After about a week with a Verizon 7130e I must say I'm super happy.

I came from a 7250. The 7250 was great for email/calendar tasks, but just OK as a phone.

7130e improvements over the 7250 (IMHO);

• Great voice quality compared to my 7250
• I like the true handset form-factor, you can be a CrackBerry addict w/o advertising it
• The screen is awesome, even in daylight
• I for one, like the Suretype
• Can you say 'speakerphone'

Other's have opinions on the 7130e?

I agree................

Fully agree.

I totally agree. I came from a 7100t and the 7130e is drastically improved. I now have converted to one device instead of a phone and a PDA. Good job Verizon!

I agree. I was using phone and PDA and now everything is together and working great. Suretype is perfect and BB has simplified my working life.

Absolutely... and MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH faster then my 7750!

It does look like VZW has a winner with the 7130e. I'm very pleased with mine.

I concur. I am coming from Treo 600 then 7100T. For me, major 7130e improvements over 7100T:

>Amazing browsing experience. Must have a significantly faster processor as images are processed extremely quickly (nice on sites like Engadget and CNN)

>Tethering although I haven't been able to get this provisioned yet. If it is 1/2 way as good as my EVDO card, I'll be thrilled to reduce the number of things I carry on trips.

>Dialing speed. There is something about T-Mobile/7100T the dial tones can take forever to go through

>#1 difference for me is the way the keys are smaller and press with a better action than the 7100T. I can type faster on the 7130e than the 7100T. Note that if you get your 7130e for the first time in daylight you might freak thinking that the keys aren't backlit (doesn't seem possible that they are based on appearance but they are and look great)

Not as good:
>I had to (within the first 30 seconds of booting up) kill the Verizon theme. Man did they (IMO) pull together a crappy look. The biggest issue is that they use a gray background on all of the pages (e.g., when browsing) and it makes text very hard to read.

Don't even get me started on how this is a superior business tool than the Treo line (stability, ease of use, EVDO speed, stability, built-in apps like Alarm, stability...did I say stability?).

Agree........... And the slight increase in size actually is a plus regarding feel, comfort, and usability.

Wirelessly posted (Blackberry 7130e: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0) BlackBerry7130e/4.1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/105)

I completely agree. I came from a 7100g, and I can honestly say there is not one thing the 7100g does better than the 7130e. Well, except for international roaming. Heh.

I recently gave up on my 7250 after playing around with the new 7130e's for 3 new users in my organization. I couldn't take it anymore and had to switch.

I am sold after three days. I have the same comments as the other here about the device. If anyone at RIM is reading this, I do, however have a couple of things they can work on...

-Allow the SEND key to send SMS instead of having to switch to the side button.

-Adjust the magnet in the holster or something to end the key press issues with holstering and unholstering.

-Modify the Bluetooth profiles (on ALL devices) to allow better support for the handsfree profile. My wife has a Motorola E815 and on it you get soft key press tones and the DTMF tone in the headset when you dial. I like that so you know you are actually hitting the key.

And something maybe someone has figured out...

I am using the default Verizon Theme. I really like it in the way of the text style and the grouped layout. However, there are a couple of applications I would love to move to the main screen. Any idea how to do this?

He he looks like you had a 7750 for a long time. No wonder Mark calls it the Turtleberry.