Hi - I'm not an admin or even on a BES, but I have a client who asked me what I'd heard about BES 5.0 and whether he should upgrade - think he's on 4.1. Anyway, general thoughts please? the Good, bad and ugly of BES 50 so I can look like I have a clue? Much appreciated!

... BES 5.0 new feature list.

Def worth the upgrade.

great insight.

I run a very small BES ( 5 Users), so my view is most likely different from someone managing a large User base:

The most important good things (for me) in this upgrade:
- direct access to smb shares in the network where the server able to connect (but limited usability, only pdf and txt files work, xls, doc, mp3 not, might be a device problem)
- flagging emails is helpful
- attachment support for calendar entries ( but only works one way, you cant edit on the device )

If this is worth the $$$ for the upgrade I dont know, but for me it is.

The bad things:
the Web-Based console:
It might be good to have a web-based administration in addition to a normal Windows application, but not as a replacment. Turning everything in a web-based app is IMHO a bad idea.

This is ok, if you have a few simple things to manage - like restarting a service, but not for the plethora of options you have to manage in the BES Server. Navigation is complicated, slow, everything looks ugly, important things are hard to find.

Even worse in this case, it doe not expand the manageability across Software platforms (what a web console normally would), because Windows is required and only Internet-Explorer ( 6 !) is supported.