Looking for a way to increase your BlackBerry’s battery life? PC World has a nice informational post that can help you save battery life in a few different ways.

Here is what I do:

• Set my BlackBerry to automatically turn off at night for a short amount of time.
• Turn off the radio (antenna) when I’m in a dead zone (no reception).
• Don’t let my battery get into the red (almost dead).
• Delete old messages and phone call logs (more memory more battery usage…I think).
• Set screen brightness to lowest setting.
• Turn off TrackBall clicking.

Pretty basic, but it works.

It’s difficult enough to keep plain-vanilla cell phones charged for a busy day of just talking.

But these days, we also use our smartphones for e-mail, surfing the Web, editing documents, accessing corporate networks, text messaging, enjoying music and video, playing games, managing our personal information and much more — making it all the more catastrophic when our devices run out of juice.

The problem is that while smartphone capabilities have increased dramatically in recent years, batteries have not kept pace. “Phones do so much more now, but battery technology hasn’t advanced that much,” says Scott Riddle, digital sales supervisor at BearCom, a retailer of mobile equipment. Riddle regularly hears from customers about their struggles to keep smartphones charged. “Everybody has this problem,” he says.

Fortunately, there are many things you can do to significantly increase the time between charges, although no one solution is a silver bullet. “It’s a lot of little things that help,” according to Riddle.

We asked Riddle and other experts for their best tricks to extend your smartphone’s battery life. Here’s what they told us.
Remember the Basics

First, some basics. You may already know these tips, but if you apply them diligently, they can help increase battery life.

Read more @ PCWORLD.com

Macintosh users and BlackBerry users have much in common; they can be fanatical about their favored hardware (and we do mean that in a good way). But it has been difficult to be a devotee of both, because the Mac support from Research in Motion (RIM) has been lackluster. For years, RIM BlackBerry users with Macintosh computers have complained about the lack of Mac-compatible BlackBerry tools. But that’s all going to change within the coming year.

RIM plans to release a set of new tools within the first half of 2009 which will address a number of longstanding complaints from Mac users, according to a source within RIM who asked to remain nameless because the company’s not yet ready to officially announce details or release dates.

It can’t happen too soon, as the existing limitations can be annoying, to say the least. Currently, BlackBerry owners with Macs cannot perform a number of important functions which are built-in to users running Microsoft Windows with RIM’s BlackBerry Desktop Manager software, shipped with every BlackBerry device. The Desktop Manager utility (which, we’re told, does run in Parallels) enables Windows users to update their BlackBerry operating systems; to back up and restore data on their BlackBerrys; and to manage BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) corporate e-mail settings, as well as other features.

There are a couple of Desktop Manager alternatives for Mac users, including PocketMac and Missing Sync, but neither offers close to the full range of features within BlackBerry Desktop Manager for PC. In fact, in the first two installments of this BlackBerrys and Macs series, we compared RIM’s Desktop Manager with Pocket Mac and Missing Sync to see how the software measured up. It’s clear that neither is a suitable Desktop Manager alternative for power users.

Read the whole article at PCWorld.com.

PC World has done a pretty nice review of the BlackBerry Bold. Great pictures, really detailed, and not a long read.

“The Bold is by far the best BlackBerry yet and has very few flaws. A refreshing new interface, outstanding display and reasonable multimedia features are just some of what it has to offer. Most importantly, this superb device is great for both enterprise users and regular consumers.” Ross Catanzariti

For the full review click here.