Many readers know I have been a big advocate of the Treo 600 and then the 650. I really believed in this machine. But no more. It failed me big time on a trip to Los Angeles on Friday. And when it crashed I realized that I had come to hate my Treo. It increasingly froze in telephone mode and it was a pain to deal with duplicate names appearing after each backup.

Saturday morning I found a Cingular store and learned that the Treo was a mess and could not be fixed on the spot. I needed a phone. I sprung for the new Blackberry 8700 (how convenient RIM settled with NTP the previous day!). Nearly 48 hours later I am a Blackberry freak. What a terrific device. I now realize what I fool I have been using a Treo when I could have been many times more productive with a Blackberry.

And there is another benefit. I can now tell readers that I have been confined for nearly 9 weeks due to a bad disc which required microsurgery in early February. Hopefully this will dispell rumors that have recently surfaced (mostly on Wall Street) that something was not right with Jupitermedia because I was keeping a low profile.
The low profile stuff is over!

So how does the back and the Blackberry connect in the title of this post? One downside of surgery is you get limited by what you carry around on business days. I have always carried a light computer (presently a ThinkPad X41). After two days with my new Blackberry 8700 I can see how I no longer need to lug around the computer everyday.

So I am blessed. The aggravation of a crashed Treo has led me to a great new Blackberry and at the same time I help my recovering back. Now its time to get back to business.