stuart,
i played around with the pearl a couple of days ago. it's small and sweet! the suretype keyboard appeared to be pretty easy to use. that said, the pearl is not the device for everyone, particularly people who want something with some more meat and a qwerty keyboard. but RIM has an interesting multi-device marketing strategy these days. rather than have one blackberry replace an earlier model, they're selling different blackberries to different markets. smart.