RIM Strikes Back, Files Countersuit Against Visto 83
SilentOne writes "Research In Motion Ltd. launched an all-out assault on competitors yesterday, countersuing its latest legal nemesis and introducing software to pre-empt imminent launches by other challengers. The countersuit also gives RIM a chance to move the patent battle to a courtroom where it has a better chance of beating Visto. Visto filed suit against RIM on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division, which reportedly favours patent holders in 92% of cases heard by the court. Jim Balsillie, RIM's co-chief executive, said the company wants the trial moved to the Dallas area, where RIM's U.S. headquarters are located, for practical reasons.
Meanwhile, RIM is giving away a free software package, valued at US$3,000, to hook the e-mail accounts of small businesses and consumers up to BlackBerries instead of competitive devices from Palm and Microsoft."
Re:Is Anyone Actually Surprised? (Score:1, Informative)
The $3,000 software package (Score:2, Informative)
is barely mentioned in TFA. What they're referring to is BlackBerry Enterprise Server v4.1 Express [blackberry.com].
Only a 1-User licence is provided for free, however.
RIM is obviously worried about Microsoft giving away push technology in Exchange Server 2003 SP2 [microsoft.com].
Re:Can't you just use pop mail? (Score:2, Informative)
Blackberrys are great except for two major things that drive us crazy at my company:
1. RIM refuses to build IMAP functionality into Blackberry Enterprise Server. Most of our company's email users connect to a Linux IMAP server, but we have to provide an Exchange server just to accomodate the Blackberries, even if the users don't need any groupware features.
2. Because some of our users are on Exchange and some are on the IMAP server, we have to maintain a company contact list in public folders on Exchange. But BES doesn't sync public folders or provide LDAP search capability, so the Blackberry users can't sync these contacts wirelessly (some of these users don't have a computer).
When is RIM going to fix these issues?
Re:Free software? (Score:3, Informative)
RIM of course.
How can they say something like this wiht a straight face?
I see where you are going, but you would be wrong.
Actually this is what they typically charged customers for it previously. Its not some magical artificial suggested retail price that nobody ever actually paid... that they plucked out of their ass; people actually did pay around 3k for a modest Blackberry Enterprise Server package.
Re:discount parent comment (Score:1, Informative)
Integration with Exchange/AD is horrible. There are no LDAP lookups to AD, and the sum total of BB integration with Exchange is via a single mailbox. Hardly an "enterprise-class" product.
I can't wait until we start playing with the PPCs and get a real solution for mobile mailboxes.
Re:Can't you just use pop mail? (Score:2, Informative)
If your battery runs low the blackberry will disable wireless. Now thats great because I get extra life out of the device and can use all the PIM functions for a while without wireless. Now if you plug it into a charger guess what it doesnt do? It never re-enables the wireless, so if you're not paying attention and dont "enable wireless" you'll be wondering why you're not receiving any phone calls or emails.
The desktop software for windows includes a "Automatic Backup" feature, its not very automatic though because it asks you if you want to back it up, what you want to name the backup, etc. How about a "scheduled backup" and a "automatic backup" the difference being that the scheduled backup asks you these stupid questions and the automatic backup will just backup whatever you select when configuring it and use a naming scheme like 'backupMMDDYYYY'.
Another neat thing is there are *two* internet browsers on the BB. You have "blackberry browser" and "internet browser", I can't really see much difference between them, but its annoying that there are two programs that do what seems to be the same thing.
Also, this may be related to my network/outlook setup, but typically my email gets to my BB long before it hits my Outlook client, which is somewhat fun because I'll feel the thing vibrate and look at outlook but see no email.
And the keyboard on this thing (BB 7250) really does make your hands hurt quick. I used to have a Danger Sidekick and I could type extremely fast with my thumb and never feel like a. I was going to drop it while typing and b. my thumbs were going to fall off.
Overall I'm not really very impressed with the blackberry, but atleast the Exchange stuff works as advertised.