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BEIKS English Dictionary Gold For BlackBerry - BerryReview

Original Review Link: Review: BEIKS English Dictionary Gold for BlackBerry | BerryReview
Rating: 9/10
OTA Link: Welcome to BEIKS Mobile!
Desktop Link: BlackBerry dictionaries, phrase books and other language and reference solutions by BEIKS
Cost: $14.95 (7 day trial)
Compatibility: OS 4.0+



Our review of BEIKS English Dictionary for BlackBerry devices has impressed us that we have awarded it our Editors Choice must have seal of approval. The dictionary includes about every word that we through at it with concise and effective definitions. The search as you type feature is very useful and I found myself using the dictionary every day while writing presentations and executive reports. As a side note they also have many different language and professional dictionaries but that is beyond the scope of this review. Read on for a detailed review of why BEIKS has a real winner on their hands.



Installation: The install of the dictionary requires two parts. First you must download the dictionary viewer from BEIKS which is a small install and then you download the English dictionary. The download for the dictionary is quite large at 2.2 megabytes so they do offer two flavors of the dictionary. The Gold version has 34,000 words at 2.2 megabytes and the Standard version has 17,000 at 1.1 megabytes. Personally I installed the Gold version for this review since most recent devices have room for the large files. Hopefully in the next revision BEIKS will include support for installing the dictionary on a microSD card to free up space on the BlackBerry. Once you install you will have a 7 day trial of the software. My issue with registering this software is that you cannot copy and paste the registration key into the activation screen. I am not sure why this is the case but hopefully this will be changed in a later revision.



Interface: When you first open the application you are prompted with the list of dictionaries that you have installed on the device. For example on the review device we have the English Gold Dictionary and the English Thesaurus. You only have the option to open one at a time.



Once you open the dictionary you will see a screen such as this one above. The beauty of this dictionary is that it actually searches for the word as you type. That means that you do not have to type the whole word. You then scroll down through the word suggestions below. Personally I found it a bit difficult to see which word I was selecting since the only indication is that the word is indented out. Hopefully in the next revision they can add the option to change the background color of the word being highlighted.



Once you found the word you wish to look up you either hit enter or click the menu button and select translate.



You will then be shown the translation of the word. You can see some samples of how this works above. You do have the option to copy the translation to the clipboard for easy emailing. Sadly there is no send definition by email option.



Personally I only had two complaints about the software. In truth they are not really complaints but rather suggestions on what would make the software even better. The first you will notice is that with 34,000 words in the Gold edition you are limited to the definitions on the device. Don't get me wrong there are some really useful definitions on the device (See above). But when you get to words like paraskavedekatriaphobia (Seriously that is a real word =) is obviously not in the BEIKS dictionary. This is not BEIKS fault but rather I think the dictionary would be more powerful if it had the ability to expand the search beyond words in the dictionary. Maybe a way to say if the word is not found automatically search online on Google. I personally think that this would also help with the definitions of the 34,000 current words. If you could search for a word and you did not like the definition you should be able to search on the urban dictionary or something to get alternate results. The other thing I was sad to see was that there was no relationship between two dictionary's. This means that if you have the thesaurus and dictionary installed you cannot just go back and forth between them. As the saying goes a man can dream...

Pros:

• Full featured dictionary with 34,000 words and great definitions
  
• Fast lookup as you type
  
• All words are stored locally so no waiting for a reply from a web server

Cons:

• No ability to extend search online
  
• No option to email results

Conclusion: BEIKS has a wonderful dictionary application that I found invaluable. We awarded it the BerryReview Editors Choice "Must Have" award since we found the software extremely easy to use and was a wonderful resource to have on your BlackBerry. Personally once I installed the dictionary I found myself using it 2 or 3 times every day. There are still the few suggestions that we mentioned above but none of them are actually problems with the program. Rather we are just hoping that BEIKS will add the functionality to the application to expand its usefulness.