I work for a very large firm that has a very large account with Cingular and I am being told by our IT people that it may be months before the 8700 is available to our organization from Cingular. They say that we will continue to supply employees with the 7290 for the forseeable future. Does that sound right? I realize we may have some units stockpiled, but is Cingular planning to ship new 7290's long after the 8700 release?

At any rate, I am less excited about the 8700 given some of the reports I have read here about poor phone performance. What a bummer if true...

Can't you just buy the equipment from Cingulars Premier site?...if your company is with Cingular, go to Cingular's site, put in your company email address, and you should recieve an email with a link to the Premier site with your companies discounts. That way you don't have to wait for your company to recieve new units...unless of course you get free from your company.

I do get the handset for free form my company - I would gladly pay $149 rather than wait, but they won't link it to our BES if I do that...

Very interesting post jjdnyc. I am a BB admin for a very large firm with a very large account at Cingular and I too have told my folks that it will be months before we deploy the 8700's in lue of the the fact that the 8700 will not be "end-of-lifing" the 7290. Because of this, we will not get the 8700 at the price that we get the 7290 for which is probably the biggest reason that we won't be delivering it sooner. I have very close connections with our Cingular reps who have not told us when the 7290 will be terminated. Until that day we probably will not be able to get 8700's. One other thing to consider before you go rogue on your BES Admin and buy your own device. While it isn't technically possible with the current BES version (4.0 sp3) it will be possible with BES 4.1, which he/she will probably be upgrading to soon, to restrict which device and from which carrier an employee can attach to their exchange or lotus account. You might want to ask your IT pro so as not to really tick him/her off. We wont bite, at least not most of us. It is always better to be up front with and IT pro than to go behind the back to do things. Just my opinion.

Actually,the first thing I did was raise it with Blackberry support. Thats how I learned that they would not be getting the 8700s anytime soon. When I said I would buy one myself, I meant through the company - ie. I would pay for one myself. - I was not thinking of buying one directly from Cingular and then asking the company to support it. I know better than that, from years of being told "no" in relation to PDA's, smartphones etc... I appreciate the heads up on BES 4.1, but I don't think that they will want to hear about me supplying my own handset.

Thanks for the color that the real reason for not getting the 8700 is price. That is what I suspected which is why I asked the question in my subject "7290 still available at Cingular?". Oh well, looks like I will be stuck with the 7290 for a while, which means I am going to be stuck with 2 devices since I just cannot live with the 7290 as a phone. And I have tried... When we eventually switch over I will have to pay for the 8700 but like I said will be happy to for $149.