Well after two days of light to moderate use on the touch (not from full charge, but about 75%), it finally died this morning, this is about the same life that one would/could/can expect out of the Blackberry. So from that perspective, they are on even footing.
Bringing the browsers into the game, Safari is amazing on the touch, and while Opera might be slightly more useable (both crash every now and again), it is slightly harder to read. Both access WordPress and Vista 4 just fine and allow the user to post with ease. This bodes well for using either as reference resources, but I would give the edge to Safari as it renders the text and images beautifully. Both are a bit clunky when it comes to copying and pasting – Safari doesn’t and Opera can, but it’s not “built in”. Safari allows for more than one window to be open, and Opera is one windows only. If I were using either in a classroom situation, I would choose Safari (unless I had to do discussions in Vista where Safari dies all the time) because of it’s rendering and inline PDF viewing.
So where would the Crackberry and Opera Mini come out ahead? Well, that would be on the real world campus. Open WiFi isn’t very common on campuses, and most don’t have web based authentication, though many are moving toward it because of devices like the iPod touch/iPhone (the iSlates). On campus, one is likely not going to want to carry around two devices either, so that is a big bonus for the Crackberry, at least in non iPhone countries. Finally with the physical keyboard, it is much easier to use muscle memory and tactile feedback to enter data into the Blackberry than it is the iSlate. Though it is really easy to pick up, I can see many people spending far more time dealing with the interface to the iSlate than entering data. If the iPhone was here and the data plan was equal to the Blackberry data, I would still put the Blackberry out just ahead. But if the iPhone had the better data plan, then I would consider the two tied for educational reference uses, but give an edge to the iPhone for a bigger screen. Without the iPhone in Canada, the Blackberry would win, except if you consider that there is a good chance that people are not going to be on campus all the time.
Public libraries, Starbucks and many other places have open WiFi, and that is where many students tend to gather to work, when not at home. So if a student already has a great phone plan, the initial sticker shock of the touch quickly (within a term) is recovered on the data plan. As they likely have an iPod already, this would be an upgrade that would also save them from having to haul around their laptops. So off campus, I would give the edge to the touch.
So it’s not an easy judgement to make for me right now, as to which is better, but I’ll continue to test the touch around town and keep writing.
Leave a Reply