[AaronR]

I'm travelling in Los Angeles now, and, having waited anxiously, finally went to a Best Buy to look at a physical product. My experience?

1) It's in the telephone section, not the tablet area. Not grouped with Samsungs, nor the iPads - just a corner display on it's own. I took 20 minutes to find it.
2) It's on a stand. That's it. No literature, no helpful sales person, no "what we can do" video, nada.
3) The sales people have not one clue of how it operates. They were given no training, no sales materials.
4) They have only the stock they need to fulfill pre-orders. All the 64 & 32 units are spoken for, and they have lots of 16s, but, like, so what? Oh yes, the price on the 16 is fixed - no bargaining. OK, it's their store. But. no walk-in sales stock, either.
5) They could not crack open a box to even let me look at the manual, since they couldn't spare telephone sales time. When I asked about operating instructions, the salesperson (order taker) walked me over to a screen and got me on to the RIM web site. PHOOEY!!

I can only think that RIM presupposed they had a captive business audience and did not need to work at keeping the arrangement going.

I STILL don't know if it will tether with my 9000 of the wife's 8330.

[hrbuckley]

I picked one up in MD while traveling. The Best Buy had BlackBerry Brand Ambassadors and the sales staff was very helpful. They had all models in stock too.

[ZombieBerry]

Originally Posted by AaronR

I'm travelling in Los Angeles now, and, having waited anxiously, finally went to a Best Buy to look at a physical product. My experience?

1) It's in the telephone section, not the tablet area. Not grouped with Samsungs, nor the iPads - just a corner display on it's own. I took 20 minutes to find it.
2) It's on a stand. That's it. No literature, no helpful sales person, no "what we can do" video, nada.
3) The sales people have not one clue of how it operates. They were given no training, no sales materials.
4) They have only the stock they need to fulfill pre-orders. All the 64 & 32 units are spoken for, and they have lots of 16s, but, like, so what? Oh yes, the price on the 16 is fixed - no bargaining. OK, it's their store. But. no walk-in sales stock, either.
5) They could not crack open a box to even let me look at the manual, since they couldn't spare telephone sales time. When I asked about operating instructions, the salesperson (order taker) walked me over to a screen and got me on to the RIM web site. PHOOEY!!

I can only think that RIM presupposed they had a captive business audience and did not need to work at keeping the arrangement going.

I STILL don't know if it will tether with my 9000 of the wife's 8330.

Not the 8330. You need minimum OS 5. Your 9000 shouldn't have any issues.

[AaronR]

Oh! Heavens!
Does that mean I have to change my nice, stable 4.6 to buggy 5.822?
I'd rather buy an iPad.

[NJBlackBerry]

Feel free.