BlackBerry Tour 9600 Made Simple: For the 9630, 9600 and all 96xx Series BlackBerry Smartphones

First and foremost, both the Table of Contents and the Index are missing a lot. I can only assume that much is also missing in the book, as I can't find it. The term "Mass Storage" isn't there, neither is a list of the Options (all of the ways to make the phone do what you want it to, including various diagnostic tests, and "hidden" tests). Descriptions of the functions of the Desktop Manager software is missing. When anything remotely technical IS discussed, it is usually to refer the reader to the BlackBerry on-line Knowledge Base articles, or to other on-line resources, such as the series of short videos produced by the publishers of the book. In addition, the authors seem to have some difficulty with proper English, at least in a technical sense. They refer to closing unused icons that may be running in the background and slowing down your processing speed. Excuse me? I was under the impression that icons are the graphical rendering of a program start command. I believe the authors mean to say to close down background programs. There is some discussion of the options included in the Options icon group, but they are not grouped together in any logical way. A lot of time is spent discussing Mac and PC issues. More needs to be spent on BlackBerry ones. The whole book seems to be a puff piece for the publisher and its other products. It is a lot easier to find out about that company than what I really need to know about my Tour.

The information is probably all in the book, but I had trouble finding most of what I was looking for and finally went to the Verizon store where they explained the answer or solved the problem for me. I spent a fair amount of book time in the early stages of owning the Blackberry and found it either not easy to understand or not well organized when using the index.

This is the book that shames the documentation that comes with the BlackBerry Tour. It is so comprehensive, it will answer any of your questions about how to use your Tour and it will also offer ideas you likely haven't thought about yet. It's an amazing instructional manual and I suspect even long-time BlackBerry users would pick up a multitude of ideas and suggestions from it. For casual referral when you've got a problem or to learn everything there is to know about your Tour, you can't go wrong with purchasing this book.