I recently purchased one of these and after nearly commiting suicide from frustration from not being able to use anything without a BB data plan, I would like to offer some guidance to anyone else who buys one of these without prior knowledge of Blackberries.

Everyone will tell you, that you cannot use a blackberry without a Blackberry data plan.

I have no intention of spending a exorbitant amount of money for 10MB of data, when I could have otherwise used a normal phone with the casual data rate.

I am here to tell you, that you *CAN* use a blackberry without a BB data plan.

The point is, all the software that is pre-installed from RIM will NOT work without the BB data plan, but that does not mean you cannot use third party software which will.

There is a hack out there which installs Service books, which without them you won't be able to download anything over the air.

The hack installs service books for push email and the BB browser.

After installing that, I recommend downloading Opera mini, this will allow you to surf the net. Go to Gmail, do your email, etc.

The hack, means that when you try and download something OTA on Opera, it will redirect to the BB browser (which without the service books, would fail to download) but because you have the service books, the download OTA proceeds.. very cool.

To use the GPS, you won't be able to use Google Maps (I did try downloading this, without success) Nav4All doesn't work for me either... I have however had success with MGMAPS (www.mgmaps.com) and find it very useful!! (You even have the option to download stored maps, so you don't need to use your data connection to download maps continously - I haven't been able to sort this out yet, as there are a few issues with blackberries; but it's looking promising)

NO ONE told me any of this, and I spent way too much time trying to figure all of this out, so I'm doing this as a service to anyone else who is in a similar position to myself.

Cheers

Any questions or problems feel free to PM me.