5. Hot Apps, Continued

Features such as bookmarking, detailed Webpage history archives and other features make the browser comparable to any other for PCs. The small display remains irksome, but there is not much that can be done about that. One nifty stand-out feature is that the browser lets you email your bookmarked Webpages - why can't PC browsers allow you to do that as a default option? Could it be that Microsoft lacks the development resources to offer such handy functionality for Internet Explorer?

The 8800's media player is adequate for viewing image and video files and listening to music files, at least to a certain extent. Instead of relying on the notoriously cumbersome Blackberry sync software, the 8800 allows for file transfer with a UBS connection from a PC. Moving files to the 8800's media player folder from a PC with Windows Explorer - using both XP and Vista - is just as easy as it is to copy files to any mainstream MP3 player.

While I could open the JPEG and MP3 files I transferred from my PC to the 8800, I ran into problems with the video files. The media player could not read Microsoft's WMV sample video that comes with Windows Vista, nor could I play a simple MPEG video file that I had made using my digital camera. We were unable to determine the cause of the video file problem before this review was completed.

RIM did not alter the 8800 organizer software too much compared to previous Blackberries, but there is not too much you can add to an address book, calendar, memo pad and task utility anyway. For these features, RIM seems to have followed the wisdom of the expression "if it ain't broke, then don't fix it".

Synching the data up with my PC using the Blackberry software went a lot more smoothly that it had in the past with older Blackberries. The desktop synch software is still not terribly intuitive or straightforward, but I could at least get it to work. I even managed to transfer my Outlook Express contacts to the 8800, which I could not do with the 8700c.