When I was first informed by my boss that I would be getting a Blackberry on loan from work, I was actually very unhappy about it. The last thing I wanted was a PDA, a device that would be attached to me, go everywhere I went and make me feel like I was permanently at work. The first weekend that I had the PDA, I was stressed out. Did I need to check this device every second to make sure I did not miss an important email that would tell me to come into work? Or could I leave it in my bag and ignore it until Monday morning?

A Blackberry is one type of PDA in a range of different devices on the market that provides consumers wireless access to work, friends and family. It is essentially a mobile office - allowing you to access email (including attachments), telephone and the internet while you are on the move and away from your normal work station. In addition to these normal features, the Blackberry also offers you many functions that Microsoft Outlook would offer to you - for instance an address book and calendar which show you exactly which appointments you might need rush off to next.

The Blackberry 7230 also has a convenient light switch at the bottom right hand corner ensuring that the user can also access information when traveling in a dark taxi at night or sitting in surroundings which are not well lit. The information is displayed in high resolution on a display measuring 240x160 and it supports over 65,000 colours.

The Blackberry 7230 comes with a handset, travel charger, USB cable, battery, holster, hands-free headset, SIM card, BlackBerry Desktop software.

I found the Blackberry quite difficult to get used to. It essentially has a small keyboard underneath the LCD display, which lists letters, numbers and symbols. On the right side of the Blackberry is a track wheel, which acts as a mouse - you can scroll with the track wheel by moving it upwards and downwards and then select the option you want by pressing onto the wheel once. Below the track wheel is another button which enables you to go back if you accidentally clicked on the wrong thing.

Clicking on the first symbol will take you straight to your inbox - which will contain exactly the emails that you would receive at work. From here you can read the email, respond to it, forward it to someone else or simply file it away.

There is, however, one great advantage to having a Blackberry to access email - and this became very apparent when I was away from the office for three days and kept checking my emails for important news. Usually when you return to your office after a longer absence, you find yourself having to sort through emails for absolutely ages. If you have your Blackberry - you can either file emails away or even delete the ones you do not need - either from the Blackberry alone or from both your Blackberry and desktop PC at the same time.

The Blackberry will also enable you to open certain attachments. These currently are Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Powerpoint, Adobe Acrobat, Text files and WordPerfect. If an email does contain an attachment, this will be displayed at the top of the email. You need to click the track wheel and then select "Open attachment". Then you need to select "Full content" followed by "retrieve" to access the attachment. This generally takes quite a long time - and if the attachment is very large, it is really better to leave it for later reading - as it is not the easy to decipher long documents from the small LCD screen.