Today I upgraded my BlackBerry Bold to the *leaked* OS5 to see what lies ahead of us and it’s great to report that OS5 finally features Follow Up Marking, which I’ve been using in Outlook for ages, but it was still missing on my BlackBerry. Until now, which is super cool!

When I receive an email in Outlook, I always flag it for follow up (if I need to do something with it later), keeping my inbox nice and clean. Whenever I wasn’t behind my desk (happens a lot) and I read a potential follow up message on my BlackBerry, I always had to keep it in my inbox for later Outlook Follow Up Flagging, which made me feel a bit itchy. But those days are over now! I do have to check Outlook and see this actually works and hopefully the BlackBerry flagged messages get picked up by my Follow Up Search Folder. Haven’t seen Search Folders on my BlackBerry, but of course we can’t have it all in one go, simply because I want it 😉

Unfortunately I lost the ability to use Windows Live Messenger (it says I don’t meet the minimal system requirements, which is probably a stupid & simple version check issue anyway) and I can’t find the Facebook icon, although the app is installed and even updating to the latest version (which caused no problems at all!) didn’t bring it back.
Live Messenger was really cool and I’ll miss it, but I think this is only temporary. It’s cool to always be online (I have an unlimited international data plan) and it didn’t take me long to remove Messenger from my PC’s. I’m not sure if I’ll reinstall it on my PC’s while proper BlackBerry support is missing…

I noticed that the new PC Live Messengers have multiple screen/device support nowadays (cool! be online on multiple devices and read the same chats on multiple screens), but the BlackBerry version doesn’t understand that yet and logs you off when your PC goes online, while the PC version “understands” concurrent logins and reports that your chats will be visible on more than one screen. I feel there’s a bit of work to be done by our friends in Redmond so I’ll just be patient in the mean time and remain offline for Windows Live Messenger…

I’m using my BlackBerry in Dutch, so it’s strange to see a menu option that says: “Text löschen”, which is obviously German, but those are the only bad things I’ve come across so far. What would “Text löschen” do, anyway? Investigation needed, here…

Stability looks ok and that’s not the least!

I do feel a bit strange about the new Profile regime. I’ve had a quick look at it and I have a feeling that my old preferences (phone rings loud when holstered and modest ring when unholstered) will be difficult/different to translate into the new OS, but I’ll dig into that a bit deeper tomorrow.

Have to sleep now; being on holiday still involves getting a bit of sleep every now and then 🙂

My Bold is now powered by OS 5.0.0.90 (91) and I feel very excited about it so far. The future is now!!! See ‘ya!