[womp]

I am seeing a lot of people saying they like one more then the other but why? What makes one better or worse then the other?

Empower allows you to scroll down and read your email while it is downloading the HTML images, BBsmart doesn't. That and the many more options available overall in terms of customizing how to view your mail made me choose Empower during the $9.99 Crackberry sale. IMO it was the better of the two overall. Also didn't help that BBsmart had me doing a few battery pulls during the trial either.

Would I pay $29.99 for either of these apps though? No way. I find Blackberry software as a whole to be horribly overpriced especially for something such as this or even setting multiple alarms.

[cdf3]

I purchased Empower pro and I still have to go to menu, get images. I have it configured to show images, but it's not automatic. The html is just fine, but I'm running os 4.5 so I don't need it just for the html. Is this normal?

You may have to set Empower as your default Email viewer.
Messages > Menu Key > Empower Options > Advanced Options > Set as Default Viewer > Choose: All, None, or Custom

I had mine set as the default, but I had issues with Emails that contained attachments in OS 4.5
So I changed it to None.

I'm using the default HTML viewer to read my messages now. If I want to read a particular Email with Empower I do the following:
Messages > Open the Email I would like to read > Menu Key > Toggle HTML/Text
The Email is then viewed with Empower. After closing the Email, it changes back to the default HTML viewer.