When I bought Blackberry Bold 9700 I had to re-enable ‘All mail’ IMAP directory in my Gmail account and it caused not few problems with Mail.app.
Googling around I didn’t found a solution, BB wants ‘All mail’ but it causes problem with Mail.app .. I had two possible solutions, change Blackberry or change Mail.app .. obviously I chose the second one!
First I used Thunderbird for a couple of days, it was not so bad but in two occasions it didn’t send email (and didn’t popup error about it) .. so I looked for something else when I found Postbox 2.
At the beginning I had some doubs about it because based on Thunderbird, but now, after some days of testing, I’m really satisfied with it!
It quite fast, it has really confortable shortcut keys and it allows to unsubscribe to ‘All mail’ IMAP directory (it’s absurd Mail.app doesn’t allow it!!!).
For example I’m used to move email about shopping on a particular local directory, to do it it’s enought to press ‘v’ key and an essential popup pops up in which I can write the directory where I want to move the email(s) .. really fast and I don’t need to use mouse :)
With Mail.app I was a loyal user of Spamsieve, it worked everytime really well so I was a bit sad to abbandon it, but I had no choice because it doesn’t support Thunderbird :(
Anyway in Postbox there is a spam filter and it works really well, Spamsieve I love you but I found a new love ;)
Postbox interface is not bad, it supports 3 columns (like Mail.app + Widemail) and I’m confortable with it.
The only ‘big missing thing’ in my opinion is a more readable messages list. If you know Mail.app + Widemail you know how confortable is to be able to have subject and sender on two different lines .. but sadly Postbox doesn’t support it and reading online it won’t support in the near future :(
I didn’t find how to enlarge a bit text in messages list and in the column on the left (anybody knows? tell me please!)
In conclusion, if you have to leave Mail.app I suggest Postbox 2, it’s a really good mail client, it can improve in some ways but it’s usable and it’s solid (no crashes by now).
Another useful thing is that I think (I’m not sure) you can import everything from your Mail.app (I did Mail.app -> Thunderbird -> Postbox 2).
Try it! :)
I switched to Blackberry by ten days (more or less) and I didn’t belive to get so much satisfaction from it!
It’s really a great phone, battery life time is incredible (up to 3 days with wifi always on and on intensive usage), software is really robust, I still never had a problem.
The only problem (but it’s not an issue) I noticed is when there is an high network activity (for example when downloading anything) the phone is less responsive, but for me it’s not really an issue.
Usually I use my mac for everything related with my communication needs and I used my iPod touch (1st gen) for Facebook and email while I was at home. Now with Blackberry I don’t use iPod at all, everything is in my Blackberry, I receive alerts for incoming messages on email and Facebook (I use it less for twitter).
With Blackberry Desktop Manager (on my mac) I can sync contacts and calendars with Blackberry (as I did with Nokia).
Another annoying thing is that Blackberry Desktop Manager supports just the cable sync, so I have to use the cable everytime I want to sync, with Nokia I could use bluethoot. I had also problem to connect Blackberry to my mac using bluethoot, so probably Blackberry Bold can’t send data with bluethoot, just voice (I didn’t check because it’s not a big problem)
Blackberry browser is not a great browser, but (as I did with Nokia) I installed Opera mini and it works properly :)
In conclusion I can suggest everyone to buy Blackberry Bold 9700, it’s a robust phone with good software, it isn’t perfect but for me the little issues it has are not really a problem.
I’m really curious to see version 6 of the OS :)
