Hey guys, I'm new to the board.

I am in the market for a BlackBerry, but I cannot figure out which one I like, or which one performs better than the other. I am coming from the Samsung SCHI730, and the Palm Treo 700P. I can't take these PDAs freezing and lagging anymore, so it's time to move on.

Just had a few questions:

1) After looking on Verizon's website, I see they offer the BB 8703 and the BB 7130. Which is the better phone?

2) Are you able to add personal MP3's as ringtones to these phones like you are with the Windows Mobile phones? Meaning, can I drag an MP3 from my computer, and set it as a ringtone on my BB?

3) Does the same method work for alerts? Such as customizing your voicemail and text message alert as a custom sound from your computer, etc.

4) Do these phones have any type of document viewer such as Word or something? I constantly am carrying around Word documents on my removeable storage device now.

I did a seach, but didn't really find anything. I read the article about the ringtones, but it only pertained to the 7100 series, which is helpful, but I am leaning more towards the 8000 series.

Help me fellas, I can't take these Windows Mobile phones anymore!!

Wirelessly posted (7130e: BlackBerry7130e/4.1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/105)

I have the 7130e with Verizon. It's an awesome device. If you will text or email more than using the phone then I would go for the 8703e because it has a full keyboard the other features of the device are the same. Both are very reliable.

Welcome, we all started as newbies at some point in time...

Depends on whether you're going to do lots of emails, if so then the 87xx series might be easier to use rather than the 7130. Note that the 7130 has been superseeded by the 8100 and so Vz are clearing out old stock of the 7130

Yes provided that's its running 4.2 version handheld code. Both the 8700 & 7130 only runs 4.1.x out of the box. I've upgraded my 87xx to a pre-release 4.2 and it works fine with mp3 tonez. I'm not sure whether 4.2 will be released for 7130, I'm doubting it. also some carriers don't support upgrades for several months until tested post release to them from RIM.

The 8100 has the advantage of supporting memory cards so you can load the full Mp3 on the mem card without issues. To make my tonez work on the 8700 i really had to strip down the track to the first 30 seconds manually prior to upgrading.
Yes. You can have different sounds for different email accounts if you require.
You can view attachments sent by email - .doc, .xls, .txt, .csv, .pdf, .jpg but other than jpgs theres no native saving of the files for later review - essentially the attacment is streamed to the device rather than stored.

If you really want mp3 tones / functionality I'd have a look for an 8100 or the 8800 which will be out in the next couple of months. Both of these support memory cards and have the 4.2 s/w version to support playback out of the box.