OK so needless to say, I am probably going about this the wrong way, since I am a cheap SOB, but I am at the point of throwing this thing in the freeway and going back to the mundane phone...

I bought a 7520 on ebay and that was all good, except that I don't have the BB data plan, just the generic. So, no text messaging, no internet, etc. The IT guy at work had a couple thousand CDs for the desktop software that he loaned me to use.

I loaded the disk and the desktop manager connected to the handheld, great. I went and downloaded the current desktop software and the newest OS, installed new desktop software and now it will not connect to the handheld. The computer recognizes the BB when it is plugged into the USB, but the software will not connect to the BB, so I cannot install the new OS...

what am I doing wrong? I have tried the procedure on my laptop (vista) and on my desktop PC (XP) and I get the same results.

uninstall the desktop software and install version 4.2 sp 2. There are many bugs in the current version (version 4.3)

The link from Nextel to Blackberry says that the most recent desktop manager version is 4.1, that is what I installed. does that make a difference?

there are several newer versions than the 4.1. Vista has a fair amount of issues with DM, i *think* 4.2 sp 2 is stable with it, but if you search for Desktop Manager and Vista you will find many posts on it

Great, thanks for the advice!