I am a gadget guy, so why was I so reluctant to purchase the Storm? After all, it is sexy, solid because it is a Blackberry, and runs on the Verizon network (can you hear me now?). Why did I hesitate?

• The reviews are fairly consistently negative ... not terribly negative, but enough so that it made me think harder than I would have liked. The more I thought about it, I had to go with my long held belief that bad news gets way too much attention on the Internet. After all, people who don't like something are more likely to go on the Internet and complain and gripe than are those who like the product and just go about their daily business.
  
  
• There was another problem with the reviews that helped me get by them ... the only real comparison for the Storm is the iPhone. This means that a lot of the reviewers were iPhone users and carried their iPhone bias into the review, in my opinion. That isn't to say that the iPhone isn't a better device .... I don't know, I've never used one. But for those of us who look at it as a phone first, email second, web browser third, and really don't care much about the music, games and camera, it seemed a lot of what the reviewers were criticizing where things that didn't mean much to me. Moreover, I couldn't get by the fact that the reviewers simply were not weighing the factors in a way that made sense. For example, with the iPhone you have to use AT&T, and the battery is not replaceable. Sorry, but for business users who travel, those two things should be given much more weight than how cool the games are.
  
  
• It was version 1.0, and there were what appeared to be valid OS complaints. I waited until the first OS service release was available and saw reviews that it helped with crashes (I've not had any in my first 48 hours of use) and slowness. For example, one complaint was how slow the switching from Landscape to Portrait was. The only comparison is with the iPhone. This video comparing the Storm and iPhone in this area put that issue to rest. The Storm is a little slower, but it is insignificant.