Need help with email/contacts/calendars and blackberries

[Mark Phillips]

I have a blackberry curve and I was trying to find a way to sync my email, 
calendar, and contacts. I use debian and kmail or evolution on my PC, and 
cox.net for my email. I am looking for an inexpensive and easy to maintain 
solution for syncing my email, contacts, and calendar.

1. I found that the blackberry can get email from my cox account, and when I 
delete an email on my blackberry, the email is deleted on the cox.net server. 
However, I can't find a setting in kmail or evolution that does the same 
thing - basically leave the email on the cox.net server until I delete it in 
kmail or evolution. They both have options to leave the messages on the 
server, but no way to delete the messages other than from the server itself. 
Am I missing something?

2. I have looked at creating a funambol server (http://www.funambol.com/) 
which looks like an open source version of RIM's BIS using syncML. However 
the blackberry plugin is not being actively supported, so it seems it might 
be a dead end. Funambol is more focused on Microsoft Mobile devices. Anyone 
have any experience with funambol and blackberries?

3. There is a free (?) service called ScheduleWorld 
(http://wiki.scheduleworld.com/) that provides syncing calendar and contacts 
(no email) for blackberries. It is based on the funambol server and SyncML. 
Anyone use this service?

4. GMail is an option with gmail mobile, but then I give up a local email 
client. Google calendar on the blackberry is not very good.

5. There are hosting companies that provide a shared BES server with an 
Exchange backend. Evolution is supposed to talk to exchange. Could I forward 
my pop email accounts (i.e. cox.net) to an hosted exchange server and then 
have evolution talk to the exchange server and my blackberry talk to the 
exchange server. Would all my contacts, email, and calendar objects be in 
sync? Does this sound feasible, or am I missing some fundamental concept that 
makes this plan infeasible?

Does anyone on the list use a blackberry? How do you sync your contacts and 
calendar entries, and how do you have email set up?

Thanks!
-- 
Mark