Even as someone who actually uses a blackberry, I recommend you do some soul searching before you decide to get a blackberry-like cellphone to push your e-mail to you. For me, it's been a big lifestyle change. You don't check your e-mail; your email checks you. It seems from your post, you want this just for your personal e-mail account. If that's entirely the case, I recommend you go for it.
However, I strongly recommend you do some soul searching before giving into the temptation of having your work e-mail sent to your phone. As a grad student, my departmental e-mail tends to get used for both work and social stuff, and while most of the time getting my e-mail on my phone is nice, there have been multiple occasions where I received a work-related e-mail that I would have been much happier if I had seen and dealt with once I got into work in the morning, instead of seeing in the evening while having a good time. Also, the temptation to constantly check your e-mail on your phone can make your poor company to be around. Occasionally I make a conscious decision to leave my phone in my car/office/somewhere so that I'll be a better conversation partner while in public.
So yeah. If it's strictly for personal stuff, I definitely recommend getting your e-mail on your phone. It can be extremely convenient. If you have a number of friends who also do e-mail on their phone, using e-mail instead of SMS can save you a lot of text messages/money. And GMail integration with blackberries is very good. Blackberry and GMail have an arrangement that has GMail accounts push e-mails to blackberries basically instantaneously. The reason I switched to having all my mail forwarded to GMail a few months ago was because I would get my mail on my phone instantaneously, rather than every 10 minutes or so. So when I'm actually sitting at a computer, my phone will often notify me that I've received mail well before my gmail session informs me.
If you only want it for emergency stuff, there are generally ways to use text messaging or combine text messaging with e-mail for this sort of stuff. (For example, have a special e-mail filter that forwards important housing related e-mails to your phone.)
I don't have much to say about the second question.
However, I strongly recommend you do some soul searching before giving into the temptation of having your work e-mail sent to your phone. As a grad student, my departmental e-mail tends to get used for both work and social stuff, and while most of the time getting my e-mail on my phone is nice, there have been multiple occasions where I received a work-related e-mail that I would have been much happier if I had seen and dealt with once I got into work in the morning, instead of seeing in the evening while having a good time. Also, the temptation to constantly check your e-mail on your phone can make your poor company to be around. Occasionally I make a conscious decision to leave my phone in my car/office/somewhere so that I'll be a better conversation partner while in public.
So yeah. If it's strictly for personal stuff, I definitely recommend getting your e-mail on your phone. It can be extremely convenient. If you have a number of friends who also do e-mail on their phone, using e-mail instead of SMS can save you a lot of text messages/money. And GMail integration with blackberries is very good. Blackberry and GMail have an arrangement that has GMail accounts push e-mails to blackberries basically instantaneously. The reason I switched to having all my mail forwarded to GMail a few months ago was because I would get my mail on my phone instantaneously, rather than every 10 minutes or so. So when I'm actually sitting at a computer, my phone will often notify me that I've received mail well before my gmail session informs me.
If you only want it for emergency stuff, there are generally ways to use text messaging or combine text messaging with e-mail for this sort of stuff. (For example, have a special e-mail filter that forwards important housing related e-mails to your phone.)
I don't have much to say about the second question.
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