excel attachments and send them back. The screen wasn't big enough for reviewing screenshots either.
• Very slow in supporting 3G. BlackBerry didn't have 3G handsets until recently.

If you're happy with the BlackBerry as your mobile companion, well good for you. For now I'm roving around town with my not-so-mobile Sony Vaio and Merlin 3G Data Card. Until something better comes along.