Hi everyone,

Well after a long day of prepping operating systems, double and triple checking pre-requisits and version numbers I set about installing BES-Express.

Platform as follows-

SBS 2003 + Exchange 2003 (Both with they're respective SP2's installed)
VMWare workstation hosting Win2003 Server Std. with Admin Tools and Exch. System manager ready for BES.

Now this is a test system to see how the installer goes and to test the whole BES 'Experience' so I'm using my personal GMAIL account as the mailbox (Via POP Connector) so exchange is setup as if I host gmail.com (lol)

Well I sat down with the flash video tutorials on RIM's website and a few hours later (With breaks to do other stuff) I get to the final 'Start Services' screen and was a very happy guy when they all started successfully!

I performed a wired activation which went through no probs on a spare 7290 I had lying around and it's working 100% with the exchange profile I set up!

So now Exch. and the BB are perfectly in sync - email/contacts/calendar etc unfortunately if I wanted this to be my main system the gmail client would have to go as it will no longer be in sync with the exchange mailbox as to what has and hasn't been read etc. This is a shame as Im no fan of Outlook Web Access at all (Especially hosting it myself and the security risks that are associated with opening 443 in my firewall to get access to IIS remotely.

Whether I'll use it or not the BES really is superb and just what a wireless email system should be. I'll report back with more observations as time goes along, still enjoying the novelty of adding contacts and them syncing over the air at the moment (Not a new thing I've had WM5 devices and Nokia mail for exchange before - both were crappy by comparison!)

All the best
Dan

Living with BES is just easy, from the server to the device and it does make it a joy to use.

The solution for you depends on what you need to achieve. We have a couple of clients who need to run .NET on their handsets and go the Direct Push route. In house we're 99% BlackBerry. We do also run a bit of Windows Mobile on Direct Push but this is only for users who have shared mailboxes where BlackBerry unfortunately doesn't fit the mould.

Glad to hear you're having a good experience with it.

Well the more tests I do the more it impresses me, it's just Outlook Web Access that is the weak link of the whole setup (Obviously that's no fault of the BES) I['m a Mac user mainly and OWA renders awfully on anything other than Internet Exploiter so us Firefox users are left with a sub-standard experience.

Still I guess I could use VPN and a mail client over IMAP such as Thunderbird or Apple Mail which could alleviate that problem...