8700c has been my first BlackBerry . I got it a month ago right in the thick of the lawsuit. Cingular 8125 came out soon after that which really made me to consider if I should go for the WIFI-enabled, full size keyboard and MS Office compatible Windows Mobile phone. In fact, I did exchanged for the Cingular 8125...for ONE DAY...before I ran back to the Cingular store and exchanged again for a BlackBerry 8700c. (I almost cried happy tears to have my beloved BlackBerry back from the angry sale rep who had to deal with me.)
Why the BlackBerry is the BEST communication solution I have ever used:
1. BlackBerry email is incredible. What can I say? I guess it's hard to appreciate its greatness without testing
2. Reliability of the operating system. I think this is by far the most important factor. Windows Mobile freezes or becomes extremely sluggish about 2/3 of the time I use it. It pratcially is useless. BlackBerry however is always responsive, stable, and most importantly you can MAKE phone call and RECEIVE phone call ANYTIME no matter you are running a Google Map or what not. (This is not possible on Windows Mobile. Whenever I am doing some CPU-intensive task the phone will just freezes for about 30 seconds.)