Now I’m new to the whole bb thing. And as I might have stated before, I seen the commercial (ask why people love their bb). And that got me took. I came from using a treo 700wx which seems to do what I wanted is there a big difference between the two. Is there any were maybe you can point me to see the difference or show me the light in using a BB. I’m using the 8703e I think some of my concerns might be in using that model.
How do you use yours? Is it just e mail that makes this a high demand phone.
thanks

For me, I didn't have a choice. My company standardized on the Verizon 8830, so that's what I have. Now that I have it, would never go without a bb again. The features that make this a must-have for me:

Email instant push technology
Syncs instantly with corporate outlook contacts and calendar
Verizon network awesome in my area
Rock solid Blackberry operating system

Those are my high points. I'm sure others have many other reasons why we love bb!

kinda hard to say why to choose a smartphone with lesser capabilities than another smart phone.

You've just gotta get hold of one and try for yourself, the possibilities are many. Even tho most of the phones don't got wifi, which is a big con. It won't bother you.

I use my BB for personal usage, I get aprox 20emails pushed to the phone a day.
BB in Europe isn't that big as in US, I'm in Norway and thers almost no other users with BBs, at work during lunch thers always somebody commenting my phone.. heheh

Also what I really love about the BBs is all the applications avalible for it, its like a gameboy with push email.. hehe ;p

Push email is a huge benefit. Like a lot of people, I never know when an important email is going to come in. But before I had a BB, I had to actively check email all day long.

Now, I still get caught thinking I have to check email on my computer, then I realize nothing important came through on the BB, so I'm fine.

The other big plus is stability. The BB is a little less flexible, with less third party software, but a cell phone is something I can't have crashing. If I have a conference call, the phone just has to work.

I think the more consumer friendly BB models (Curve, Pearl, 8800 series kinda) match up better with other phone manufacturers. Before I had a Curve I would look at the older models and they were a little too basic for my taste. No media card, no camera, etc.

My perspective on this matter is this:

Blackberry's have always been known. Either mom/dad had one from the comany, it had a cool name (blackberry...who wouldn't like that? ha), or the name just became part of the booming wireless communications era since the start in mid-late 90's. A lot of people recognized the name blackberry, but most didn't know what it was. Until NOW. The marketing between RIM, carriers, and carrier sales reps, is fantastic (im glad to have been part of that)

Our era, especially with the demand for effective communication "on the go" between users, associates, internet, business, and just good old fun loving friends and family. Blackberry's design of the 8100 Pearl was introduced as a means to get these people what they want. The design was to catch the personal user's interest, then the trained sales reps come in to ensure that this device is what they'll need because it can... ... ... ... ...
and to also demonstrate what he/she said it can do, they'll show them with their personal blackberry cell phone. SOLD. after that, its been word of mouth, but not before the introduction of the 8800 series and the 8300 series. Now they'll have options to really fit their needs.

Just my opinion and observations though

My treo had the mp3 player, memory card slot, camera I very seldom use the camera and never got a memory card and never use the mps player but they were there. I don’t want a lot of useless things on there. But it did have a few short cuts that I was getting to like, the bb only comes with 64mb of ram now that seen like a little to me with all the newer models having extra things on there. Can bb use that little memory better?
My using this BB is still early I updated the o/s over the weekend I like that lot better then what was on there. I think it’s the same that’s on the 8830 out now. So that puts me on par a little bit. I don’t know how the 8830e is Alltel don’t have it in there regular line anymore. So you can’t just upgrade you have to go through there web site.

the blackberry has a lot less memory because it doesnt need a lot, windows smartphones are coming with more memory and card slots because of all the 3rd party apps you can install and the videos, pictures and music you can play.

for me it was the stability of the OS, i was constantly doing resets on my WM phone before i got the BB and the push email is awesome. WM claims to do the same with an exchange server but i was having a lot of problems with not getting emails until hours after they were sent to me on the WM phone. never once had that problem with BB.

the major thing is you either need to have a blackberry/email server to attach to or you wont be able to wirelessly synch your contacts and calendar. supposedly you can do it with the redirector software but i have always been on a BES. if you can setup a BES or your work has one the BB is great, if not then WM maybe a little better from a synchronization standpoint

well my job switch to verizon blackberry's but they found out are server didn't sync with bb so they have a long term contract and nobody can get there email from the phone. I'm going to probably still with the BB and hope i can get a newer model. but been with alltel. i have to take what they get.

what kind of mail server do you have? no mail servers sync with blackberry you need a BES server. no one at your work did any research at all before making the jump??? that sounds odd

no they didn't ist that scary