I went out and got myself a Blackberry yesterday.
Firstly, the purchase fed the gadget hunger while being cheaper than getting another Mac (Titanium Pbook).
Secondly, I needed (or felt that I had the need to) stay in touch while I was in class on Saturdays. This is mainly because the guys at work tend to do their OTs on Saturdays. So the Blackberry would allow me to stay in touch without using the Powerbook.
Long time visitors to svgeek.com will know that I was one of the early adoptors of the Blackberry. Unfortunately, in those days, spam filters were almost inexistant. So my Blackberry would be merrily vibrating every minute or so with spam.
In 2006, spam filters are a lot better and that makes using a Blackberry for personal email a good option to lugging around a notebook.
The model I got is a Blackberry 8100 aka Pearl. It is slim and sleek and lots of bling with shiny metallic sides.
RIM now has a Blackberry Internet Service (BIS) that allows you to easily set up access to your email accounts via the device’s web browser. You set up access to POP3 or IMAP accounts. There is no need to set up your own Blackberry Enterprise Server 
I had trouble setting up the three email accounts I wanted to use.
Initially, it took sometime for the device to get registered on the Internet. So the built-in browser could not get connected.
The other problem is due to the fact that the applications on the device do not shut down. They are always running.
When the web browser started working, I started the process of entering my email information. However, I was in the office and had to run off for a meeting without exiting the browser session. After the meeting, I tried to set up email again, but kept getting errors while trying to access wap.voicestream.com. In fact, none of the T-Mobile WAP sites were working.
The solution was to pull the battery. This forced the system to do a cold start.
With this glitch out of the way, I was able to set up my first email address.
Although the 8100 is targeted at the consumer market, I would say that the real audience is the prosumer. I would not expect a real non-techie to be able to set up the device for email. Indeed, I would advice T-Mobile sales associates to help their customers set up email. Otherwise, expect a bunch of returns within the first 30 days.
I will post more observations over the next few weeks.
However, I expect the 8100 to be really useful. I have already been getting a bunch of work emails this morning and already know which meetings I have this morning