Blackberry: The First Few Hours

Last night I became a Blackberry user.  I’m excited about the communication options this will give me at times when I’ve previously been unconnected.

I now have a Blackberry 8700g with service through T-Mobile.

Here are my thoughts on the first few hours:

• I was very impressed with the purchase experience.  Total time in the store was probably only 20 minutes since I knew what I wanted and the sales representative didn’t waste my time.
• Activation was perfect.  Voice was active before I walked out of the store, and data was active by the time I got home and plugged it in.  I was told that data activation could take up to 24 hours, but my experience was closer to 24 minutes.
• Setting up push e-mail through my Gmail account was very easy.
• I haven’t yet figured out a good way to get the thing out of the belt holster without accidentally pushing at least one button.
• I wish that the mobile version of Google Reader would automatically mark things as read without me having to explicitly do it for every 10 items.
• I currently use a Palm for most of my PIM functions; this weekend I’ll be moving contacts and schedules to the Blackberry and will blog about how that goes.  I know I’m in for some challenges… why?  We use Google Calendar for our home calendar.