[lexluthor]

Hopefully, I'm in the right place here.

I've had a Motorola Q (Windows Mobile) phone for 2 years now, so I'm pretty loaded up on software and I'm pretty set it my ways of doing what I need to do on Windows Mobile.

My NE2 is up on Verizon and I'm looking to get a new phone. There are no WM phones I'm interested in at the moment and it looks like the HTC Diamond and Touch Pro are pretty far off in the distance.

The BB Storm looks like it could be a great piece of hardware, but I'm pretty scared of jumping into the complete unknown of a new OS.

I guess I'll get this started by explaining some things I do/need to do and hopefully it can all be done on the BB system. If it makes a difference, let's assume all questions will be related to what can be done on the Storm, as opposed to other BB devices, if that matters.

1) Email - I use the phone for business and personal email. Right now, I use a 3rd party WM client and connect either on demand or sometimes via IMAP IDLE (sort of push). I've heard all about the BB email addiction. I want the ability to check on demand or to have it pushed to me, but only when I want it pushed. 90% of the time, I don't want any notification/downloading of new emails unless I actually go and check email. The business account is a hosted exchange account (which does have some sort of support for BB devices, though, based on the above, I'm not sure I'd want to set it up that way), the personal account is a gmail imap account.

2) Is there any way to sync my contacts and calendar with Outlook on my desktop? Can I sync over the air with my gmail calendar? I use the free oggsync now to do that on WM.

3) This is probably a tough one since the Storm isn't out, but maybe the answer can be based on other BB Verizon devices. I'm in a pretty low signal area and EvDO mode absolutely kills my Motorola Q battery. So, as a sacrifice, I've accessed a hidden menu and enabled 1x mode only. Will I be able to do that on the Storm? I'm hoping that somehow the storm pulls in a better signal or has a much better battery than my Q and this won't be necessary, but I have no way to know that now.

4) Can I run Opera Mini? In other words, can I run Java apps, which Opera Mini is one of. Because of #3 above, IE or Opera Mobile are real slow on 1x as I'm sure will be the default Storm browser, but Opera Mini is quite usable on 1x.

5) Can I use Avantgo on BB Storm? It looks like it's available for the BB, but no idea if it'll work on the storm
my.avantgo.com / rim

6) Music. Right now I sync using Windows Media Player. It looks like there's some BB program that will allow me to sync from ITunes? I think I could live with that if it's pretty simple. I don't really need to sync DRM'd music.

7) I use Google Maps/MS Live Search, but looks like I'll be ok with that on a BB.

8) Can I play videos? What formats are ok? I'm using TCPMP on WM now which pretty much takes any format. I'm already recompiling movies for the Q, so really shouldn't be a big deal to get them in whatever format the BB requires. It'll wind up being the same amount of work.

9) Any suggested sites where there's blackberry freeware/shareware type programs that i could look over? I do have a decent number of games. Not that I play them much, but it's nice to have that diversion there once in a while.

I assume it'll have a solid contact/calendar/alarm system so I wouldn't need a 3rd party program like I use on WM.
I'm sure I'll have some more questions shortly as well.

Anything else anyone want to comment on about my potential mobile OS switch?

Thanks in advance for any help. It's appreciated.