I consider MSNBC.com tech reviewer Gary Krakow to be one of the most astute pundits out there.

For what it's worth- and that's a lot - Gary is quite wowed about the BlackBerry 8700. That's the device that Cingular debuts a week from Monday and Rogers Wireless in Canada rolls out four days later.

"What you should know is that they’ve made their new BlackBerry smaller, sleeker, faster and just plain better in every way," Krakow writes.

Gary is especially impressed with the speed of e-mail delivery as well as the 8700's powerful Web browser.

"This BlackBerry is very fast when it comes to delivering my e-mail," he writes. "There are times where I’ve received a message on my 8700 before it has been delivered to my home computer’s Outlook mailbox. And this happened without using BlackBerry’s fastest delivery system via its server software."

As to the browser?

"Without exaggeration this is the fastest browser on a handheld machine that I’ve ever experienced," Gary writes. "I don’t know what alchemy they’ve been able to add into the cauldron, but it works: Watching this little handheld loading the MSNBC front page as fast as my latest Pentium PC with its high-speed cable connection was a pretty amazing sight."

And this is no text-only WAP browser like you find on many other handheld devices. The 8700's terrific little browser can handle pictures, logos, art (and, of course, text) with ease."