Just got my 8700 this past weekend. Had an issue with activation but that was squared away (the rep forgot to add BB connect in my account).
Now I can surf the web and send/receive messages. However, when I tried to send test messages to my BB, thoese messages took between 5 to 20 minutes to arriave into my BB.
My question is, how "instantly" do messages generally are received in BB's? Is 20 min. a "norm"?
Thanks.

This is dependant on many factors. Your outbound mail server/path, the inbound server (BES or Webclient), the network congestion at that moment, etc.

The worst I've personally seen have been on big spam/worm days where our BES server doesn't even see the messages for 20/30m if not longer. But my general performance either with BES or Webclient is well within the 30s mark and no longer than 2m. If you're consistenly seeing that type of delay I would suspect a problem.

Then again, perhaps my BB use has been excessively lucky. I'd like to see what others have experienced. -Pk

It is discussed in here in several spots, so search around a bit. The short answer is yes, it polls every 15 or 20 minutes unless you get a hosted BES, then instant. Another way to get instant, which is what I personally do, is to get a free Gmail account, forward all of your personal email accounts to it, then use the Gmail customizeable filters to get rid of spam, then forward the Gmail account to your BB. I get spam-free email from 5 account in 1-5 seconds from being sent. Perfect for those of us without BES. Otherwise, look into BES from places like exchangemymail.com, link2exchange.com, mailstreet.com, etc.

You generally have 4 options to receive email,

1) from a corporate BES, which is almost instant
2) forwarded a copy from your mail server to the ( you don't need Gmail, your current mail server can do just fine) which is also instant
3) use the which is also instant
4) set up your email on the webclient from your provider. You can receive email from up to 10 accounts this way, but this "polls" as seattle18 stated, I think Cingular it is a 15 minute polling.

You guys are good people! Thanks for the great answers.
Forgot to mention in my post that I use BIS via Cingular. I have configured my three mail address to forward to "myname@provider.blackberry.net" address and it is indeed blazing fast.
Thanks for your help.

As nb_mitch mentioned, this works as quickly, the only thing you lack is the spam/junk mail filtering you get with Gmail routing. But there is also this program (http://www.webmessenger.com/products/mablackberry.htm) that does filtering right on your BB, similar to Outlook's rules method.Either way, I just can't live without something like this - too many spam messages!