[makkystyle]

Hi everyone... first thread, but I have been intrigued by the idea of a hosting service (like mailstreet.com) for an enterprise server. I am (obviously) a Mac user and though I love iCal and Address Book, would consider switching to Entourage if it would sync properly. Couple of questions though:

- Would I still need a blackberry plan added to my wireless service or would a standard data plan work?

- How reliable do you think the sync would be from my computer -to- hosted exchange server -to- blackberry and back?

- Any downsides to hosting services like this?

[jax]

- Yes you still need a BlackBerry plan.

- In my experience, Contacts and Calendar sync wirelessly very well (categories don't sync and neither do notes or tasks - these don't actually sync to the exchange server on a Mac so they can't wireless sync to your BB).

[Dirky]

Originally Posted by jax

- Yes you still need a BlackBerry plan.

- In my experience, Contacts and Calendar sync wirelessly very well (categories don't sync and neither do notes or tasks - these don't actually sync to the exchange server on a Mac so they can't wireless sync to your BB).

I assume this is a problem with entourage? I'm a bit miffed at the performance of entourage on Mac!
Mike

[mikegold]

Originally Posted by Dirky

I assume this is a problem with entourage? I'm a bit miffed at the performance of entourage on Mac!
Mike

That's what happens when you leave the programming to Microsoft!

[Dirky]

Originally Posted by mikegold

That's what happens when you leave the programming to Microsoft!

yeah!

OSX Mail and iCal work very well, I could continue to use Mail with
Exchange but I dont think I have much option now for a calendar application
which will work with my Exchange 2003 BES setup ?

I read a comment on M$ site that there are no plans for a universal binary version of Office 2004 yet as their current version works well on intel mac's with rosetta!

Mike

[dulcamara]

I use link2exchange, who support Mac/Entourage to a limited extent (ie they have setup instructions). I get sync for contacts/address book/calendar, but nothing else.

It's worth the $20/month to me.

[jax]

I found that OSX Mail didn't work very well with Exchange - in particular it tried to sync all the public folders (this won't be an issue if you are using a hosted service or a company that doesn't store a lot of stuff in the public folders). There are some tricks to stop it doing this, but it just became a pain - so I switched to Entourage. At first I hated Entourage, but after a few months I started to appreciate it and get my head around how to use it - it's certainly grown on me!

You can sync your Address Book and iCal with Exchange either using Entourage as an intermediary, a third party app (http://www.snerdware.com/) or there is some support built into the Apple apps. Again I didn't find the iCal integration very good, although I do sync the Address Book via Entourage and frequently do a look up in the address book rather than Entourage (the Address Book search is a lot faster).

[makkystyle]

thanks for the replies guys... not having to-do's or notes might be the killer for me. I love my stickies and iCal to-do's. Now I just need to see if I can get pocketmac running again.