Ogo: The Poor Man's BlackBerry

The Ogo interface is pretty easy to use, once you get used to the somewhat slippery round-headed shape of the device's keys. Particularly trying on my patience and fingernails was using the 8-key navigation gizmo that operates more-or-less as a Tab key on steroids, but does manage to get you from place to place on the screen.

The Ogo sports a faded-color screen with colors that can't be changed, and the usual array of notification and keyboard sounds, most of which can be switched off and on and alternatives selected.

The Ogo software doesn't include any text editing tools, such as cut/copy/paste, and the keyboard is more suitable for one-thumb typing, rather than the two-thumb typing I have been able to get so good at on the BlackBerry's more-elegant keyboard.

There is no way to interface the Ogo to your PC, which means that if you have contacts stored there you can't bring them over. But text-editing on small devices is a sketchy hobby at best since small keyboards, especially ones with rounded keys like Ogo's, are inherently hard to type on, and Ogo is designed for Web-based e-mail users, not Outlook users.

The Ogo is a poor man's BlackBerry -- not the real thing. It's not nearly as powerful, but it does only cost $100.