Just got a new Blackberry. I'm seldom without a laptop when I'm on the road. So, I never really saw the need. However, my business partner Darrin said my old phone (it was just a phone) was embarassing to the company. Hence, the new phone.
MTS (Manitoba Telephone Services) has a deal right now for $35/mo with unlimited data. Sounds perfect for browsing and wireless mail. Sign me up!
Here's the catch. Even though the Blackberry device includes a license to use it with a workgroup BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server) server, on this plan, you can't use a BES server. You can attempt to configure it, but it will just hang because MTS is blocking it. This plan is considered consumer grade. An unlimited data plan that includes BES would be another $40/mo.
The biggest benefit of BES is automatic over the wire syncing of mail, contacts, and calendar with an Exchange server. However, you can do the synchronization with desktop software as well. My solution is to access mail over the wire and then sync calendar and contacts with desktop software. That works well enough for me.
Update: After actually playing with this for a while. When using Blackberry Internet Service, it will synchronize meeting requests automatically with the Blackberry calendar, but not appointments or all day events. Slightly annoying as I typically use appointments to book my schedule, but it's not hard to start using meeting requests to myself instead.
ReplyDelete