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Old 05-03-2005, 05:06 PM   #39
dulcamara
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Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: RDU
Model: 9810
OS: 7.0.0.261
Carrier: ATT
Posts: 343
Default Very naive user needs hosted BES/MDS. What should I do?

I've been studying the FAQs, and am still not sure what to do. I may have
missed something obvious.

I've been completely frustrated by Cingular and have just about given up on wap.cingular as an apn. I need to ssh to my desktop rarely, but when I need it, I need it bad. Cingular has done little but waste a lot of my time:

http://www.blackberryforums.com/showthread.php?t=7645

So, I have some questions about the FAQs. I'm not sure what has changed
since 4.0 and BWC became options.

1. If I sign up for BES/MDS, can I forget about wap.cingular for
things like

ssh, PocketDay weather/stocks, IM, ...

and get them to work with MDS?

2. Is there anything that I'll need an apn for at all? Can I cancel the
media net $5/month plan cingular is making me use for the apn?
Do any of you BES people care about apn? The FAQ says that MDS
is like TCP/IP. Is the set up the same? Do I do this in
options->tcp?

3. The FAQs talk about roaming. Is this a problem in urban areas in
Europe and Asia? International service is a big deal for me.

Have I missed something about BWC? I'll be in Frankfurt and
Stockholm in two weeks, and email needs to work for me.
If the cingular BWC won't work in major cities in Europe, please warn me.


4. I'm a MAC/Linux person, and use my windows partition as little as
possible. It seems some of the hosted services let me run outlook
via the web. Is that right? Which are the most MAC-friendly? I use
yahoo for my calendar now, so switching to a hosted outlook won't
hurt too much. All my contacts live on the 7100g, so having them on
the web where they're easy to edit wouldn't hurt either.

It seems that for $25/month from mailstreet, for example, I can get
BES/MDS + web outlook + spam filtering. That seems to be the best
option for me, and some of the FAQs recommend it for MACs.

5. I'll probably need good tech support (and I'm NOT getting it from
Cingular). Which of these guys has that?

6. The FAQ talks about improved browser speed. Will I get a new browser
with BES/MDS or will the speed of the BB browser simply improve?

7. Will I need to reinstall the desktop if I don't plan to sync the BB with the
laptop where my windows partition lives?

Thanks in advance.
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