Katie Boehret, trained by Godfather of Gadgets Walt himself, reviews the Blackberry 8800 in this week's edition of The Mossberg Solution. The whale of a PDA picks up some styling cues from its hipper sibling, the Pearl, including its namesake white trackball, and the swoopy keyboard design, transposed to its QWERTY.

She likes the trackball, but loathes the keyboard:

...this device's keyboard...left me frustrated no matter how many emails I typed...Instead of using essentially flat keys like those on older BlackBerrys, each key on the 8800 has a slight, distinguishing ridge that I found annoyingly restrictive; my thumbs had to be in exactly the right positions to type well. Keys on the older keyboards can be tapped from any direction or angle.

Corporate IT departments and CEOs everywhere give a concurrent, collective sigh.–Brian Lam

BB 8800 [WSJ]

Contact information for this author is not available.