1. Is the SanDisk "Mobile Premier" product worth the extra money?

1-B. Is 8GB necessary? Or is 4GB enough? I don't need 8 if 4, for example, holds 20 movies.... I'll never watch that many in one sitting..... How much memory does one movie "typically" occupy?

2. What's the best software converter to get movies onto my Curve?

3. Is there a place to download movies in the correct format or do you truly have to just convert your own DVDs at home -- fine either way, I'm just wondering if they can be bought/rented PPV style or whatever....

4. How does the Curve do (re. picture, performance, and sound) with movies?

5. I know I can't OTA real-time sync with BIS (which I absolutely hate.... sorry to vent a little), but can I make my Outlook and/or Hotmail messages appear as "already have been read" through the "wired" sync process if I've already read them on my desktop/handheld and vice versa?

6. The BlackBerry case that came with my Verizon Curve is great, but I need the "faux" belt/visor clip to be functional -- who makes the best visor clip so I can pop it in there while I'm driving?

"Worth" is a personal judgment call. I use a standard SanDisk 4GB microSD card and it works well for me. I wouldn't consider a "mobile premier" product to be worthwhile if it had an added cost but YMMV.

This is another question where there's no one single answer. Think about it this way -- can you really have too much space on your PC/Mac's hard drive?

I have 1GB free on my 4GB media card and it mostly contains music. I have intentionally left 1GB free because I also use my 8310's camera quite a bit for on-the-go snapshots. If I could get a 40+GB microSD card for just music I would to house my entire collection.

The space taken up by a movie is going to depend on the length of the movie, how much it's compressed, and the content itself. Your best bet for figuring this out is to take a movie and encode it based on your preferences to give you a starting point.

As with any "best" question you need to qualify what you mean. I feel that the software I use is the best but it's professional and expensive but I already own it for the video work that I do. I suspect that your needs are different and you don't want to spend thousands of dollars just to get a movie on your BB.

Feel free to vent but you do have to pay for features that you want (full reconciliation means BES). There are options to reconcile during wired sync but I don't use BIS really and can't answer as to how well/if this works. Gmail and Yahoo offer at least partial reconciliation though that probably doesn't help since you're asking about reconciling with Hotmail. I'd also point out that BIS isn't the only limiting factor with regard to reconciliation. Your mail server (Hotmail) would need to support it as well.

Here's another "best" question.

IMO you can't beat RIM's OEM holster. However, you'll get a number of varying opinions -- especially when you don't specify what you mean by "best".

Xilisoft Video Converter Is the best and easiest one I have found. It has a wizard too that makes it really easy to do. It converts the movie files to very small files that will easily fit on a memory card. There is a website that you should check out called Giveawayoftheday.com that has new programs on it every day that are free for that day only. All sorts of programs. I got it off there for free, but it was only free that day. I converted the files to 3GP and i think the whole movie was 80 mb. Good luck.

Thank you very much for the helpful information. It's refreshing to see that some people have the ability to read a list of questions, pick one out on which they can offer quick advice, and actually offer up a little help in the form of a quick suggestion or a life experience they've had -- instead of repeatedly saying "well.... 'best' is a pretty stupid word to include in your question" and asking them to go off and form their own opinions on these things they don't understand... when obviously they're struggling to form these opinions on their own -- or they wouldn't be here asking for help and guidance from complete strangers.

So to you, I say thank you very much.... and I appreciate the response.

2 hours of video truncated into an avi format able to be digested by the BB is between 275 and 350MB, depending on the amount of "action" in the video subjected to compression.

here's a free video converter: Blackberry Freeware

it's VERY simplistic, the results are ok, but you will of course notice some artifacting... dont expect dvd quality after conversion as the program chooses to optimize footprint over optimizing video quality. but hey, it's free and really simple to use... 2-click operation once you set it up, and only 8-10 clicks to set it up.

Great link there, oakie. Sure can't beat it for free!

Thanks!

Supercool -- thank you! I'll try it! Do I just have to do my own movies? Or is there a place where they're shared or buyable in the right format that one can simply download straight to the phone?

Thanks again...