I, too, have Causerie for BlackBerry--in use on my 8700c from Cingular.
I bought a subscription to Causerie Premier two months ago, and I have yet to get my registration key from Mantra Group, the company that produces Causerie.
I had used it on my Treo 650 before I switched to the BlackBerry platform (and boy am I glad I did!
), so I'm familiar with the software. Overall, Causerie is a very good piece of software. It, like many other programs, has a few glitches now and again, sometimes too much, I like to think.
I enjoy the 'bots' feature, and I also like the ability to have two accounts per client service. It is nice to have two AIM's, two ICQ's, etc. The thing that gets me is that my overall experience as a *second time around subscriber* is that things just are not working out well at all.
First, when I bought the thing on
www.mantragroup.com, their shopping cart didn't properly register my purchase with their online proof-of-purchase system, thereby leaving no record of my purchase for me or them to refer back to. Since I bought it from them, it *should be there!* Alas, it is not.
My checking account shows distinctly, a debit from Mantra Group for the amount of the Premier subscription one-year rate. I went over this point exhaustively--literally exhausting both my own mental strength and patience--with the tech today, and it was a relief when I finally received a registration code. . .that didn't work.
I have had an open support ticket with Mantra Group since May 22nd of this year. My last post to that ticket was June 29th, and the problem is still not resolved. I keep getting told that the problem will be forwarded to their developer.
Some of the more technical issues I can trace to the program hanging on a connection when Causerie has trouble connecting to it's servers, then, after a few minutes of trying to connect, using the Escape Key (8700c) to close the program. A dialog box pops up saying "Still Trying To Connect To (service/AOL, ICQ, what-have-you)." This results in Causerie in an infinite-loop-style connection hang; one can not use the click wheel to either end the program or get out of it.
Pressing the END key for the phone gets you back to the Home Screen, but doesn't stop Causerie's running in the background, ergo, <i>using up space in memory</i>. The only solution I found was resetting the device by removing the battery.
As long as Causerie can connect to it's servers, it seems to do just fine. I would almost definitely say that it pays to use MDS with this service, as I have not been able to connect using either the Direct or the http:// settings. I just got a BES/MDS hosting account with
www.exchangemymail.com and using MDS has solved the issue. So long as Causerie can connect, it should work.
Well, I'm off to dinner. I hope that this thread will help others who like Causerie to help get it through to the developers, marketers, and tech support staff at Mantra Group to fix the bugs and make it a better client. I really like it, but the difficulties with the registration issues make me think that Mantra Group would be better off with a single-price-model for the software, and not a subscription service--at least right now.
Hoping this is at least of some use,
Warm regards,
Stephen Brown