BIS vs. BES - for Exchange Server and Gmail

I'm considering purchasing a BlackBerry, but first I'm trying to do my homework. I appreciate any help you guys are willing to offer.

My company doesn't have BES, so I'm looking at getting a personal plan through T-Mobile (BIS, right?). I believe our company has Exchange Server, so I'm currently verifying Outlook Web Access.

For personal email, I use Gmail.

I've used a BlackBerry connected to BES at another job, and I loved the way it always stayed in sync with Outlook on my computer. But people have warned me that BIS doesn't work as smoothly. Thus, I'm wondering if you guys can outline the differences for me. Specifically, these are my main concerns:

Will read emails be marked as such, no matter where I read them?
Will emails be deleted completely, no matter where I delete them?
Will sent emails appear on both platforms, regardless of which one sent them?

Feel free to point me to old threads. I tried searching, but I didn't find a lot that was helpful. It looks like Gmail has some problems with archiving and marking messages as read. Maybe those are fixable.

Thanks in advance for your help!
Andrew

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

Welcome to CrackBerry.com

With the new BIS 2.3 when you add GMail to your account, if you read an email on your device, it should do the same on your GMail account. Same for deleting emails...

As for 'sent' emails, there is an option in BIS to auto BCC all sent emails from the handheld. I suggest you select that option by entering an email address there...