I was pretty excited to get my new HTC Droid Eric.  I've been a loyal Verizon Wireless customer for a long time, unwilling to switch to AT&T and spotty coverage to get an iPhone, and the initial reviews of the Droid Eris were pretty good.

Two weeks of actually using it, and I have to say my feelings are mixed.  Display is great; browser is terrific, and browser speed is very good compared to the Blackberry Curve it replaced on my desk.

Overall device speed is horrible however.  Often you'll have to press core keys like MENU 3 or 4 times before it responds, and you need to get used to waiting 2 or 3 seconds between interactions. 

The virtual keyboard: annoyingly, it only rotates to landscape mode in some applications, and in portrait orientation the buttons are too small to hit reliably.  In portrait, I'd say I can probably get the letter I want 40% of the time, which makes it pretty useless.  In landscape orientation, it's much better.  Personally I find the physical keyboard of the Blackberry easier to text quickly with--if you text a lot, consider the Motorola Droid, which has a pull-out physical keyboard.

Battery life is fleeting.  With wireless on and Bluetooth on, I'm draining the battery in about 3 hours of standby (heaven forbid I actually place/receive a call!).  So as long as you're at your desk and continuously plugged in, I guess it's ok.  Kinda defeats the purpose.

Stability: (or lack thereof...) The Contacts list has crashed 3x in 2 weeks.  And it's SO difficult to use.  I keep finding myself accidentally calling people when I'm just looking up an address or wanting to text someone.

Syncing: if you're a business user, you'll need to abandon the HTC sync and get CompanionLink USB, which lets you sync directly with Outlook.  Took a bit of work to get it set up, but the support folks at CompanionLink are great, answer the phone fast, and know their stuff.  They're going to make a lot of money on the failure of the built-in app to work well :-)

Calendar: not ready for prime time.  Extremely basic, no week view, and just not usable for daily work.  Luckily the CompanionLink software comes with an OK calendar (and also syncs Notes, Tasks, which the Droid won't do otherwise).

Summary: this is very much a beta product.  It's fun to play with, great if you need to browse the web while traveling, takes very nice photos and videos.  But if you're thinking of using it for a workhorse business phone to replace your Blackberry, you're going to be very frustrated, as basic phone, contacts, and calendar functionality is 5 years behind the Blackberry--just as the Droid's browser is 5 years ahead :-)