Recently I received a letter from Cisco acknowledging that I’ve fulfilled the requirements which meet the CNSS 4011 training standard for information security professionals in the federal government. A valid CCNA certification and passing the 640-553 IINS exam meets this standard.
More information can be found here.
On a last minute business trip to Japan, I had to figure out how I was going to get my email remotely. Japan is 3G only, and my new Curve 8900 does not support 3G. My options were to buy a Blackberry Storm (uh, no), start a new plan with AT&T and get the Blackberry Bold 9000 (uh, no), or rent a Blackberry 8707G. These are currently the only Blackberry’s available with 3G support. I decided to go with the rental.
I did a quick Google search and came across Roadpost.com. Their rental plan is very straight forward – $19/day (plus optional daily insurance) which includes a nice travel kit too. Email & internet use is free and unlimited, but phone calls and texting are extra. Within minutes, I had placed my order on the phone (because remember, this was all last minute!) and had the phone the very next day. When I received the phone, it came with everything I needed, it was clean, and in excellent shape. At that point, I configured the rental for BES use, sent/received a few test emails, and I was on my way.
Once in Japan, the phone connected to their local wireless network provided by NTT DoCoMo, and the emails I missed (while on the 13 hour direct flight from New Jersey to Tokyo) started to roll in. When I was able to start Outlook on my laptop, the Blackberry send/receive delay was almost unnoticeable compared to Outlook. Internet browser speeds were decent too.
After I returned from Japan and was ready to send the rental phone back, I reconfigured the 8900 for BES use, and shipped the rental back in the pre-paid FedEx envelope provided by RoadPost. I was then billed for my use accordingly.
The only trouble I had with the phone was that it is a little on the slow side at times. Occasionally it locked up for a few seconds during heavy use, but that was really all. It’s not the sleekest phone available, but it got the job done without spending a lot of money.
Next time I travel to Japan, I would definitely rent again from Roadpost, considering that I don’t have a new 3G phone by then!