Got the 8700 on Friday...
 

I love it! BUT, i am new to Blackberry and I have 2 problems with it. I use sms A LOT and cant stand that my emails and sms messages are mixed together. Also I was a Treo 650 user and the Treo stored your sms messages as individual chats with each of your recipients. is there anyone who can help with this??? any other questions regarding the device, let me know.

yeah the BB devices aren't great for SMS. They'll do them but nothing that I've seen discussed which approaches the functionality of the Treo.

Actually, The BB does provide you a "chat" view of all the sms messages that was from the same user. It does however store them seperately in your inbox. I am also a Treo 650 user and find the SMS client there much better.

I used a Treo 650 for awhile and agree with you too. The SMS chat on the Treo was great. Pocket PC's are even worse than BB's.

I just moved over to the 8700 and love it! This, coming from a die hard PPC guy. I also set up hosting with exchangemymail.com today and the service is wonderful! It was soooo easy setting up my BB. Sorry, just had to share! :)

sms
 

no need to hold them down together....

alt then "s" lists sms mess

...also

alt "i" is incoming mess
alt "o" is outgoing mess
alt "s" is sent

alt "p" is phone calls etc....search short cuts posts here

i hope this works on 8700

alt "s" is helpful.
with hiding my sent it makes it a little better.
thank you!

Personally, when I'm doing many email transactions, I filter out my Sent messages altogether! I don't ever need to see them!

Will the Ramble AIM work on 8700?

yep, works great

Yeah, it does the chat list which is actually pretty cool. But, SMS seems like an afterthought on the BB. I am still on a 7290 - the single biggest SMS failing is that you cannot have multiple addressees on an SMS. Which is just silly. Having said that, once you've sent qwerty SMS messages, its hard to go back to t9 on a phone... Does the 8700 by chance address the multiple addressee problem?

yes, you can send SMS's to multiple adressees with the 8700

Great news - thanks (y)

Isn't there any third party software out there that allows you to send/receive sms messages without using the carrier's sms feature? Something like using the data packet to work around the sms feature? Thought I heard of this somewhere...

Can you give me an idea of why people fret so much over text messaging. I do not use text messaging at all, I find that I can do what I need via e-mail specially on the BBs since it has push e-mail and it is instant. I can understand somewhat using text when you do not have push e-mail or e-mail at all period, but I am at a loss on the incesant facination with sms messaging. PLease I am not trying to berate anyone just trying to understand.

Easy to explain - I have four children and a wife, and I am the only crackberry addict (recent convert from PPC). They all have "normal" cell phones, as do my parents. That makes 7 ppl I send sms's to from time to time, particularly my wife and kids. Until we all have BB's we still need sms!