blackberry erxchange sync

[scottyman]

hey guys - does anyone know of any other sync tools for blackberry over exchange? I'm not going to spend £5000ish on blackberry enterprise for exchange, also, I'm not going to spend £60 pm for have my mail hosted for me (thus granting me access to the shared host blackberry server)


does anyone know of a way to get exchange activesync talking to blackberry (without using desktop redirector, which works, but is a little clunky) alternatively, a 3rd party solution which works on a per user pricing model - i.e. 3 users rather than 50!

Situation is that I've got an exchange server (on it's last legs hardware wise, so I'm going to spend a couple of grand on new hardware) running on sbs 2003, syncing cheerfully to outlook 2003 on my desktop - my g/f has given me her blackberry which she can't be bothered using - but doing this properly is going to be VERY expensive, and would rather find a cheap, decent workaround.

Cheers,

Scotty

[Moby-Dick]

If you ask orange nicely , you can get BES for a lot less than 5k , but you'll need a separate box to put it on ( it wont sit on the SBS box )

go get yourself a smartphone instead and use activesync over GPRS

when it works it kicks the bejeezus out of blackberry ( push notifications - full attachment support etc. )

[scottyman]

i know - I'm seriously considering swtiching to O2 and getting the xdaIIi - very cute, very fast - and configured one in the o2 store yesterday to see if it would work (the sales guy was blown away - he'd never seen one working before!!!)
but I'd not considered looking at orange. if they're cheaper might see if I can do a deal with two sim cards - one for data (xda equivalent) and a normal phone

[Jiff Lemon]

To echo Moby's comments, I personally HATE blackeberry; Why on earth pay for something that's already built into exchange? If I was a betting man, I'd say MS have their sights well and truely locked on Blackberry, and will be delivering a bit of blow with the next Service pack of for exchange.

Wireless Sync rocks; You checked out OMA yet? Its pretty cool and very likeweight.

[Dooms]

exchange 2003 and latest activesync do a brilliant job replacing Duality and Blackberry - you just need a PDA or Smartphone

[scottyman]

i love oma - use it on my 6230 all the time, and works very well, just wish there was activesync for blackberry - the technology of the handset is great - just the implementation of the server side is flawed.
i'd still have to get a data only sim card for whichever one I wanted to use, and at this point my g/f's company is paying for me to stuff about with her blackberry (which is why I want to get this working without me paying out any cash ) if I've acutally got to pay... then I'm going the pcoket pc route with activesync.

seeing the new exchange sync tools working is very, very impressive (even a mac/linux stalwart mate of mine has invested in a server and exchange to run it instead of stuffing about with his system anymore - loves it to bits - but still hates windows )

[Aaron]

To echo Moby's comments, I personally HATE blackeberry; Why on earth pay for something that's already built into exchange? If I was a betting man, I'd say MS have their sights well and truely locked on Blackberry, and will be delivering a bit of blow with the next Service pack of for exchange.

Microsoft doesn't currently offer true "push" e-mail. Microsoft know that they're behind in an area where they're usually leaders (enterprise) and RIM are certainly enemy number 1 for them at the moment. With Windows Mobile 5 (due out later this year) and the next version of Exchange you should start to see Microsoft making a big push into push e-mail.

[Moby-Dick]

the main problem with push email seems to be the UK operators.

Exchange push mail would work perfectly IF ( and its a big IF ) and email to phonenumber@provider.com actually got through to the phone as an SMS.

I believe this works fine in the states , but its a bit flakey here.

[scottyman]

yes, well currently this solution is about as useful as a chocolate teapot -
am downloading my mail - but also my g/f's mail onto the blackberry which is a bit pointless:/
even though I've convinced her mis dept to disable blackberry sync on their enterprise server, and reconfigured her account on the vodafone page - push is still being carried out, and push from desktop redirector gets confused. sod it - I'm going to spend a few hundred quid today just to make a point!

[Jiff Lemon]

Don't forget that Activesync version 4 is out too makes smart phone configuration easier.

[Craig]

Moby, I dont know if it is something thats with the new versions, but about three months ago at my old job they got the latest version of Blackberry Enterprise Server and it did go onto a SBS 2003 Box, it took alot of doing but the guy at Blackberry talked me through doing it Altho it did cost them like £5k!

Craig