BlackBerry 101: the Help Me! screen explained

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I tried to find something today, a tidbit of knowledge here at CrackBerry.com for Storm and Pearl users about getting to the Help Me! Screen. I couldn't find it. I remembered the gist of the information, I remembered writing the darn thing, and I still couldn't find it. When I finally tracked down the article, I realized the Help Me! Screen needed its own BlackBerry 101, and here it is.

For most BlackBerry users, it's a simple three key press top access this useful little screen. Press the alt, left shift, and H key at the same time. Don't worry about pressing them simultaneously, just make sure all are depressed at the same time. In other words, while holding both the alt key and the left shift key, press H. Pearl users can hold the alt key and type R A C E. Storm users will hold down the return (back) key while they click the top left corner, then the top right, top left, top right and release. Slightly complicated, but it works. Any further questions, head on into the CrackBerry forums.

So what information does the screen give you?

Vendor ID: the identifying number Research in Motion uses for your specific carrier
Platform ID: Internal designation for the Java Development Environment
App Version: When you hear about such and such leaked or official OS, this is the number we're talking about.
PIN: Your Personal Identification Number; the unique number assigned to your Blackberry.
IMEI: International Mobile Equipment Identity, your carrier's way of uniquely identifying your device on the network. When changing devices, it's a good idea to alert your carrier of your new IMEI.
MAC: Media Access Control address; uniquely identifies your smartphone on the network. Every single device connected to the internet will have it's own MAC address.
Uptime: the amount of time (in seconds) since your BlackBerry was last restarted
Signal Strength: Your carrier's wireless signal strength represented in dBm. Through a quirk of physics and math, the numbers are all negative. A higher number is still better, thus -65 is a much higher signal strength than -127.
Battery Level: The amount of charge left in your battery
File Free: The amount of space available on your BlackBerry's internal memory. This figure does not include removable microSD cards.
File Total: The total amount of space in your BlackBerry's internal memory. Also does not include removable microSD cards.