DON'T GET AN MOTOROLA PHONE MODEL V8

In the beginning I used Nokia but on a recommendation I obtained a Motorola Rasr V3i. This soldiers on, now with a Swedish SIM card, and after a lot of fuss and bother I managed to get it to display the Swedish characters Ö, Ä and Å. I got another V3 last year and this has done well too. The V3 was a handy package and well designed. They sync perfectly with an Apple Mac so you can make a backup of your contacts book and diary and transfer things between the two using iSync. The main snags are short battery life and sometimes the phone just crashes.

So I went into Carphone Warehouse and was offered a V8 as a replacement. These are very well built, well finished and more substantial. I was assured that I would still be able to transfer data between the phone and my Mac, as usual.

It doesn't work. There is a lot of information about the problem on the net. Strange that the firm didn't bother to sort it out. I have no intention of copying all my contacts by hand and then not being able to back up onto my computer.

And the software will drive you mad. It all looks flashy but it is not as intuitive as the old models. Before giving up on the thing I decided to see if I could load and unload stuff by connecting it to a Linux computer using the USB cable provided, to browse the filesystem of the phone in the usual way. But I was unable to do that using SuSE Linux 10.3.

Back to the Mac, I managed to export the address list as a file and transfer it to the V8 as there is an option to import contacts from the v-file. That didn't work either. So after wasting several hours I have packed it up and it is going back to Carphone Warehouse.

I don't suppose I will be the first person to have complained about the problem as transferring contact lists is the first thing one would want to do. Sounds as if Motorola has shot itself in the foot.