The BlackBerry enjoys an unmatched reputation as a mobile access device, and a pretty fair reputation as a phone. But even without adding new applications, it has plenty of useful functions which many people neglect. Here's five handy things I regularly do with my BlackBerry Bold (and which you can do on pretty much any operational BlackBerry).

Use it as a word processor
The BlackBerry's MemoPad function is an obvious choice if you want to make unstructured to-do lists, but you can also use it for basic writing tasks like this article. On more recent models (like the Bold) it includes a spell checker, which makes accurate editing much easier. (Access it from the Applications option on the main screen.) There's no formatting features, but that can be a bonus: rather than worry about how your text will look, you can concentrate on what it says. The only real restriction is length: in practice, you can't store more than about 1200 words in a single document. And I grant you it would suck on the BlackBerry Storm, but only because its input methods are so awful.

Not lose its mind when you travel
If you don't work for a global company, Outlook is absolutely rubbish at building a schedule, since it always adjusts times on your appointments to the local time. Fortunately, you can dodge this problem on your BlackBerry when synching with Outlook. Under the Clock/Options/Set Time screen, set Date/Time Source to Off. Your device won't pick up network time, so you'll need to change the time manually, but your appointments won't get mangled.