Hi,

After three years of waiting for Treo to get its act together and failing, I'm thinking about going Blackberry.

One of the things that I'm concerned about is the performance of third-party apps on the BB. My Treo has the Windows Mobile 5 software, and I know how bad app performance can be on that. (I would primarily run office productivity type apps: PDF reader, Word/Excel, and the like. I probably wouldn't use them daily--but enough to not want to be annoyed by their performance.)

I also noticed that the two models I'm looking at (8130, 8830) have half the memory (64MB Flash/32MB RAM) of the Treo (128MB Flash/64MB RAM).

Can anybody who's used these type of apps let me know how the performance is, and if you've had experience with the Treo w products, how it compares?

Thanks for your help!

Performance on BB devices is pretty good. One of the reasons for this is that it, unlike WM (and the apps developed for it), isn't "bloated." It's simpler, albeit with the ability to do more complex things when needed.

As far as memory, it's true that the smaller RAM size means that you won't be able to store as much. But, again, you'll find that you'll need less simply because the architecture better uses memory.

I use a Tilt and 8820, mostly the latter. Software performance on the 8820 is good considering the programs are written for this platform. So, don't expect to see the wide range of software with a high level of UI and graphics on the blackberry you see on WM. With WM you can just install software on the memory card and load as much as you want. Memory is more limited on the Blackberry.

Regards-Michael G.

Stats say it all - 73% of corporate users depend on BB's.

I didn't use the Treo apps before but I have to say the BlackBerry's performance is quite good.

palm OS treo user here. I switched a couple of weeks ago. So far, 3rd party performance is good on BB is good, but limited. The number of BB apps is no where even close to treo apps. But I am satisfied.

One thing that most of the replies that you have received so far fail to mention is that at this moment your ability to edit in office productivity applications is quite limited. The Office suite is not available now -- Docs2Go will be available when OS 4.5 is officially released. Some other options also exist right now.

Don't get me wrong; I prefer the BB to the other options that are available for my needs, and it is much more stable. But you should probably do some more research and check out the aftermarket software that is available on the BB for what you must accomplish.