I don’t know if I qualify as an average computer user, but I am a Linux newbie. My reason for getting the Eee PC 901 and installing a new Linux on it was to learn more about Linux, and I have learned a load. It’s a hobby machine - if I needed a reliable productivity computer, I made a poor choice

I didn’t know about the array.org downloads - thanks for the link.

I don’t know the passwords to the containers, just the passwords to the keychains. The keychains unlock the containers.

I don’t travel with the containers unless I have to; and if I do have a need travel with the data, then I fedex the keychain to the destination. I can’t be compelled to disclose a password I don’t know, thwarting would-be interlopers.

The upshot of this mechanism is that the passphrases used to secure the containers can be arbitrarily complex and unintelligible — since I don’t have to know them, let alone remember them, they can be of ridiculous strength.

The downside is that an interloper presented with the data but no key might be inclined to make things very unpleasant…

GSM in the US sucks. Poor coverage, bad technology. About the only advantage GSM has is the ability to swap phones without involving the carrier and the ability to use non-US handsets without jumping through hoops. When I carried both an AT&T and a Sprint phone there was almost nowhere my AT&T phone had coverage but my Sprint phone didn’t, but the reverse was not true.

However, CDMA has crappy handsets. I was looking at getting another Palm OS device (great usability, crappy email, nonexistant push email,) a windows mobile device (crappy usability, crappy stability, but a great feature set, except that turning on push email makes the phone crash more) or a blackberry.

The blackberry gets all the right things right. Email that works, that doesn’t crash the phone. Seamless and quick integration with the company directory. The features that are there work. And the BES, which AFAIK no other handset has an equivalent to.

The ability to locate the BES behind your firewall is the key point. This gives your users the ability to access resources on your internal network from their handset. No VPN client. No special configuration. Just type in URLs or open an ssh connection.

If you’re using a phone as a business tool and you’re often out of the office, or you need 24/7 access to your network, this feature alone makes the BB hard to argue against.

In most respects the BB is an exceedingly average phone. However, I can’t really think of any area where I find it deficient, and aside from the BES nothing really stands out as a great distinguishing feature either. It just does what it’s supposed to, in what should be an average way. The only reason it’s not done in an average way is because most of the other phones on the market suck and crash a lot. I have yet to see my BB crash.

I’ve been wondering what the state of all this is in Symbian land. Can I get push email while I’m sshing into a server and using my web browser all at the same time? I can with the BB, I can do it for a while with windows mobile (until the crash happens, at least) and I can’t with palm os.

Problem soon to be solved.

Just wait until I start talking multivendor 802.11n around here. I’m sure that will be even more awesome.