Hey Brendan...
I'm using one at the moment & I'm pretty impressed. First off they look the biz (a first for BB), feels real nice in the hand & up to the ear (I was using a Kjam before that.. as a result I ended up with one huge bicep from lifting to my ear... that & the excessive wanking). They also have a very pretty screen, not sure of the specs but it looks good.
Because RIM's OS is java based you can customise a whole lot of shit in it. You can pick which icons you want on the screen & also what they display. For example a theme that I like is the today screen.. each icon has two entries below it. So from the home screen I can see my next two appointments as well as any unread emails or missed calls. A guy here has also just downloaded a comic book theme which has turned the whole thing into like a comic strip. So the battery icon & stuff are in one of those speach bubbles, very cool.. as soon as he can figure out what all the icons now mean.
It also has the camera, supports itunes, mp4's & all the other multimedia stuff that you'll find in nearly every other phone. The voice recognition stuff wasn't bad either, you don't have to add voice tags it just knows by the spelling how it should sound. But like all that voice stuff it's a bit of a wank & doesn't always work.
What I didn't like... The inbox view imo is shit, you can't distigush between email or sms. It also doesnt present them clearly, considering that's the things main task I would have thought that'd be better. My biggest gripe would be suretap.. which is BB's version of predictive text. On a BB you have 6 extra keys so each key has 1 or two letters. So you know how for the last 8 years you've been pressing the 2 key for the letters A/B/C, top middle... yeah well forget that shit, cuz it'll fk you up. Now A's over to the left & the shit's all over the place.. sorry but give me the 8250's predictive text or a full qwerty any day of the week.
There also seems to be a few little glitches with the sw, inc one nasty one with the caller not hearing you for the first 5 seconds. Happening all around the world & newer firmware seems to do the job.
As for outlook.. well all BB's have done a good job at syncing up with it. That's their main job so you won't have any problems with notes, tasks, memo, cal & address book. If your company has a BB server it'll do all that stuff in real time wirelessly.
Battery life for it is the worst of any blackberry, but that's to be expected with it's flashy size & screen. You get about two days or maybe a day & half with full on use.
The main problem is the cost of running the things. The cost of the device is good at around $600 but the ongoing cost is the kicker. It doesn't just do pop mail like your Nokia does, you need to subscribe for that which is around $30/40 a month for some carriers. That's just your email cost, no calls.
Alright.. there's a bit of food for thought.
Blackberry Pearl (8100)