Techy Question. Blackberry. POP, IMPA, or Exchange server.

Okay, there's a few things here.  (Some of which we IMed about, but I'll say again...)

First, POP vs. IMAP:
  In POP the server is assumed to be temp storage until you download it to your local mail client.  When you start having multiple clients, you can see where this falls down.
  In IMAP the server is the athoritative storage of mail and mail clients are just "views" into it.  Assuming you have good IMAP clients and a good IMAP server, reading/sorting/deleting/etc on one client is the same as on all clients.  By the way, if you use gmail, you can use gmail via IMAP, and with gmail doing e-mail hosting for domains now, its a very attactive solution to this part of the problem.

In general, this is why I prefer IMAP.  In fact, that's one of the big reasons I originally switched to the iPhone from the sidekick, its IMAP client is pretty damn good.  All the sorting, deleting, or whatever, holds when I hit Thunderbird and/or Mail.app and/or SquirrellMail, etc.

However, not all IMAP clients are created equal.  In its default setup, the Blackberry can read from an IMAP source, however it treats it like POP.  A delete on your blackberry is a delete no where else.  Again, to call back to the Sidekick is why I left the sidekick.

Now, to your exchange question...  The one thing that the blackberry has going for it in spades is that RIM wrote software that tightly integrates with enterprise style mail servers such as (don't laugh) Lotus Notes/Domino (such as NAR (except CRT) uses) and Microsoft Exchange.  This allows you to do that famous "push" e-mail as well as syncronize certain things such as address books and the like.

For just YOU, you probably don't want to run an exchange server, as I have a feeling that cost will be greater than you're willing to pay.  That being said, there are some other workarounds...  (all of which assume you have access to IMAP.)

You can find an ISP that will host your mail on exchange for you with blackberry support.  When you and I talked in July about this a quick web search found a few places that seemed reasonable in price.  I haven't really looked into this, so I don't have any good pointers for who would be good or not.

You can host and run your own funambol server.  This is an open-source based sync server.  They are looking to be used by ISPs and the like to offer these services, but you can set it up yourself.  I looked into it a few years ago and it looked like it wouldn't be hard to syncronize between an IMAP account and a blackberry.  I never got fully into it as I gave up my blackberry shortly after that.

You can run an IMAP client that ISN'T the built-in Blackberry mail.  There is not a whole ton of those, but LogicMail looks like an interesting thing to at least try out.

Since you mentioned you have t-mobile, it looks like t-mobile does have some sort of service to help here.  (And you may already be using it.)  Syncronization of reads/deletes varies by backend provider as evidenced by https://support.t-mobile.com/knowbase/root/public/tm22645.htm However, none of those seem to do what I would really want.

Ian Murdock has a good write-up of his quest over this same question at http://ianmurdock.com/2006/07/30/two-way-email-synchronization-without-blackberry-enterprise-server/  He points to a few services that might be worth checking out as well.

Okay, that's about all I got on this topic since I don't use a blackberry...

I was facing the exact same problem as you. I want to set up my Outlook account, and be able to access the information (mail, tasks, calendars, contacts) on my mobile. I also wanted two way synchronization between my mobile and my desktop account, i.e., all changes made on either device be mirrored on the other. And one thing i knew was, i did NOT want Exchange server, considering the back breaking costs. i looked at hosted exchange providers and Exchange alternative solutions.

after a lot of research i finally decided upon web based HyperOffice, that really fulfilled all of my needs. its web based, and allows you (and/or your employees) to almost instantly set up your Outlook account like Exchange were running in the background. You can access your information on Outlook, or HyperOffice's online client, or on any mobile device (iPhone, Blackberry etc) and the information is automatically kept in step everywhere. it also has other integrated features like document collaboration, forums, intranet/extranet publisher etc which make it a really robust solution.

POP3 on mobile devices is going the way of the dinosaur.

For smaller operations, I suggest using IMAP.  It allows you to keep your mail synced on all devices and can be impletemented cheaply or free.

For small firms, I cant speak enough of Google Apps.   Their free product should do most organizations just fine and works great on mobile devices using IMAP.   Google makes clients available for all different platforms too if you don't want to just use the client on the phone.

If your willing to spend a little more money and want to use the true synchronization capabilities of a blackberry you can set up an account at an Exchange & BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server) provider such as Mailstreet ($15-$25/mo per user).    Once you have your email setup through Exchange and your blackberry configured, all your stuff in outlook (Contacts, Calendar, Email, etc) will automatically be pushed to your phone.

Honestly, however, Google Apps may be the way to go for now vs. Hosted Exchange.

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