Al Sacco put together a great editorial for CrackBerry where he goes over his top 8 reasons why the Palm Pre’s “got nothin’ on BlackBerry.” Very good read .

Here are his 8 reasons:

• 8 ) Pre, First webOS Device, Could Be Flash in the Pan
• 7 ) Sprint Owns Pre Users Until AT LEAST 2010
• 6 ) Pre as an Enterprise Device? Not So Fast…
• 5 ) No Expandable Memory/Memory Card Support for Pre!!
• 4 ) The Pre’s Not Built to Last-But It Did Cut the Cheese
• 3 ) There’s Only One Pre… For Better or for Worse
• 2 ) The Palm Pre’s App Catalogue Is Weak Like Your Little Cousin
• 1 ) Pre’s Keyboard Is for Pixies and Lilliputians

The Pre is here; Palm recently released the much-anticipated Pre smartphone to the world-and the fate of the company very much depends on whether or not the device is a hit. Palm, former king of the PDA market, is attempting to pull itself back to the forefront of the smartphone game with the likes of RIM and Apple, and the Pre will no doubt be instrumental to its success…or lack thereof.

A while back, I penned a piece for CrackBerry called “Top 10 Reasons Why the iPhone Is NO BlackBerry,” in which I pointed out why Apple’s iPhone might be fine for your kid brother or all the Mac-heads at school or work, even your mom, but it doesn’t hold a candle to BlackBerry when the two are stacked up next to each other (I’ll be weighing in on the state of this ongoing debate soon now that the iPhone 3G S has been announced).

While the Pre is certainly exciting and I look forward to some quality thumbs-on time with it, I didn’t rush out to pick one up this week, nor will I be trading in my beloved ‘Berry for a Palm device anytime soon; the Palm Pre’s simply no BlackBerry.

Read more @ CrackBerry

By Al Sacco:

On the list of reasons why I admire Research In Motion’s (RIM) BlackBerry operating system (OS), the sheer number of built-in, valuable keyboard shortcuts ranks near the top. These tricks help you navigate your devices and data, as well as the Web, as quickly and efficiently as possible.

In fact, your BlackBerry’s literally packing hundreds of “hidden” tips and tricks, many of which I’ve already uncovered on CIO.com, with the help of high-level mobile gurus–even RIM’s co-CEO.

Today, I’m offering up a list of keyboard shortcuts specific to the BlackBerry browser. I’m sharing tricks for rapid movement around a Web page; one-click access to a variety of browser options; a page-wide search function; a tip to instantly enable JavaScript for individual Web pages, and much more. Read on to see a side of your BlackBerry browser that you never knew existed.

(Note: Some of these tips and tricks may not work on devices without full QWERTY keyboards, like the Pearl 81xx and 82xx series, as well as the BlackBerry Storm. I tested them all using a BlackBerry Bold 9000 running OS v4.6.0.228 and a Curve 8900 on OS v5.0.0.90.)

Read more @ CIO.com