[kmcvey]

Hello All-
I work at a very prestigious lawfirm in downtown Chicago. We are a T-Mobile shop still working on a 3.6 BES with 400+ devices in this office, with a total of 750+ devices worldwide. I would love to hear some input on the pros and cons of BES 4.0.


Not sure if many of you are in the legal world, but a BlackBerry to an attorney is HUGE! They can't function without them any longer (lucky me).

Thanks for your input and maybe we'll run into each other at WES!

-Kate

[NJBlackBerry]

Do you promise not to sue us if we offer an opinion and you end up disagreeing with it ;)

[kmcvey]

Of course!

[NJBlackBerry]

The major pro to 4.0 is wireless activation and wireless syncing. The major con is that it is new, and new means bugs. Frankly my company is waiting for the summer, but we are never jump on new code just because it is new. It's the old Microsoft "wait for Service Pack 3" scenario. 4.0 also features enhance attachment viewing, including images, and a new "pictures" application.

[kmcvey]

Great, thanks. I guess since I'm familiar with what 4.0 brings, I think I'm a little bit more interested in the cons. LOL! Shoulda put that in the original post. I've heard it's a bit buggy and I agree with waiting for at least the first SP to be released. Anything else?

[glenn4dde]

Kate-

I work for a major credit company and I currently have ~180 users. The majority of my users are the biggest of the big dogs, I know how you feel...with that said, I installed 4.0 on a test server about 3 months ago, I ran it in test for about 1 month, then I upgraded the production box.

The good thing is that until you MANUALLY upgrade the devices to 4.0 there will be little changes to the user. Most wont even know. I have upgraded about 40 devices so far, I have not had 1 complaint. I am running E2K and BES4hf2. So, I guess I'd have to say the only con is the fact that you have to touch each device to upgrade it. Also, if you have any VZW 7750 devices, they SUCK with 4.0. They are very slow.

If you have any other questions, feel free to PM me and I will give you my e-mail address to discuss the upgrade.

[Dahood]

In a nutshell 4.0 is full of bugs and known issues. The Service Pack has addressed a few of these but does not go far enough in all honesty. Previous versions seem to be stable. Once RIM gets to grips with the bugs this could be an exceptional product.

[jibi]

Originally Posted by Dahood

In a nutshell 4.0 is full of bugs and known issues. The Service Pack has addressed a few of these but does not go far enough in all honesty. Previous versions seem to be stable. Once RIM gets to grips with the bugs this could be an exceptional product.

Have you actually seen what SP1 fixes yet? I was not aware that anything aside from TMO's immediate solutions was released from RIM. The document that TMO has out concerning the SP1 release was for their issues reported ONLY not the entire Service Pack. Also, to state that its FULL of bugs and known issues is a bit absurd, in my opinion. I'm pretty sure there are only a handful of priority 1 bugs and known issues, most of which would potentially be situational at best.

As for bugs, I have had 2, what I consider, major issues. The first is something that I can no longer remember... hehe. The second had to do with wireless message status reconciliation from Outlook to the handheld (if a user opened up an email in Outlook, it would not show as 'read' on the handheld). The latter issue was due to an AD problem resulting from when we used ADModify.exe to change the order of our users' display names - it did not affect email for our users, but did affect the BES 4.0 users (only them, though. 3.6 users were fine).

I have not yet rolled this into our production environment, though. That is being planned for early next month.

I would say to put up a test server and just run it yourself for a few months. RIM gives you a 3 month SRP ID/Auth Key and a 4 month user license. If you need more time, they will be more than happy to accommodate your needs (I just love how liberal that company is). There's nothing like real-world experience.

From an end-user perspective, its an increase in productivity. From an administrator's perspective, its a pipe dream. From a support perspective, for the first few weeks/months during the growing pains that come with change along with the handheld upgrades, it will likely be a nightmare. Take that for what its worth.

[bbuser105]

Every user who has upgraded to 4.xx in our company experiences frequent handset crashes. The device crashes not only when using the more advanced features of the phone, but also in even a simple phone call! After crashing in the middle of a call, it takes about 10 minutes to boot back up. Wait until they work out hte bugs before you upgrade!

[aristobrat]

We ran a test BES 4.0 box for a few weeks and upgraded our production box to 4.0 about a month ago.

We've also upgraded about half of our ~90 BlackBerrys to 4.0. Only 1 experienced frequent crashes (actually, it experienced frequent "hourglasses for no reason"), and reloading it with 4.0 fixed it. The majority of our devices are VZW 7750s, followed by Cingular 7290's, T-Mobile 7100ts, then Cingular 7100gs and 2 T-Mobile 7730s. We've eliminated most of the slowdowns on the 7750s by removing the non-essential applications and recommending to users that they only keep email on their device for 30 days vs. "forever".

Haven't had a single user complaint about 4.0

The only "con" we've experienced with 4.0 is Enterprise Activating T-Mobile 7100t's, and the workaround for that is fairly simple.

The biggest pro for us is Enterprise Activation. Most of our users are in the field, and with 4.0 we don't have to worry about installing (or supporting) the Desktop Manager on their remote machines.

The second biggest pro is now that there is no Desktop Manager to worry about, our tech support folks feel a lot more confident troubleshooting the issues themselves (vs. escalating the call to us). They know that no matter how bad it gets, they can have the user "Wipe Handheld" and then do an Enterprise Activation and everything gets put back just like it was.

[rpfeffer]

Kate, is your job Strictly Blackberry administration? I upgraded our server and all of our devices manually. We have about 40 users, and it still took forever. About a week and a half of constant upgrading, including the installation of new desktop software, device upgrading, wireless activation, and testing of all wireless functionality was involved in the process. I can't imagine how one would go about upgrading 400+ devices....