I am new to the Blackberry with Cingular and was wondering if there was any way to get e-mails (both POP from my personal account as well as from the Exchange server at work) without signing up for a full Cingular data plan as I feel I only need e-mail.

I've looked around the forums, but do not quite understand what the options are for e-mail only services. Looks like I will have to go to a 3rd party? I was looking at Link2exchange, they have a $9.99/month plan that looks like what I need. The only thing I'm not sure about is if you need to have a Cingular data plan on top of this for this 3rd party service to work.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

If you're on Cingular service, you need the Cingular Blackberry Xpress data plan to do what you want to do.

That's the thing that "sucks" about the plans, in addition to having a data plan, you have to have some sort of BlackBerry plan.

What? No. There are no "additional" data plans. On Cingular, I only have one data plan -- the BlackBerry one. That gets me my email and gets me online.

There are two things that your Blackberry needs to receive email in a BES setup. You need a BES server and you need a (BES-enabled) Blackberry data plan with your wireless carrier -- or else email _will not_ reach your Blackberry. In your case, there's no point in signing up with Link2Exchange since your company provides the BES. You can use the BIC for your personal email.