This is completely erroneous, Blackberry Storms work perfectly on BES mine is running on our Live Vodafone BES now and it is fine. The BES service books were available on release

"RIM charge us for every SIM card number registered on their network, and they charge us more for an Enterprise connection than for a Prosumer connection - this is why the cost suddenly jumps from £10 to £26 when moving to a BES handset."

Do RIM charge you PER MONTH? No. So why is it an extra £16 a month?

Like those bastard ISPs who charge a monthly fee for static IPs, which they pay NOTHING for.

So this article uses it's main response from Vodafone a forum posting. Hardly solid journalistic fact finding wouldn't you say?

Service books are a config file not a handset specific setting, so the concept of enterprise service books being ready is a load of bollocks. Not to mention that the service books for enterprise services come from the BES directly no RIM's NOC.

Secondly the idea that the Storm is not ready for BES is crap, the devices initial ROM release is flaky, as many modern devices are. So rather than shipping high value customers a new flaky device VF have decided to delay BES release while a firmware update is finalised. If you have a Storm and want it one BES now its simply a case of having the provisioning changed. A bit of social engineering should do the trick.

Good old voda, they always seem to struggle with the concept of getting your device on BES. Frankly having just downloaded the simulator i'm not that impressed, it was obvious the software would be really similar to the latest curve OS but to be honest i'm no0t sure I want to pay 300-400ish for a device that's bigger than an iphone and has an annoying touch screen keyboard...

Perhaps they've missed the point?

My Vodafone account manager told me that noone was getting a BES handset as RIM hadn't released them yet. So given the above post by Ross I may have to ring my account manager

Storms are provided dual provisioned for both BIS and BES. IF you have a BES setup for your corp then call your premier team (not PS people yet) or get your onsite person to do it and they'll sort you out to authenticate onto BES.

Just be aware that it might not be a 100% trouble free life until it's properly released. A number of people who went out and got their own Storms (lots of corps won't be providing them to their people) are running on BES right now.

Have you ever tried to administer a pool of a few thousand assigned IPs? Compared to DHCP administration, the amount of effort is substantial. That's what costs the ISP, and thus they pass the costs on to the customer for the convenience it provides the customer and the headache it represents to the ISP.

Oh dear oh dear... poor Voda... The storm works fine on the BES, the OS is built for the BES and the service book is available, Both Telus and Verizon are running BES out of box.

As for the screen... drives you mad... the iphone is never going to be a business device and the Storm well we will see, but my $0.02 is... Its clunky and slow, the screen is just frustrating to type emails on, the phone functionality is slow, making a quick call is 3 long hard clicks on the screen assuming the contact is in your phone book... you will need divine help if you want to search the GAL... click after click.. making it slow...! As for those who like to type one handed with a coffee in the other on the curve or bold... get use to Blackberry SureType... or put the coffee down and get those thin thumbs ready... two hands for the full keyboard as you need it in landscape mode for the full keyboard...

Compared to the iphone, apart from a touch screen the devices are worlds and target markets apart. The iphone is hardwork as a corporate device and not as functionally rich as the BES powered RIM.

The final word... the storm is more a Storming Norma and the a Storming Norman... it seems too much effort has been put into the press screen and missing the point of how to type emails on the screen. Try it you might like it... you might not.. let each man, woman, child and those stupid little dogs make their own mind up.... its a near miss for me...! back to the Bold.. which is a little less pants.. but not by much...!

-p.s. I have been using the device (storm) for over a month and Iphone since Gen 1 launch...so not - a quick 2 minute of play feedback.