Two Cents: Making a Connection

July 28, 2005 By Jessica Jones

I moved recently and was without Internet access at my new place. I'm an e-mail freak, but more importantly, how was I going to Google my new surroundings for restaurants, coffee shops, grocery stores and the like?

Luckily I had Cingular's BlackBerry 7100g business phone from Research In Motion (RIM) with me -- or so I thought.

It worked great for e-mail -- I had access to my Gmail account at all hours of the day, which came in handy one night when my boyfriend e-mailed me directions to a club, and rather than printing it out, I saved a tree by bringing the BlackBerry along.

As far as responding to e-mails, which I did many-a-time, it seemed like the keyboard would be simple to use -- and RIM advertises its SureType technology, which combines the traditional numerical keypad and a QWERTY keyboard, as "fast, accurate and easy."

I, however, had difficulties at first, especially since SureType also completed words for me based on the first few letters I typed. After I passed the learning curve, I was just fine. But I'll be honest; I wasn't impressed with the 7100g's Internet capabilities -- or lack thereof.

My first Sunday at the new place, I needed to know where the nearest coffee shop was, because I still didn't have coffee -- or a coffeemaker for that matter. I tried accessing Yahoo's Yellow Pages, but it was slow. Really, really slow.

I tried Google. Same problem.

After a good 30 minutes of waiting, Yahoo finally loaded, telling me Peet's Coffee was right around the corner. I could have been sipping a latt

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