[James Bond 007]

I spoke with my IT Department and they told me that they are not going the Blackberry route, I think its because they don't want to fork over the 10K BES service. So knowing this up front if I want true push email I must use a third party like Mailstreet. I called a spoke with the BB rep for Mailstreet t ask him what I need to do on my side in order to get this going. He told me that the ONLY thing I need my IT guys to do is setup my email account up to be forwarded to my Mailstreet account. He also said NOT to install the BB software that came with the unit but to download there BB desktop manager.

My question is....Mark R. said in his FAQ section that you can have your email forwarded to your bb.net account and that you wouldn't need BES service. Sorry BB tech guys/girls now I'm real confused. What would be the difference if I have it forwarded to my BB.net or my BB.mailstreet? Thanks in advance.

My GOAL is to own a BB and have complete TRUE email push with my work email. I need to be able to receive and send in real time, I also need to be able to access my company's global contact list. Please help in what I need to make all this happen.

[Mark Rejhon]

You can use either BWC (BB.net) or BES (BB.mailstreet) email, both are push email. You can do it either way, although BES-pushed email is usually more reliable than BWC-pushed email in my experience. Only because thousands of users can overload a BWC server on a particularly mail-busy day, while your BES server is more likely to be lightly loaded.

If you need to access your company's global contact list, you need some synchronization method between two Exchange servers -- between your company's exchange server and your Mailstreet remotely-hosted exchange server accont. That is the part I am unable to help you with, but I've heard that it is possible.

Or your company can buy a small BES initially, as a trial -- like the $995 small business edition server (5 users) and then upgrade from there. That's all you need to support only 5 BlackBerry users in a 1000 person company. Sometimes these licenses are available for cheaper if you catch a resale at street price style discount. You get full access to the distribution lists too. You can put other BlackBerries on a different BES (or even use BWC) like Mailstreet if distribution lists are not important.

And if you were lucky (or unlucky) enough to be low or middle management, you can probably pay for a discounted 5 user BES out of your pocket -- and then put it on your IT guy's shelf. "Install it or else" :D Just for your own use, plus expansion to 4 other users. (Unless you are in a big enough company that doing something like that gets you fired by the CEO or a board of directors!)

[ryanporschen]

Almost all of the Carriers will GIVE You BES software with the handhelds, it comes in 5, 10, 25, and 100 Cal versions. I've gotten several of our wireless customers BES software through our REPS at the carriers. If you need a REP that can get you the software for free, shoot me an email . If you only have one handheld, BESX is free.

[ryanporschen]

This is obviously a copy of BES, and with that it requires the same prerequisites that the full version does. The licensing is the only thing that changes. This is single user, single license.

Here is the link for download.

www dot blackberry dot com/express

(cant post actuall link because of my NEWB status)

You can switch handhelds by just running the enterprise activation on the new handheld. It will change the PIN in your user account EES. You will need to logon and set the enterprise activation.

I've got two of these running on two virtual servers at a clients office, the port had to be changed from 3101 on the second server of course.

[x14]

Originally Posted by ryanporschen

Almost all of the Carriers will GIVE You BES software with the handhelds, it comes in 5, 10, 25, and 100 Cal versions. I've gotten several of our wireless customers BES software through our REPS at the carriers. If you need a REP that can get you the software for free, shoot me an email . If you only have one handheld, BESX is free.

I think the 10K he's refering to is the annual recurring support cost with RIM (depending on number of users they have). Last year our support was 12K.