IGX

I've had a Blackberry 7750 for 2 yrs and never had a bit of trouble with, Verizon was the provider. Then 2 weeks ago it died. The Java engine just crashed. A call to Verizon on a Sunday and they sent me a brand new one. After waiting 5 days I called on a Friday to find out where it was, and they overnighted me a replacement which I found on my back porch on Saturday. Got it all hooked up & reloaded & back in biz.

Then this Friday I started poking around curious about new models. The replacement 7750 seemed very slow compared to the old one. I scoped aout the latest and since I like the full qwerty keboard & wanted to stick with it.

It seems as though you are limited in your choice of blackberry models per vendor and Verizon doesnt carry the 8700 of any flavor (C,g or r). I look at Cingular (8700c) and T-Mobile (8700g) and T-Mbile was WAY cheaper. I got the Blackberry for $150 after rebate and a new Razr for my GF for FREE after rebate. Plus I will be saving about $60/month on the bill.
I ordered online & a rep from their shipping service called a few hours later. seems T-M ported my numbers immediately instead of waiting for me to actually have the phone. This meant my phones were basically dead. T-Mobile FedExed them & I got them Saturday!

A few hours of setup time & retoring the stuff from my old BB to the new one & all is good.

The new model uses the Edge network rather than CDMA and is extremely fast. Surfing on the 7750 was worse than dialup. surfing on the 8700g is almost as fast as cable & I think I can even use it as a modem for my laptop.

If you are looking for a phone/pda and dont want WindoZe Blackberry is the way to go. I can get up to 0 email accounts PULLED to the unit automatically. Once an account is setup in the BB is pulls mail from the ISP and you can set it to leave messags on the server so yo can still get the mail on another system.

The only thing I see that is not as good as the 7750 is the keyboard. They made it a little narrower whihc makes for more typos with my big fingers, and the screen is a bit shorter which means more scrolling.
But they made a few other improvements to it like adding call & disconnect buttons like regular phones and put a few of the special character on the main keyboard instead of having to use the Alt or Symbol key to get at them.

All in all a great unit.