Can you get E-mails from non-BB servers?

I plan on getting the storm when it's released, which will be my first BB! It would be ideal if I could retrieve my college email messages on this phone. Not only am I a student, but I also happen to work in the IT department at the college.

Today, I asked the network administrator if I got a BB, could I retrieve my emails from their servers. He claims I can't because blackberrys will only allow you to get messages from blackberry servers. Immediately my BS flag went up. He claimed the President of the college had a BB and he was forced to get rid of it for an HTC because the email function wouldn't work.

I would believe the issue would revolve around our servers not allowing the BB to push the emails, though I could be wrong...? Tomorrow I'll find out what type of server we run, but chances are it's linux based. Our netadmin hates MS, FWIW, so I know it's not an exchange server, and definitely not a BES.

I'm just looking for some background information so when I speak to him again, and he tries to blame the BB device, I can bring up counter points. The only thing I would need is the path to the email server, and my login credentials, no? BTW, the email IS IMAP based.

Thanks!

Wow, total BS. If you have the server settings, the same any desktop client would use, you can setup the email account through either the actual device or the BIS. However, you may not be able to get push email, but you can set it up to poll at regular intervals.

If your mail provider supports POP3 or IMAP, you should be good. I'm using my Curve with my Postfix/Dovecot mail server and everything works fine (even push mail through IMAP IDLE).

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

That's what I thought. I'm going to get the server info from him tomorrow, and try it on my friend Curve and see how it works.

Just for my knowledge...what is "push" email again? I thought that was simply the phone getting the message as soon as it's received by the server, correct?

Push is simply that your BlackBerry doesn't do anything other than being connected to the network to receive email. It's handled be the server. The BIS sever will poll your POP/IMAP accounts and collect any new email in the inbox and then push that to the device. The polling is handled be the server instead of the handheld.

If the President of the University was looking for full access to all folders, etc. then a Windows Mobile device might have been necessary, but just for receiving new email from your inbox a BlackBerry on BIS should do the trick.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

pretty much what everyone else said....

The black berry can get new messages... its email capabilites are kinda limited compared to smarter devices like windows mobile phones and Iphones so you won't see any folders or anything like that... so as long as you don't use any email rules you should at lease see new messages in the inbox

If your primary use for the blackberry is email, you might want to look at other phones.... if you want to play pacman get the blackberry

yep. I know you can set hotmail, gmail and yahoo up on the bb.
When i created my BB email it asks you to add other emails that you use...

Originally Posted by panaman

If your primary use for the blackberry is email, you might want to look at other phones.... if you want to play pacman get the blackberry

What? The BB was made for instant email communications. :confused:

I get my yahoo mail almost as soon as it it hits the box. the store can help set up the email my carrier did.

I'm not too sure what your admin is talking about because me and my coworkers have no problem setting up our BBs with the university email addresses. I did find it better to forward those emails to a gmail account which I use as a primary account and sync that gmail account to my BB. Only because they make us change our email password every 60 days. That just gets to be annoying. Just make sure you have the correct outgoing and incoming mail addresses and security settings.

Ive got mine setup to foward certain emails to a different address and it works fine. No problems there.

Originally Posted by kvaughan

What? The BB was made for instant email communications. :confused:

The blackberry only works with a certain types of mail servers for 100% email functionality.

If you have a qmail server which 90% of mail servers run qmail you won't get all the functionality of a standard imap client.

If you have a windows mobile or an Iphone you will get all the imap functions that standard imap solutions provide. that is the limitation of the blackberry

I am a new blackberry user.. I never owned any kind of smart phone before. I was told by sprint that it would do what I want and I was told wrong. I think I am stuck with this device for the next 2 years.... I wish I would have done better research. All I saw was that blackberry supports IMAP when i was researching the device. It's not true IMAP though.
I bought it so I can have my email on the go.... I only receive about 5% of my email since most of my rules have them go into folders.

I am completely wrong. You can view your folders in IMAP. you just need to download a different client.....

I am so happy I figured it out. It makes my blackberry the perfect device.

Can you elaborate for a newbie - WHAT client are you finding useful?

Originally Posted by panaman

I am completely wrong. You can view your folders in IMAP. you just need to download a different client.....

Originally Posted by panaman

pretty much what everyone else said....

The black berry can get new messages... its email capabilites are kinda limited compared to smarter devices like windows mobile phones and Iphones so you won't see any folders or anything like that... so as long as you don't use any email rules you should at lease see new messages in the inbox

If your primary use for the blackberry is email, you might want to look at other phones.... if you want to play pacman get the blackberry

The BB's email capabilities aren't limited. The reason people buy BB's is for the e-mail; RIM still has the best push e-mail in the world.