I have a Blackberry Curve... because my work made me. I have had it for 6 months. Prior to that I have never owned a cell phone of any shape or kind. I've seen the light however and do see the convenience of being able to stay in contact with my wife and kids. Great, all I need is a device that makes calls. Beautiful. Everything else is just plain silly.
When I'm not at work I don't want to be hounded by e-mails, text messages, having to look up documents and ****. I do not think I'm not so important that if I'm off the grid the world will implode.
Personally, I think it has more to do with people being afraid to be alone with their thoughts for more than 30 seconds at a time. They'd realize how meaningless their tech-world is and want to kill themselves.
I have this app called "Grocery IQ" on my Evo. My wife and kids all have it on their Evos too (it's a free app)... Anyway, with that app, you make a shopping list, and you can share it with anyone you want. You and whoever you share it with can all access it and edit it right on your/their phone. To share it, all you have to do is allow their email address right in the app. When one person edits the list (and you can have as many lists as you want, all shared with whoever you want) the edit shows up for everyone it is shared with.
Anyway, long story short, if we ever run out of anything, it's known. If someone goes to the store, we know what we need and have the most current shopping list with us at all times. If the kids need something for school, it's known.
Oh yeah, that app also lets you scan a barcode using the phone's camera, and looks up product info with prices at all the local stores. It's pretty sweet.
The calendar is equally sweet. You enter something on your calendar on your phone, and in the "attending" field, either put people from your contact list, or enter someone's email address. It will then automatically send them an email (which their phone instantly receives and notifies them of) notifying them of the "event" and asking if they will be attending. If they answer yes, it automatically puts it on their calendar and notifies you they accepted. If they say no, it notifies you of that too. It's kind of like Outlook at work, only better and everywhere. Since my wife and kids all have the Evo, you can imagine how awesome this is.
Both of those examples are the same on any Android phone by the way, you don't need an Evo for it. And the calendar is actually the gmail calendar. So it would work with anyone that uses gmail, whether they have an Android phone or not. And even if they don't use gmail, it will still send them an email and notify you of their response (and update your calendar on your phone or any computer you check your gmail calendar on- with the list of confirmed and pending attendees), it just won't update their calendar (I think it might actually update some other calendars, not sure, I have only confirmed it with gmail though as all my friends and family have gmail).
Dumbphones are living on borrowed time. I can't imagine any family using a smartphone and then going back.
A Blackberry is barely 1 step above a dumbphone by the way. Not much to get you hooked there. If you had one that was more geared towards consumers and average joes (like an iPhone or Android) and less geared towards corporate use (Blackberry is pretty much only for corporate use), you might feel a little differently about them.
