I have switched to the Blackberry Bold 9700 & am running the latest development version of HanDBase Pro.
I use my HanDBase app every day on the job to keep track of my patients and to keep track of all my billable activities. (I am a self-employed Fee for service Anesthesiologist.)
I have switched to HanDBase for BB in the last month or so & have found certain features missing that I took for granted on the Palm version. These significantly affect the usability of the application (in a negative way). I have been in touch with customer support at DDH & they have reassured me that there will be fixes for these issues. I have not yet seen or tested these fixes yet.
I though it might be useful though for users to compile a list of bugs and features that would be useful to users & to allow others to know how the BB version differs from the Palm version.
*** In the BB version, if you navigate away from a record it will lose all data entered unless you remember to press the BB menu Button and choose "Done". If you press the "escape" key, you instantly lose all data entered for that record. It does not prompt you to save or discard changes. This needs fixing.
*** BB version: There is no "Save record to New" (equivalent to duplicate record in Filemaker). This was a very useful feature in the Palm Version as it would allow a full transfer of all patient data on that record to be applied to a new encounter. This would be a very welcome addition to the BB version of the Program. Not having this results in a lot of extra work.
*** BB version: All relational popup databases are not operational. Accessing another related Dbase will open (slowly) the related dbase but one is unable to actually click on any item in the dabse to allow it be appended to the primary record.
*** Search functions are essentially inoperative on the Device.
*** BB Version: VERY slow compared with the Palm version. I had previously been able to have several years worth of data in use on my Palm Treo 680 (3000+ records). The palm version was quick and pretty reliable. All linked dbases were instantly accessible & worked as they should. Opening, creating new records etc. was essentially instant. The BB version on the other hand had to be culled down to a few months worth of records or else it would slow to a crawl taking over 30 seconds to save a new record. It is still slow, taking about 8 - 15 seconds to save a new record after I click on "Done" . I only have about 4 months of records saved at present but fear that as I continue to add records it will again slow to a crawl.
I am quite disappointed in HanDBase so far. Tech support has been responsive in fielding my concerns and quite polite & sympathetic, but real fixes have not been forthcoming yet. The major reason I went with the BB over the iPhone was the understanding that HanDBase would port over to the BB and allow accurate entry on a tactile keyboard. I have so far not been able to port over anything useful and have essentially started from scratch. I now have a dumbed down version of HanDBase on my new device.
I have been exploring other options such as FMTouch's BB version of Filemaker, but it is not really out of the beta stage yet.
It's hard to believe that a much more modern platform running BB OS 5 can be so much less functional than the ancient Palm OS. I would recommend that if you can continue to use you Palm, stick with it until some of these bugs and features are remedied. I do hope for a fix soon but am quite disappointed with the performance so far.
Have other users out there experienced the same issues? Any fixes?
-evan
