I usually am an ‘early adapter’ of technology. This is a term I learned from my geek-husband (said affectionately, of course), who works with such things for a living. I think that’s one of the reasons (I know, I have to admit it) that I liked loved working in the CCU so much. All those wonderful gadgets and toys to play with – sometimes had to remind myself to ‘treat the patient, not the monitor’.
Well, for years and years I have used a succession of Treo smartphones with the wonderful Epocrates Essentials reference suite. In clinic, it’s absolutely glued to my hand (no, not to text my children … to check drugs and compatibilities and make sure I don’t hurt anybody by prescribing the wrong thing).
To make a long story short – the Treo died. Decided to try the Blackberry. Well everyone else at my fine institution is sporting them on their waistbands! SO MUCH TROUBLE SINCE! My eyeballs are spinning in their sockets from two days of staring at this teeny screen trying to get stuff to work. The litany of problems goes like this (and this is the abridged version)…
- Blackberry doesn’t sync with Mac (I will NEVER give up Mac).
- PocketMac doesn’t work with my Mac for some reason.
- The Missing Sync worked for mostly everything (guess I don’t really need the calendar anyway), but is expensive.
- The Blackberry ran out of battery three hours into the saga.
- The only version of Epocrates that runs on BB is the simple one. Might be ok?
- Tried to download PEPID – it’s well-rated but expensive (Epocrates is free to me through my institution)
- Didn’t work
- Called/emailed/chatted with PEPID people. Problem with MAC.
- Finally got it to work. PEPID people were lovely.
- SO MANY WORDS ON THAT LITTLE TEENY SCREEN.
- More eyeball spinning, leading to the maximum allowable dose of naproxen for me.
- Deleted PEPID – too expensive anyway.
- Downloaded the basic Epocrates. Oh well, I should know where to look up the other stuff anyway.
- Now to figure out the BB and why it keeps telling me I have messages when I don’t.
- Do I want to keep this thing? Or go back to the clunky Treo? Aargh.
I think the problem really is one of shaken foundations. I am usually quite adept at the technological things. Why so much trouble with this?
If you’re reading to the end of this, YOUR EYEBALLS are probably spinning. Sorry to share my angst with you. Feels good to write it all down. Isn’t that what blogs are for???
my new centro works nicely.
Let me guess: you have a Pearl. I traded mine for a Curve, which for some reason works better with my Mac. Also has more memory for my med stuff. The free Epocrates seems OK, or Skyscape has the Davis manual. I think Skyscape is evil and wrong, but they’re the big name in the game so I buy from them anyway. I was a Palm fangirl until a few months ago when I went from Centro to BlackBerry: the learning curve is steep but worth it!!