Hints and tips for Blackberry users

(The following hints may not apply to those companies using their own Blackberry Internet Server, for those configurations please check with your System Administrator).

The RIM Blackberry service is fully compatible with Computer Variations' Mail Services.

There are however two distinct ways to configure the Blackberry service with your email; one works well, the other can lead to problems.

If you follow the Blackberry EMail setup wizard on your device or on your carrier's website, you should be prompted to enter an email address and password to add your mailbox to your list of mail services to check. This should be ALL you need do. By default, this will create an IMAP access account for you on the Blackberry servers, which will monitor the state of your mailbox on our servers in REAL TIME. As soon as a new email comes in - assuming you do not have a desktop or laptop actively checking the mailbox with a POP configuration that manages to download and delete the email off our server first - the Blackberry servers will read your email from your mailbox and PUSH it out to your Blackberry phone immediately. Attachments up to a total email size of up to 10MB may be included, subject to any limitations by your carrier.

This is the preferred, most efficient and secure method of getting your mail to your Blackberry device; it will also enable you to reply from your normal mailbox address.

  Mail is not necessarily delivered to your Blackberry immediately, it may take as long as 15 or 30 minutes to get there.

  If the person sending your email has added a large attachment, the email will not be delivered, and you will be none the wiser (unless you configure a maximum size for forwards) because the reject message will go back to the sender, not to you. Worse, the reject message will expose your private Blackberry email address to the sender. Imagine the chaos if that were a spammer!

  Any reply you send will expose your private Blackberry address.

So if for some reason you MUST use the mailbox forward configuration, be sure to LIMIT THE SIZE of the message to be forwarded. A suggested limit is 1 mb. If a message arrives that is larger than this, you will be sent a notification, and you can then retrieve your email (which will still be in your mailbox) by another means.

Note that Computer Variations limits the size of forwards to Blackberry addresses to 5 MB. The preferred, IMAP, configuration is not limited by us.

Questions?: support@compuvar.com