Blackberry Storm..post Oct-09 upgrade: far from a perfect storm

 Well, it was that time of the year: a new software upgrade for my wonderful BlackBerry Storm.  I did receive an email - on the Storm - letting me know that I needed to go to http://verizonwireless.com/storm to get my new upgrade.

Huh? what happened to OTA upgrades (I thought)...anyway...I promptly got right on it and went to the website.  Whereupon I was a link "Upgrade Storm software", which took me to a....pdf file that informed me to go the verizon site to get my upgrade.  OK.  Now what.

I ventured the page and found a small non-obvious link in the middle of links describing the benefit of the upgrade - and I clicked on that.  Finally - a page that said (basically): you need firefox, not safari.

I forgot about the love affair between Verizon and Microsoft. So I went over to the Windows machine (Vista) and used - gulp - the newest IE (with Bing!) and tried it there.  The first time - no kidding - it crashed. the second time it downloaded a 25 MB file to my machine, and after going through the typical executable steps, I was up and running...and running...and..resting.  The process to load the software onto the Blackberry lasted - no kidding again - well over an hour. The entire process was over 90 min. 

the install process deleted Yahoo Messenger and AIM.  Deleted the Google Voice app too. 

Everything else appears to be intact.  I did have to long into viigo again.  And the softkeys now have an apple-esque "genie" effect.  Supposedly the touch controls on the screen have been improved, and other physical/interactive features, but I have not noticed anything earth shattering yet.  If I do, will add comments later:

Summary:

- need to use a PC, or, try with Firefox
- download is over 25 MB from Verizon
- tranfer to Storm takes over an hour
- you will need to reload some apps.  Read the log on the computer for details.
- prepare to be underwhelmed.