Sorry, but my patience has run out.

I’ve waited and waited for Iliumsoft to come thru with the promised eWallet for Blackberry originally scheduled for release July 2008.

No longer will I wait. I’ve found a solution that works for me, Keepass, the open source password manager, with the following pieces to the eWallet puzzle;

• A plug-in eWallet converter that takes an exported eWallet text file and imports it into Keepass.
• A windows desktop client (Mac and Linux versions also available).
• A Blackberry client that includes near full sync (deletes are not supported, you have to manually delete from both sides to keep them in sync with deletions).

This completely free solution works and is available right now. I was up and running in about 30 minutes with the most difficult part being the somewhat cryptic instructions on configuring the sync in the Blackberry desktop.

For those former Palm users who are now on the Blackberry having extreme eWallet withdrawal pains, check out Keepass, you won’t regret it.

Well, the Verizon contract was up last month so I went cell phone shopping. The wife has a Palm Treo, as does my daughter, and both are extremely happy with them. I strongly considered the Treo, but couldn’t bring myself to go with it due to the lack of full support for handsfree bluetooth voice dialing. With California’s recent handsfree law, I wanted a solution that was 100% handsfree.

Enter the Blackberry. The Curve is a really nice device. No too big and not too small, great screen, great sound and 100% handsfree bluetooth dialing. The only downside I could find was having to give up the Palm Desktop and eWallet.

I really really dislike Outlook. The simplicity of Palm’s Desktop software along with Thunderbird as a mail client have been working well for me for many years now. Changing would be painful.

I also find eWallet an indispensable tool that I can’t do without. Good news there is that IliumSoft is working on a Blackberry version of eWallet that they promise to release real soon now.

After much introspection and second guessing myself, I finally went ahead with the Blackberry Curve. Spent a weekend of pain jumping through hoops to get the data off the Palm moved to Outlook so it would sync with the new Blackberry (that is a story in itself, not easy but doable).

Now that I’m there, I’m delighted. RIM did a great job on the Curve, the setup was a snap and the Desktop Manager seems to work well. Other than the pain of working with Outlook, I couldn’t be happier.

Now, if IliumSoft would just release eWallet….