[unclebrudy]

Hey folks, hope everyone is having a nice weekend.

First off, my current BB, the 7250, has been my workhorse for the past few years, and has never let me down- until I let it down by dropping it in the ocean. (Oh, the irony.) I ordered a replacement on eBay, but it came in with screen corruption, so while waiting for the company to send me a new one, on a whim I thought I'd give Helio's Ocean a spin.

A little bit about me: I do not use BES. My 7250 is strictly for PIM, phone, and general reliability and ruggedness vesus my "look-at-it-funny-and-it-restarts" Treo. I've never been compelled to try a data plan through Verizon because frankly, I've never needed it since I don't browse the web or push any email to it.

I must say, convergence is surely a nice thing with the Ocean. Having my Hotmail, Gmail, and IM clients running full-time on it is actually something I've gotten into. (My son is calling me a "mid-lifer", but I digress.) The Google Maps GPS is pretty nifty, too, but not so much that it'll replace my Garmin, just that- nifty for finding a gas station in a pinch, etc.

I have 27 more days to play with it before I need to commit to it for 2 years, so here's my question for all you wise BB folk: I understand that google mobile maps isn't location-based because of Verizon, but is available nonetheless for everything else. Would an 8830 be able to push my Hotmail email (could've sworn this needed some kind of subscription for POP access) and simultaneously run multiple IM clients? Additionally, I've grown fond of browsing the web on the Ocean, even though, to be frank, pages render like crap. Is BB browsing fairly acceptable. I don't need Flash or anything, just better rendered pages that maintain even a minor semblance to their full browser counterparts. Adding unlimited data to my Verizon plan would set me back $45, or running both my 7250 as a phone only and keeping the Ocean for the fun stuff would cost an additional $80, which is fine with me if you folks think the 8830 wouldn't sate my need for these leisure functionalities.

Thanks in advanced. I apologize if my questions have obvious answers or if I sound ridiculously naiive.

-Brian