I've recently upgraded from a 6730 to a 7730, but it didnt come with a cradle although I do have a serial one that came with the 6730.

Will the 7730 work in a serial cradle or is it just USB ? If it can take serial, do I need to change something on the phone itself ?

If it doesn't have a serial connection on the bottom of the device, then its USB only. This is the way all new BlackBerrys are made. You can probably buy a USB cradle fairly cheap. The USB cradle is simply the cradle itself, no cables running to it. Its basically just a stand and you connect the USB cable directly to the handheld.

The 7730 will work in a serial cradle, I have a couple users who do so but there also running WIN 2K I'm not sure XP might require USB connectivity.

I'm running windows 2k with the serial cradle. The 6370 syncs fine, but the 7730 doesnt want to know.

Blackberry handheld manager just shows COM1 as being disconnected when the 7730 unit is fitted into the crade.

I didnt know if the Blackberry needed some sort of power requirement from the USB cradle ? or if there was some setting on the balckberry which needed chaning to enable the serial connection.