well i have been reading about bes, and i am really interested in it. the thing is i am a student and i use my bb for personal use. its great to stay organized and checking my school mail. i was thinking about going with the city net bes service. is it really worth it? also i know ur email is synced, will this work with my gmail, yahoo, and school email? to sum up my question is bes worth it? i am really interested in wireless contacts, email and calendar syncing.

It's $20/month (in addition to your voice and BB plan from your carrier) from most places. I use link2exhange. It's worth it to me for

1. wireless sync
2. no more 6 hour calls to cingular to sort our their errors in my bill

My email is IMAP, so I can't comment on gmail or yahoo.

My bottom line is voice + 64.99 international BB data + 19.99 for the BES.

I think you will still need a BB dataplan however. over and above the BES expense.

Someone please correct me if I am wrong.

Blackberries don't sync email, regardless of whether you use BES or BIS. You can reconcile but reconciliation is not the same thing as synchronization (hence the two different words). It will "work" with gmail, yahoo, and other mail if you forward it, but BES only really integrates with a few email systems (Exchange, Lotus Notes, etc). BES won't directly integrate with email like gmail or yahoo.

A dataplan is needed for any Blackberry provided that you want email/internet access. Your data plan comes from your carrier and only grants you access to a BES. The cost of the BES itself is separate expense.

It also seems that you don't have to worry about the APN nonsense with 3rd party apps either if you're on BES. I've never had to worry about configuring Google Maps or any IM app or even setting the APN in TCP/IP settings. Could be coincidental also -- I haven't really dug into the matter since it works. You definitely get much better integration with your mailbox with BES.

BES is only worth it if your email is on one of the following types of mail systems (MS Exchange Server, Lotus Notes/Domino, Novell Groupware). BES will not only reconcile changes to email, but it will also reconcile calendar (I love this), address book, and the To Do list. If you store your like in Exchange and need this on the BB (over the air), then BES is for you. Otherwise it may not be worth it.

Given that you haven't mentioned Exchange all assume you don't have it (unless your school does). If your web-based mail accounts are accessible bis BIS (blackberry internet service), then you don't neccessarily need the expense of the BES.

Is BES worth it for a personal (not corporate) user? It definitely can be. You sound like a bright person, don't get me wrong. I assume you are in college so you're not a dummy by any means. You should be able to make your own value calls. The reason for the BES is to be able to updates on your BB (including deletions and read/unread mail flags) and have these proegate from your BB to you Outlook/Exchange acct and vice versa. This is all done over the air (OTA). And it simply just works. Lots of people try to emulate this functionality with varying degrees of success with BIS-only access. The key is "varying degrees of success.". It depends on what your time is worth.

On cingular, for example, BES fees can look like the following:

$45/mo - BB data inc BES ability
$20/mo - host BES services by a 3rd party
$??/mo - hosted MS Exchange account by 3rd party
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$65+ per month

$30/mo - BB data inc hosted BIS
$free - BIS hosted by cingular
$??/mo - for web/pop 3rd party email (hotmail, gmail, yahoo, isp mail, etc)
-----
$30+ per month

Those values change depending on what you pay per month for your 3rd party email box. Just be aware in some (many?) cases BES can be twice as expensive as BIS. If you can take advantage of the BES-only features and if you need those features, BES is great.

I like an die by my BES. But not everyone can justify the expense. He'll, some companies don't - which completely boggles my mind. So there you go.

Aaron

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8700/4.1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/102)

Thank you everybody for your help. Seems has the best option for me is to sync with bluetooth to get a wireless sync.