I'll be there. See my picture. Should be able to pick me out. Seriously that is a photoshoped version of my passport photo. See if you can find me in the crowd.

I plan to be there too and my photo will make me much easier to pick out in the crowd. Just look for the cool looking dude.

I'll be at NYC tonight... will post any interesting tidbit . . .

Hey John, have fun in SF . . . don't forget me . . .

I was told when they called to confirm that vouchers would be issued. No actual units would be given out at these. Say hello to Lance for me crisambo.

I won't! I too hope to have a few tidbits to relate here and at least my initial impression of the device. Anything I can do for you while I am there?

I hear they only give them to the first 100 people that register accoring to our rep? Can anyone confirm this?

I will be there tonight.

I will be there too!

Well, how is it going. Can you post here from the show 8700 and be the first in the forum to post via 8700?

Love the 8700c. Not much wider than the 7100. Feels really good as a phone. Very fast. Most of them did not have SIMs. I tried one from one the Cingular reps. Tried the phone and the web. WoW the web cooked and the phone sounded really clear to me. I think this will be a winner. Food was great. Excellent sushi, and I drank Blackberry Tini's. I give it a thumbs up. Yes we got vouchers but I think all this talk about plans is rubbish. My firm's rep will be calling me. I have no worries.

First of all, the browser was very fast. I tried cnn, espn, msnbc, and a few other sites and it was very fast compared to my 7100t. Very fast as in the page loaded within 10 seconds. I was very impressed by the edge speeds even though there is much faster technology already out.

The keyboard was a little hard to type on given the narrower size. I started getting a little more used to it within the first 5 minutes of use, but I was still a little concerned.

The form factor felt awesome. Didn't feel clunky in the hand and had a very solid feel overall.

I was impressed overall and can't wait to get my hands on one within the next few weeks to test out the sound quality.

The cingular reps were very bullish on the sound quality but they also thought that the 7100g was amazing in terms of sound quality. The 7100t/g was crap in my opinion in terms of sound quality so hopefully this will be better.

I was there too and I am equally impressed with the 8700. I made a call to my voice mail and recorded how it performed in what can only be called a very noisy environment and it sound really good. I will post it tomorrow when I am back in L.A. It is surprisingly small. THe keyboard is a little harder to ype on without making mistakes because the keys are closer together but they are as large so that helps. I would say easier to type on than the Treo 650 or HP 6500 but harder than the 7290. I had the HP 6500 with me and it looks huge next to the 8700 which really suprised me. The screens were about equal in brightness and I would say the 8700 is slightly more yellow (I could be wrong because it adjusts to ambient light and in other lighting it might look different). I spent a good deal of time talking to the folks there and I have a lot of things to report that I will share later. Bottom line..I am glad I will be getting one.

Edit: There is some really interesting capability in the Hermon chip set that Cingular, Rim and Intel folks shared with me.

Another thing. Comes preloaded with 4 Themes. One is the 7100 theme and one is one you have seen posted here. Seems like these will be more popular than ever now.

Stinson,
I looked and looked for you at the show. I thought for sure I'd recognize you with the screws and all on your neck. Where were you hiding?

I should have planned better. It would have been good to hook up with some forum folks.

I saw him, he had his coat hanging on the screws so he was hard to recognize.

Has anyone from the SF launch event heard from their rep about getting an 8700?