[thebarge]

We're a small business and are using Windows Small Business Server 2003. We have a mix of cell phones being used by employees. A new employee starts this week and has a Blackberry 7130e and is the first employee to have a BB.

We'd prefer not to pay $1K for BES Small Business Edition for a single employee. It would be cheaper to dump his phone and buy a Treo and use Exchange Activesync, but he just bought his phone and really likes it.

I read where there's a BES Express license that's available and it looks like it's free with 1 CAL. Is Express still available and could we use this for this one employee? If he likes it, we may upgrade the rest of our employees to Blackberry's. If we do we just have to buy separate CALs (up to 14 I think) right?

So that's my first question, the second is will the Express version sync up his email and calendar with Exchange 2003 on our SBS box?

Sorry for the noobish questions, but it's our first BB user

[taftwatson]

If your busines only has 1 bb user, try setting up the users mail via pop and set up the bb with pop mail.

[balibe]

Originally Posted by thebarge

We're a small business and are using Windows Small Business Server 2003. We have a mix of cell phones being used by employees. A new employee starts this week and has a Blackberry 7130e and is the first employee to have a BB.

We'd prefer not to pay $1K for BES Small Business Edition for a single employee. It would be cheaper to dump his phone and buy a Treo and use Exchange Activesync, but he just bought his phone and really likes it.

I read where there's a BES Express license that's available and it looks like it's free with 1 CAL. Is Express still available and could we use this for this one employee? If he likes it, we may upgrade the rest of our employees to Blackberry's. If we do we just have to buy separate CALs (up to 14 I think) right?

So that's my first question, the second is will the Express version sync up his email and calendar with Exchange 2003 on our SBS box?

Sorry for the noobish questions, but it's our first BB user

Isnt there already a couple threads on this? Keep in mind this is a long holiday weekend, the IT Guru's here are probally enjoying the time off.

RIM does offer BES Express with a free CAL and options for more CAL's up to 15, the software can be downloaded at https://www.blackberry.com/express/?cp=BAC-BB1. Not sure if it supports Small Busness Server, the download link asks for the Exchange, IBM & Novell.

[thebarge]

Originally Posted by balibe

Isnt there already a couple threads on this? Keep in mind this is a long holiday weekend, the IT Guru's here are probally enjoying the time off.

RIM does offer BES Express with a free CAL and options for more CAL's up to 15, the software can be downloaded at [can't post urls yet]. Not sure if it supports Small Busness Server, the download link asks for the Exchange, IBM & Novell.

Thanks. The new employee was in the office today so I used the PIN on his phone and downloaded express, but had a few problems that drove me crazy.

First, the calendar wouldn't sync. Oops, I didnt read the pre-install directions close enough and I installed via Administrator. Fixed that by uninstalling, adding a BESAdmin user, setting the correct permissions and reinstalling.

At that point I'm not sure what happened. He couldn't send email on the phone but could sync everything else from phone to server and vice versa. I tried some things I saw on the forum to no avail. Not only that, I tried deleting the user from BES and having him resync via USB hoping he would be freshly added to the BES server, but no. I never could get his device to show up again.

I completely uninstalled again, removed all remnants of BES and reinstalled a third time. This time I got install errors after reboot (SQL errors with the db), so I changed the database name and it installed fine.

By that time he was gone, so I'll pick back up in the morning. If I can get this to work correctly though, we'll both be very happy. Not only that, after seeing it working (partially) for a short period of time our entire office is thinking about dumping our Treos for Blackberrys.

[ODS_Mobile]

You get BES Express free and 1 CAL you can then buy up to 15 Cals for Small Business. You are looking at around 9 Euro's Per License

[thebarge]

Originally Posted by ODS_Mobile

You get BES Express free and 1 CAL you can then buy up to 15 Cals for Small Business. You are looking at around 9 Euro's Per License

On their site they quote a price of $99 for a single user CAL, or $429 for a 5-pack of CALs. Is there some cheaper express CAL or something? Either way, $99 per CAL isn't bad.

By the way, after the reinstall last night, and after I made the security modifications ("Send As" changes after MS update), it works like a charm!