Look how old this is!
I post at SearchCommander.com now, and this post was published 18 years 1 month 6 days ago. This industry changes FAST, so blindly following the advice here *may not* be a good idea! If you're at all unsure, feel free to hit me up on Twitter and ask.

*update 3/08 – issue resolved – Blackberry syncs with POP mail

Yesterday was the first full day with my Blackberry 8703e. Yes after nearly 6 full months with my old phone, (the ever so fragile and sluggish VX6700), I decided to get a new one. When it arrives, I’m listing my latest insurance replacement phone on Ebay to sell to someone with more time (and sticky stuff) on their hands.

I bought the 8703e at about 3pm and by 6pm, I had eaten dinner and sat down to watch the Bears / Cardinals game. While sitting there, I auto-configured the BB for email and instantly got an email saying. “Congratulations! mail will start arriving in about 20 minutes!” . Cool! I then waited a full hour before getting no email and phoning tech support.

It seems that a glitch in their system had detected my email account as an IMAP instead of POP3, and after a quick hour and a half on the phone with them, my email was flowing freely.

Time wasted was about 2 hours, but I got to see the worst choking of any football team in history, so it wasn’t a total loss for me, like it was for Arizona.

The next morning, my BB was filled with 140 emails, but I instead sat down at my PC and worked through them there. I then realized that I needed to install the software CD to sync my Outlook, so gave that a try about noon. What a disaster!

After three failed synch attempts with runtime errors, I deleted the software, purged my BB device, and downloaded the latest version of software from BB. It seems the CD that shipped had bad software from April 2006, because the new stuff worked fine. Time wasted – 90 minutes

Okay, so now my Outlook syncs, and all is well, right? Well, not exactly. To make a long story short, after talking with three different support levels at Verizon, it seems that the new version of BB software (2.0) does not allow your handheld device to “reconcile” with your mail server, automatically deleting your messages from your handheld after they’re no longer on your mail server.

This means that you have to manually delete the emails from your handheld each day, or it will completely fill up with every message you ever receive for the rest of your life.

How stupid is that? Every other phone I’ve had with email has always reconciled with the mail server. That’s the whole point, isn’t it?

The last representative at Verizon level 4 tech support actually said “Yes, I know. The OLD version of Blackbery’s software worked fine, but this one won’t do it. I don’t know why they removed that feature”.

Oh well, at least she finally knew what I was talking about and knew it was impossible! Everyone else at Verizon during my three hour support call was as perplexed as me, and they kept having me hard boot the device, download new “services”, delete and recreate my email accounts etc. which was all a complete waste of time.

Now, for corporate users, there’s something called Blackberry Enterprise Server, that works with Microsoft Exchange server, and with Exchange email archiving systems, so this ridiculous problem is not an issue.

They have something else called “Desktop Redirector” that now requires the Enterprise Server as well, according to the last support rep. For the plain old POP3 email account holder like me, there’s no solution that I can find.

Being the conspiracy theorist I am, I can only conclude that this is an attempt by BB to get away from having to support the average non technical user. Anyone with a Microsoft Exchange server likely has an Admin that will be setting this up for them, and they’ll shell out the $2500 to $4000 that it costs for BB Enterprise server..

However, if that’s really the case, then why support POP3 at all? Why not just say that MS Exchange Server and BB Enterprise Server are both required for you to check email?

All in all, I REALLY like the BB device. The reception is good, and the volume actually gets loud enough for me to hear, unlike my old Treo. It easily pairs with my Bluetooth headsets, and the plastic holster belt clip wisely faces the screen towards your body while carrying, unlike the Samsung I730 I had.

The belt clip even automatically puts the phone in “sleep” mode, which conserves battery life and instantly awakens upon removal. Compared to my latest monster, the XV6700, this thing is lightning fast too, like using a Pentium 3 computer compared to using an old 486.

I like the scroll wheel, and the feel of the buttons, and the light weight of the phone too, which means that it will hit the ground with much less force than my others did when I drop it. 😉

Right now, the only way to bulk delete things is for to check email on my desktop, then immediately go to the handheld, highlight the date, and use the scroll wheel to “delete prior”. This deletes everything at once, prior to that date, saving nothing. Otherwise, every message must be individually deleted! Can this be for real? Apparently it is.

After two days, I have nearly 6 hours of my time invested in this device. If I include this blog post, it’s probably even longer, but I had to share this experience.

I have 13 more days in my “15 day trial” to find a solution before I’m stuck with the device, so any ideas would be appreciated.

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