Hi! - Blackberry Bold Questions

I just got my new Bold a couple weeks ago as well.. I had a crappy international phone before, but I do have an ipod touch (to compare to). A couple questions:
1) For some reason, my Blackberry gives me the loading signal (square in the middle of the screen) at random points, and almost every time I try lock the phone. What is the reason for this? It happened a lot until my 8gb sd drive came in. But it still happening since. Is it normal?
I only have a couple applications... weather, google maps, google mobile, facebook... but the phone is already warning me I 'only' have 5mb of space left on the internal memory. Is this normal? The applications are small, so this should not be a problem for a while right?
I notice the apparent slowness because when browsing the internet or applications on my touch, I don't usually have problems. It might just be excentuated on the Blackberry because it shows the loading thing?
I was worried initially of internal memory before my memory card arrived in the mail, so I read I should select the option wipe the cache of the phone every 5 minutes or whenever it goes idle. Could this also cause delay when navigating the phone? It seems like it wouldn't ... but who knows.

2) (Again, I compare this to the ipod touch), Are there any alternatives to the blackberry calender that are more aesthetically pleasing? Perhaps a theme change to the application itself?

3) I have a macbook pro. So I have bluetooth. But it does not seem to be able to connect with the bold. They have recognized eachother, and both are saved on eachothers bluetooth lists, but when I turn bluetooth on my blackberry, I have no access to its files or anything like that.

4) Again referring to my mac, how easy is the blackberry to sync with itunes? I have PocketMac for Blackberry downloaded on my computer, but Im not exactly sure what I should do. Are there any threads explaining how to set up the blackberry with itunes?

5) Im looking for an application to organize my homework assignments if possible. The tasks application seems very basic and not easy to organize. I searched for one on these forums and found 'StudentDocket' but it looks like its is meant for an older blackberry and no one has reviewed it. Any suggestions?

Any help is greatly appreciated. My dad got an iPhone when we switched to At&t and I need to prove (to myself) this Bold is better.

First off, welcome to CB and congrats on the Bold!

1. It's most likely warning you about low app memory. When this occurs, or your device starts to slow down, pull out the battery with the phone on for about 30 seconds and then put it back in. This seems to fix a lot of small issues, including ones like this.

3. I don't think it's possible to browse through the files on the Bold, but in case you're talking about sending and receiving files between the Bold and computer, first go to Bluetooth options and make sure data transfer is enabled. Say you want to send something to the Bold. You'd first have to go into Media, press the BB/menu button, and then select Receive Using Bluetooth. Then on the Mac, you'd click the Bluetooth icon in the status bar by the time, click on Send file, then select the file you want to send, and then select your Bold in the devices list.

4. It's not the easiest syncing with iTunes IMO, and I think PocketMac sucks. I've tried using it many times and have never been successful. Instead, I hook up my Bold via USB, enable Mass Storage Mode, and then in the drivers that appear, I drag and drop all the songs I want at once into the music folder in BLACKBERRY_2 (which is the media card).

I'm not sure about 2 and 5 and don't want to give you wrong information so that's why I didn't answer those..

Thanks for the feedback!

For 1) I don't think it is a warning. It is just excessive loading. The same loading square that spins for a while when you restart the blackberry hits me while navigating through the phone.

For 3)... Thank you so much. That worked flawlessly. So my Blackberry will never appear as 'connected' on the laptop? Even up to the file transfer it was still listed as not connected.

Ok, and for 4), I will still need the blackberry desktop software correct?

@ your signature... your phone bill must be ridiculous!

Thanks again for the help.

Went from a World edition to a Storm and now the proud owner of a Curve. Now this is just my personal opinion but without a doubt the best BB I've had so far is the Curve and sadly the worst ever was the Storm. There was so much hype but it just didn't cut it.