Debate on blogs this month has been about whether it was safe for Mr Obama to keep his BlackBerry.
He has a World Edition BlackBerry 8830, a phone Mack-line trialled last year.
Mr Obama lamented in an online interview with the NYTimes.online that the Secret Service and his lawyers appeared to be winning the battle to deny him his electronic link to friends, family and news of the larger world.
There is no doubt that millions of BlackBerry users can sympathise.
Blackberry devices can prove addictive to many.
Recently, I sat in a bar in Dunedin's Octagon having a quiet drink with a friend who carried on with Blackberry email without a second thought.
Unfortunately, I had to take a call on my Telecom World Mode phone which sort of made my protest about him doing email a bit futile.
But the thought was there.
Email does arrive on my phone but I can usually resist the temptation to look for at least three, sometimes four, minutes.
One of the first reasons for taking the BlackBerry off Mr Obama was security.
Research in Motion (RIM), the Canadian company that makes the BlackBerry, boasts that its devices and network were designed from the bottom up to protect the data that passes through them.
When companies install RIM servers on their internal email networks, their employees' BlackBerry messages are heavily encrypted before they are sent to one of RIM's network operations centres and passed on to other devices or networks.
RIM said that if someone were to intercept a message, it would be virtually impossible to unscramble the contents.
Mr Obama would be a prize target for hackers, spies and other nosey people who would try to exploit any kind of error made in configuring the device or the White House BlackBerry server to read his email.
Then there is the problem of whether Mr Obama's BlackBerry would give away his location to people trying to harm him.
Every mobile phone continuously contacts the nearby towers in its wireless network when it is turned on so that calls and data can be routed to the phone.
In the good old days, a mobile phone in New Zealand used to tell you it was "roaming" when you were out of home territory.
Now, you switch it on here, Auckland or Sydney, and it works just fine.
While technically possible to follow Mr Obama's BlackBerry signal, it would be unlikely that he moves anywhere in secret within the United States.
The large entourage that accompanies a US president makes the prospect of secrecy unlikely.
Some phones still offer the option of turning off the locating signal, making it harder for tracking.
But it is just as well that 9-year-old Natalie Maltais did not turn off her locating signal after she was kidnapped by her grandmother Rose Maltais.
BBC News reported that officers in Athol, Massachusetts, joined forces to use the GPS in the girl's mobile phone to find her approximate location.
They fed the co-ordinates into Google Street View, pinpointing a hotel where the child was subsequently found.
Google Street View has had some bad press here and overseas but that is one good news story.
I am sure there will be others.
It appears Mr Obama will lose his battle to hold on to his BlackBerry from tomorrow, when he is officially sworn in as President, but not because of the threat of people tracking his movements.
His legal advisers are worried that his impromptu BlackBerry conversations could become the subject of legal battles.
US lawmakers, historians and open government groups routinely request all presidential communications under federal laws like the Freedom of Information Act.
Under the 1978 Presidential Records Act, administrations are required to turn over their communications to public archivists who make them public starting five years after the end of the president's final term.
A New York lawyer wrote: "In this day of inevitable investigations, any time you have written documentation of what the president is saying on any particularly subject, then in that investigation, these records may be requested and could be obtained.
"Then you've got the president in the thick of it."
In the first two weeks of the John Key-led Government, late last year, it was fun to watch new National MPs play with their new BlackBerry devices.
Act New Zealand leader Rodney Hide is an old hand at a BlackBerry but it was clear that some of the newbies had traded in their old phones for a new device.
They were fiddling with very shiny smart phones.
Eventually, some of us will be requesting copies of their emails sent while lunching in Bellamy's.
Remember the leaking of emails from the officer of former leader Don Brash? As this column was being ended, an alert from a US website arrived on my phone.
A US judge had just ordered a search for "missing" emails from outgoing President George W. Bush's senior advisers.
Perhaps that is reason enough for Mr Obama to bid farewell to his BlackBerry.
