Dear Dr. Theopolis....

My Verizon sales rep dropped off a Blackberry Storm for me to try out for a few days.

I like the physical appearance of the device. It seems fairly solid, and even has some metal parts. The screen is bright, clear and the high resolution makes text very smooth and images crisp. There's a full size headphone jack, like other Blackberries have. Even the clickable screen seems mechanically sound, and I think it is a good idea - if it had been backed up by solid software.

The software, that's where the Storm falls apart. It's just too sluggish. There are long delays whenever switching screens, when trying to unlock the device, use the browser, etc... I can actually type pretty fast on the Storm when it decides to keep up. Often there is a delay that results in the Storm not recognizing the first few key presses. This becomes very frustrating when trying to type in the unlock password. We browsing is not really any better than my Blackberry Pearl, which is not very good. In fact, I find surfing the web on the Storm even more frustrating than the Pearl, because you look at the form factor of the device, the size and resolution of the screen and you just know you should be able to do a lot more. I hate to compare to the iPhone, but the browser on the Storm isn't even close to Safari on the iPhone/iPod Touch.

In summary: nice hardware, bad software. Too laggy, browser not what it should be on this type of device. The demo is going back, and our 20 Blackberry users will be skipping the Storm. Maybe the rumored Storm 2 will be nice. Verizon had better hope so, because the closer we get to our contract renewal in a few months, the closer we get to moving to AT&T and the iPhone.