OK this is my dilemma.

Right now I am subscribed to Mailstreet for BES.

I am looking at cutting costs with BB and wondering what would be my best setup for email retrieval & sending without the BES. The calendar/address/memo syncing is not a problem because I can use the Intellisync feature to sunc up those items.

But from your expereinces what is the best option for setting up email. I currently use Rogers in Canada and I have a gmail account. This is all I use right now.

Thanks and I look forward to your recommendations.

...Bruce

I have stated this a few times before, I use a gmail account to receive forwarded e-mails from all 5 of my e-mail accounts including from work. I get my e-mail instantly within seconds and in many cases i get it before it actually appears before it shows up in my inbox in the gmail account (I have had it open and tested to verify this). Gmail is free and so are all my e-mail accounts so I have no other out of pocket expense other than the BB service with Verizon. I too synch with my desktop at home and at work or even at the laptop level with outlook so I dont have a ral dyre need for BES. I know that there are other benefits but for me I am fine the way this works right now.

Allot of users that have their BB connected via BIS seem fond of the Yahoo or GMail setup where either (your pick) will collect your POP3 accounts and foward a copy to your BB address so you have an instant receipt of your email. I do just that but mine is done through my domain host.

With this setup, when you reply from message sent via gmail , the sent message will not show up in gmail, correct?

What i did to avoid that since it would become a loop, is that i set up a second gmail account to which I sent the copies to so they do nto show at the regular gmail then to keep everything in one place i forward the second gmail back to the first but I use a filter that uses the from address and archives the copies right to a folder without showing up on the inbox or for that matter forward them again to the BB. A bit tricky but works like a charm for me.

I have my yahoo account integrated to the BIS. It is real time, no pop. The yahoo spamfilter works great. My email is available via the yahoo web interface, (beta ones cool) and I have no issues. Its almost as good as a bes, just no add book or calendar.
ymmv

Mark,

Are you simply forwarding from Yahoo. If so where do the 'send mails' go when you send from your Blackberry?

With this setup, Yahoo retains a copy of the email, but forwards a copy to your blackberry webclient. You can specify the "FROM" address in the webclient.

"Sent" items can be kept in the webclient only. There is no sync with your mailboxes.

Remember: The webclient has a smaller capacity (25MB usually) than most hosted email accounts. If you tend to receive large attachments, you may run into trouble.

I'm wrestling with the same issues, as I don't have BES either. I'm at a crossroads: I can either spring for an extra $10/mo and get hosted BES and everything is peachy, or I can set up some convoluted back-asswards email loop like KonTiki. One thing I may try is automatically cc:'ing my gmail account on all replys from the BB, then in gmail setup a filter to put any emails sent by myself into the sent folder. I have yet to experiment with this. I'm almost inclined to just spring for the extra $10/mo for the BES, but I'm not sure if that will work exactly the way I want it to either.