New BES user - Major Obstacle

[gadgetfreak2]

I have been a loyal PalmOS fan for years and have only decided to look at alternatives now that it became clear to me that WebOS and it's first new device won't be geared toward business users (at least initially). My 755p is pretty stable but I reboot it once a day proactively. However, the device is not that reliable and is no longer being developed for business users.

So I got a Curve to "test out" and installed the BES Professional Express on my server and I am fully operational. Without going into details, I can sum up my comparison as follows:

Palm excels at PIM, 3rd party apps and yes even e-mail (see below) when using Chatter with IMAP IDLE.

BB is a more stable OS and (better) hardware with superb battery life.

So, if you don't want your phone to reset when you need to dial 911 or something, you go with a BB. For me, I see that I will need to learn a new OS anyway and WM is just as slow and buggy.

Here is my major obstacle: Both my business partner and I use our e-mail folders as tools to organize what we have to do. Items in our inbox are those that came from others that we need to address. Items in our "flagged folder", a sub-folder of the inbox, are items that we sent out that we need to follow-up on. Both folders can have messages that are 12 months old (though the size of each is under 100).

BBs don't synchronize, they redirect and reconcile (as I am told - geez). I cannot find a way to get messages older than 14 days on my BB. After much research, I don't think there is a way. So my two questions:

1) Is there a way I am missing (even if it requires a 3rd party app)?

2) As fellow business users, can you recommend alternative methods for us to use so we can happily switch over to BES?

Thank you, in advance, for any advice you can offer.

[CanuckBB]

The initial activation will only load 14 days. After that, the BB will keep as many messages as it has memory.

[gadgetfreak2]

Sadly, I have decided to give it back and see if I can find a decent sprint WM device with a front facing keyboard (Moto Q9C is very old and big, 800w 'may' have a battery problem).

I am completely baffled how 3 million people think that BES is the BEST way to view e-mail. Those who have Chatter using IMAP/IDLE to an exchange server must appreciate the ability to sync (not redirect) any folder going back for any number of days and to move things between folders easily to really replicate the outlook mail management process.

PIM was not as good (although it could sync memos over the air), mail was not as good for me, and I was adding two more points of failure (RIM NOC and BES) that the HUGE benefit of a more stable device and OS with great battery life and BT stability was not enough to make me switch.

Sorry guys.