I haven't seen anyone come up with a good description of what emoze does yet, so I thought I'd contribute my own, and compare it to web2mail. emoze is in fact much more than just a pushmail service, it constantly is updating all aspects of Outlook (email, calender, tasks, ect). Changes occur almost instantaneously (<5 seconds via EDGE, i've timed it). Delete an email of your PPC, it deletes off of your computer. Change a meeting time on your computer, it changes instantly on your PPC. Everything remains in perfect sync at all times, as long as you have an internet connection on both ends. To reduce battery drain, you can switch to a periodic sync (every so many minutes), but obviously changes and email won't show up as fast then. Regular pop email pisses me off because there's no good way to reply to email you recieved through activesync. Emoze solves this. The only other way I know of to get this sort of service is to be a large business with a big, expensive MS Exchange server. If you manage your life with Outlook like I do, I highly reccomend this software. It works right out of the box (even though there's no box nowdays), just install the desktop PC software, install the PPC software, and it goes.
mail2web has most of the same features, with a few significant difference. It has better attatchment size (100mb) versus emoze's 1mb limit. However, the kicker for me is that you must use a mail2web email address ([email protected]), along with mail2web's desktop email client, to utilize mail2web. Emoze lets you keep your current email address, and your current desktop email client, giving you nothing to relearn, and better protection if emoze/web2mail were to go bankrupt and disappear overnight. Unfortunately, Emoze doesn't support all email clients, although they're working on it, so mail2web might be the way to go if you're running, say, lotus domino. I haven't actually used mail2web, so if I missed any advantages they might have, feel free to post.
Both services are free, so go ahead and try 'em. I have yet to recieve any spam from emoze. Don't know about mail2web though.
Emoze: http://www.emoze.com/en/HomePage.html
mail2web: http://services.mail2web.com/FreeServices/m2wLive/
odd first post wonder who he works for :lol:
the main reason I am using Mail2web and not emoze is because mail2web does not require me to have my own PC on 24/7 nor installing any client on my PC. Peace out
Trucido said:
the main reason I am using Mail2web and not emoze is because mail2web does not require me to have my own PC on 24/7 nor installing any client on my PC. Peace out
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good point. That's a big plus for mail2web. Do you know some way to reply to your mail that makes it seem like you're using your normal email instead of a mail2web email address? I'd definitely switch if I could figure out a good way to do that.
You can do that, but you have to pay for it. That's how they get you to pay them.
does emoze support html mail? free mail2web accounts don't, because they have only exchange server 2003 running.
emoze has a pc client (outlook plugin?) which syncs over internet with the mobile version of emoze on my ppc? this is an advantage and a disadvantage:
the disadvantage has been mentioned - the pc has to run all the time.
but on the other side you are able to sync your mobile and your pc over air.
with free mail2web accounts you can only sync your ppc with the exchange server.
the mail2web email address is not really bad: within the settings of my usual mail account (arcor) i added a filter, which redirects a copy of every incoming mail to my mail2web account. that is not the finest solution, but better than nothing.
emoze battery issues vs mail2web activesync
i had emoze on my hp 6965 and on my htc x7500 and it works very nicely
the only few problems ive had is battery dies within 4-5 hours if the sync is allways on
also if you have pictures associated with your contacts it dosent transfer them back and forth i found, mail2web has no problem doing this
it really was nice to be able to push gmail over the air and have my desktop and ppc synced at the same time but if your pc looses connection ur off the air until you get to it and fix it.
mail2web is great since it keeps your battery life very long (i can have it on all day with about 2 hrs of talktime and about 20-30 emails a day) and still have about 30% left by the time i get home or to my car to charge it again,
but when you reply to messeges it dosent use the gmail address, which sux badly since i want it to use gmail,
the advanteges are you can hard reset your device and not worry about your info being lost or having to get home and save it its just allways on the server, which i like knowing all my data is safe,
ive looked into several other programs like pusheffect and i just couldent get it going so i uninstalled it,
the only other programs i found recently is the seven beta program, i downloaded it to my device and installed it even tho it says wm5 only supported, i had no problems running it on my wm6 unit, it works like a charm
and i get both my gmails, and my work email on it
my current setup is mail2web synced with activesync on my x7500 and seven for my gmails and work email,
also, the seven beta program does not notify you once an email comes in with any audio or the messege icon, it just shows
" [email protected] 1 unread"
so you have to keep looking at your unit from time to time to see if you have email,
push works great, alltho it seems like from time it takes it about 5 min's to get a messege,
I have frequent problems with mail2web
I have all mail forwarded to my gmail, then I have gmail forward everything to mail2web. Gmail frequently reports bounced messages sent to m2w. I'm going to try emoze. I suspect it will be a lot better. Since I have two machines (media server and tor box) on all the time anyway, that's no big deal for me, but there are other advantages to doing so.
purrfect said:
the only other programs i found recently is the seven beta program, i downloaded it to my device and installed it even tho it says wm5 only supported, i had no problems running it on my wm6 unit, it works like a charm
and i get both my gmails, and my work email on it
my current setup is mail2web synced with activesync on my x7500 and seven for my gmails and work email,
also, the seven beta program does not notify you once an email comes in with any audio or the messege icon, it just shows
" [email protected] 1 unread"
so you have to keep looking at your unit from time to time to see if you have email,
push works great, alltho it seems like from time it takes it about 5 min's to get a messege,
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the heads up for the Seven Beta, just signed up and have now stopped forwarding my gmail to my mail2web account, they can now function as two separate items with push on both. As for seven not notifying me when new mail arrives, i can live with that.
Edit
Just sent a test email to both accounts, mail2web won by 1 minute and the PPC went beep for each message
aak4 said:
You can do that, but you have to pay for it. That's how they get you to pay them.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Could you elaborate on this? I don't mind paying, but how would I set it up?
Related
We are using Google for your Domain, and we using Google Calendar, Custom Group Start page, etc. We are all setup that way already and we are just really in love with our setup as it is simple, fast and no-hassles. We don't want to get an exchange server, it seems so complicated, costy and not as compatible (ical, rss, etc).
What we are missing is to be able to get all this data pushed and to sync with our WM5 PDAs.
Right now we are forwarding our emails to a paid exchange service, but we are missing on all the emails that we are sending from our PDAs that do not get sync-ed with gmail.
Also I have read a little bit, but is there a way to sync Gcal with the WM5? We are leaning towards migrating to exchange to be able to have everything sync-ed, but... Google for your Domain is just so great and simple to use (and free...) There has to be a way to push and sync gmail (and contacts), gcal with a WM5! Anyone?
Not sure about push, but check GooSync out.
Google Calendar Sync
5 March 2008 Google Calendar Sync allows you to sync events between Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook Calendar.
http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=89955
You can now access your Google Calendar account from your mobile phone! Just visit mobile.google.com/calendar/ with your phone's web browser and once you're logged in, you'll see your list of upcoming events with date and time information in an easy-to-browse format.
Cheers
Tom
I suggest kerio Mail Server as a substitute to exchange. It works great with iCal and all of Mac. It also works great with my Tilt.
kudroz said:
We are using Google for your Domain, and we using Google Calendar, Custom Group Start page, etc. We are all setup that way already and we are just really in love with our setup as it is simple, fast and no-hassles. We don't want to get an exchange server, it seems so complicated, costy and not as compatible (ical, rss, etc).
What we are missing is to be able to get all this data pushed and to sync with our WM5 PDAs.
Right now we are forwarding our emails to a paid exchange service, but we are missing on all the emails that we are sending from our PDAs that do not get sync-ed with gmail.
Also I have read a little bit, but is there a way to sync Gcal with the WM5? We are leaning towards migrating to exchange to be able to have everything sync-ed, but... Google for your Domain is just so great and simple to use (and free...) There has to be a way to push and sync gmail (and contacts), gcal with a WM5! Anyone?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am not certain whether Funambol will handle Google email, but you might want to check it out (http://www.funambol.com). You can get a free account with them that will handle syncing PIM data and push email, coming from any POP email account. I eventually turned off the push email, since having my data access online 24/7 was running the battery down too fast, but I still use their sync function to transfer contact and calendar information between my phone and Mozilla Thunderbird
I tried this a lot a while back, I spent ages avoiding exchange, I spent hours looking; what I eventually used was a combination of IMAP and Google Calendar. IMAP has the Idle extension which allows mail to be effectively "pushed" to your device, although WM doesn't natively support this I used an add on (I forget the name, it was something like vimail but if you google IMAP Idle WM you'll surely find it or something similar). However I found it hogged my battery, it would only last literally about half a day with this program installed, not sure if it's the program or just a necessary evil of how the IMAP behaviour works.
Alternative you could just sync every 15 mins. That works reasonably well.
That leaves your calendar and Toffa's GooSync program worked quite well for me, synching my google calendar, but it doesn't offer calendar push, and they want you to pay a yearly fee which I think is annoying.
With regards to the previous post I would not recommend Funambol, nor would I recommend ScheduleWorld or Plaxo all of which I found very disappointing and glitchy (I couldn't get Funambol to work at all, actually, and I tried very hard).
This leaves Tasks and Contacts and to the best of my knowledge there is no good way of synching these OTA, so you have to resort to the bane of every WM user's existence which is WMDC/Vista (or Activesync for PC). I heard something about goosync planning to support them, but I'm not sure exactly where your synched items go, you'd have to look.
Now although this is I think the best possible solution I must say I eventually gave up and paid the $10 or whatever for hosted Exchange, which is much more seamless.
Anyone with any experience using Funambol? It's an open source push email solution. It seems to be the only Exchange competitor open source has to offer. I'm installing it now to my server so I'll post my experience. Any thing I should watch out for during the install?
Thanks
LMAO lack of interest apparently!
I tried myfunambol today... Setting up an account and installing everything was easy. Seemed to sync my contacts, calendar and tasks just fine... but I couldn't use more than one email account which was a bummer. But more importantly... the one email account I did use.. gmail... Would push the email to my device after about 5-10 minutes. It would notify me that there was new mail... but when I would go to the Funambol account (won't let you rename it in pocket outlook from what I could tell) it would say Sending/Recieving... and after it was done... there was nothing in my inbox. It did manage to get them after I clicked on Menu > Send/Recieve... but it was still spotty. I didn't get that "reliable" feeling from it.
I tried it for about an hour and even synced my Outlook on my desktop. The syncing of contacts and what not seemed fine... but the email didn't seem to work for me.
I'm on the 8525 btw.
I decided to just go back to mail2web for now... and just forward my work and my personal email to one email account. BAH!
I wish pocket Outlook would just support IMAP idle for gmail already... that and PPC PimBackup is all I would need.
Mark
funambol does actually support instant push, and as soon as the server sees new mail, your phone will sync it.
Your problem is that if you're using the my.funambol free hosted service, their server is only polling your email every 15 min.
Basically, you're notified as soon as the server has new mail for you, however the server only checks for you on 15 min intervals.
Why?
Because the public email servers (yahoo, gmail, aol, etc) dont like get pounded with constant email checking. I was told even blackberry servers check public servers on intervals for this reason (private domains will be instant tho).
If you have an ISP or private domain email, and you're nice to funambol's support team, you can ask them to set your account to check more often. I don't know if they'll do this for everyone, but they set mine to check every 1 min. Now the longest I have to wait for email to arrive is one minute, the actual time averages around 10 sec.
Or you can set up your own funambol server if you'd like...
Ah, that explains the delay.
I was hoping the Funambol server would implement IMAP IDLE connection to gmail so that the emails would be pushed much faster than a 15 minute polling. I'll have to do some more research.
Dishe,
You seem very knowledgeable about Funambol. Do you know if it support HTML email with the Windows Mobile plug-in? It is currently giving me plain-text, I thought maybe there was a setting I could do to change this. Thanks.
www.nuevasync.com
No joke, 1000x better than any other sync solution. Only works with Gapps, but I bet that's what 90% of you guys are looking for anyway.
TerryMathews said:
www.nuevasync.com
No joke, 1000x better than any other sync solution. Only works with Gapps, but I bet that's what 90% of you guys are looking for anyway.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
From their website, it does not seem to support push email (YET).
I checked out Nuevasync and it is awesome! It syncs contacts and calendar perfectly and doesn't require any software downloads. It uses activesync. Thanks a lot for the tip!
is really useful for me, I am glad to read it here.
Hello,
I am a PocketPC user, and I want to completely reorganize the way I am using my private emails, contact & calendar !
I would like to manipulate my data (email, contact & calendar), on the PocketPC AND online on the Web.
Which solution email/contact/calendar solution do you recommend me ?
I have listed these solutions (do you know other possibilities ?):
- Google and Zoho PIM suite: The good, it is online and free. The bad is that there is no way to sync them with the PocketPC.
- Microsoft Exchange: The good, it is on the Pocket PC. The bad, it is costs money.
chris
I use Yahoo. Sync device with Outlook; Outlook and device always the same. Outlook syncs with Yahoo contacts, calendar, etc via Intellisync. So I have a nice backup of everything on Yahoo, can still access things on Yahoo mobile or Yahoo full web.
Outlook on Desktop.
pOutlook on Device.
Yahoo Intellisync to sync Yahoo and Outlook.
Sync Device to Outlook, Outlook to Yahoo.
However this takes mental energy to remember which will be the home to the 'correct' info. So if you edit things in Yahoo, on your phone and in Outlook without first syncing everythign, you can run into issues.
I recently moved to a Service Desk software for my business. It is a served application and I just go to the WWW address to get all the info. Interent dependent though...and web browsing is slow when under the gun...
I also know that if you use the Yahoo mobile plugin system that you pretty much just work from within that shell. Its good for some. I guess it is called Y! Go. I had it on my 8125 and it worked well, a bit slow on the 8125.
I didn't know about this Yahoo sync system. I will have a look at it.
If I understand your feedback, what you are missing is: the need to sync your contacts/calendar directly online from your PocketPC. That's right ?
I do agree with you, the best solution would be to be able to sync online all your applications, that ís the application on the PocketPC (POutlook) and the application on the PC (Outlook).
As far as I know, only Microsoft Exchange is offering this possibility. But it costs quite a lot..
Chris
Google Apps and mail2web
I really like googlemail, and actually use google apps for domains to manage a couple of domain names. I've set up Outlook using IMAP to connect to these accounts but do not schedule mail download. This allows me to easily send emails from my account.
I've then set up mail forwarding within googlemail to a free mail2web account, that is in effect Exchange. This is set up as a push account within Outlook(works really well). Within googlemail I have a rule setup to archive mails once they are forwarded, this gives me a clean inbox should I wish to bring up the IMAP connection to view archived mail.
Could anyone using MS Exchange, give a feedback about this solution ?
Nick, why don't you just use your MS Exchange account (mail2web) ? it seems to me that you don't need to have a gmail account.
Chris
With Mail2web I can only reply and send mails as [email protected]
If I want to send an email from my own domain I need to do it through my Google Apps for Domains setup.
If mail2web could handle personal domains it would be fine. Google do a really good job of this with regard to MX records and reverse dns lookups.
Hosted Exchange would be a nice solution: admitted it costs a few euros per month (6 here) but you get a mailbox which WinMo directly syncs with (without any dirty hacks, plugins and stuff) plus a quite nice webmail/calendaring/collaboration environment (Outlook Web Access).
According to your post, it seems that MS Exchange is actually the only "clean" (=acceptable) way to have the possibility to have your email/contact/calendar on your PocketPC and online.
So, I definitely need to have a look at the offers to see how much it is. Do you know a comparison table of the different companies offering Exchange hosting ?
Nick, i understand now why you still use Google. I do think you can use your own domain with Exchange thought. Maybe not with mail2web.com , but other competitors probably offer this.
How much do you pay for your hosted Exchange ?
spone1, I agree with your conclusion. Which Exchange hosting provider do you use ?
Chris
Mail2web is free!! You may as well sign-up just to see how Push/Active Sync works.
So 95% of the benefits of Exchange (active sync, Outlook Web access etc.) but just no domain hosting. I don't have that many mails that I need to reply to from my domain when I am out and about, so it's really not that big a deal for me to quickly switch accounts when I need to. I'm sure I could get hosted Exchange including a domain or two, but I'd expect it would be between £50 and £100 pounds a year, and wouldn't really give me that much benefit.
But the benefit of having push email is great. ActiveSync does seem to occassional have trouble connecting if my connection type changes through the day. Eg, I connect via WIFI at home, then in the car the phone will pick up 3G, thn by the time I'm at work I'm down to GPRS, at some locations in work I can pick up WIFI again and then for the return journey etc. It can be fixed be manually synchronising to get things running again, but that does kind of defeats the object of push email.
Another alternative is to run your own mail server. It doesn't have to be MS Exchange, there are other that are compatible. But this seems a little like too much hard work without much benefit.
Don't forget that you can use Google with any domain by using Google Apps.
They currently handle MX records for my Domain.
Yeah, Google apps is great, and would be perfect for me if it could handle push email. IMAP isn't the end of the World, just not as slick.
Google apps is my primary mail handler. In effect all mail2web is doing for me is adding push capability
Cloud winmo now
I have a setup that works great for me.
I use a beta (free) service mobipush for push gmail. http://www.mobipush.com/
I use remember the milk for tasks that can be a plugin in google calendar and sync wirelessly with your outlook mobile tasks.
https://www.rememberthemilk.com/
(there is a gadget to add RTM to your gmail screen and intergrated into google calendar.)
I use ogg sync for syncing contacts and calendar.
http://oggsync.com/
Something extra!!!
I also us Jott to add via voice tasks and calendar events to remember the milk and google calendar when I can't type. i.e. when driving.
http://jott.com
This system gives me the cloud experiance of a google phone with the power of a winmo device
I used 4smartphone.net hosted Exchange and before that I'd been using Intellisync for over-the-air sync with Lotus Domino. Intellisync solution was a good one as it provided rather comprehensive sync options. However, I'd been using it few years ago, so I don't really know whether this solution is still available (looks like Nokia had bought Intellisync).
Exchange solution is great for its native support, but lacks few features (like separate folders support and OTA sync for notes).
I think that hosted Exchange 2007 is the preferred option.
Nick-- said:
With Mail2web I can only reply and send mails as [email protected]
If I want to send an email from my own domain I need to do it through my Google Apps for Domains setup.
If mail2web could handle personal domains it would be fine. Google do a really good job of this with regard to MX records and reverse dns lookups.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have my personal domain stuza.com pointing to my mail2web.com account and I love it. Works superbly. I can edit calender/contacts and it changes automaticaly on the mail2web server. Also saves a bucketload of time should you decide to flash your phone - you simply give it your email address and it goes away and autoconfigures the exchange settings and then pulls all your contacts/schedule data down. All my mail comes into [email protected] and goes out from [email protected] .... frickin sweet.
I will never live again without an exchange solution.
edit: dont know if it makes a diference but i have a paid mail2web account
Has anybody tried funambol.com? It is an open source project that I recently found. I haven't tested it with the exception of email but it does have contacts and calendar components. I hope it works for you!
gottago
Sprint Touch w/ WM 6.1
windows live mail
windows live mail works just like exchange, syncing calendar, mail, contacts...etc
Push mail works easily and without any setup. Usually it comes with wm6 phones, but you can also install the cab found on the forum.
Xilicon said:
windows live mail works just like exchange, syncing calendar, mail, contacts...etc
Push mail works easily and without any setup. Usually it comes with wm6 phones, but you can also install the cab found on the forum.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Okay my age is probably getting in the way, but don't you have to use Outlook to synch calendar? Has there been an upgrade to Windows Live Mail or something else I may be missing?
gottago
Sprint Touch w/ WM 6.1
gottago said:
Has anybody tried funambol.com? It is an open source project that I recently found. I haven't tested it with the exception of email but it does have contacts and calendar components. I hope it works for you!
gottago
Sprint Touch w/ WM 6.1
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Further on funambol.com and to the original poster's request. Funambol has it's own web site that will serve to pull/push email and contacts with GMail. I don't use the calendar on Gmail so I can not address that but Funambol provides you a myfunambol web page that will consolidate your email/contacts as well as any calendar/tasks/notes/briefcase on your PPC. So, in effect, you can go to your myfunambol page and see your email, contacts, calendar, etc. all in one place on the web as well as on your PPC. Funambol provides flexibility as to what it actually synchs so you remain in control. While you can schedule your synch times, it also has the option of synching on a 'push' basis. I will admit that this capability is not necessarily perfect at this point but it is clearly being worked on.
This is a great solution for me as I do not use Outlook (too cheap to buy) or Internet Explorer on my PC. I use Thunderbird/Lightning and Firefox. There is a Funambol plugin for Thunderbird that works well.
NOTE: I have no affiliation with Funambol other than as a user of this one product.
gottago
Sprint Touch w/WM 6.1
I was searching the forum, and elsewhere, and could not get a way of solving the issues..
Problem:
1. Exchange server (office related) is occupying 'push mail' using ActiveSync definitions. Works just fine.
2. Google APPS - although it can push mail, I have to connect as IMAP or POP account , losing push mail. Works fine as well..
However- recently I have a need to get notified right away when I get an email on my google account. I can use activeSync to push google, but my current exchange server does not have POP or IMAP. I tried changing the intervals of checking my google account (using IMAP) to every 5 minutes. That works kind of OK, but my battery drainage increased to a point I have to charge before i get back home.
I looked into solutions like Chronobilis, but it did not work. I need mainly emails, not calendar and contacts to be pushed (obviously). Even a paid service is nice, but I can not use a 3rd party service if my emails are sent to an un-authorized 3rd party server, especially if servers may reside outside the US.
Any ideas?
Possible solution...
Have you tried the SEVEN Beta Program? It does provide push email capabilities for free. I used it awhile back to have multiple email accounts from Exchange and Gmail pushed to my phone.
URL: http://community.seven.com/main.php
BigE said:
However- recently I have a need to get notified right away when I get an email on my google account. I can use activeSync to push google, but my current exchange server does not have POP or IMAP. I tried changing the intervals of checking my google account (using IMAP) to every 5 minutes. That works kind of OK, but my battery drainage increased to a point I have to charge before i get back home.
Any ideas?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would try a demo of touchdown from the market it can activesync i dont recall if it can do multiple accounts or not but I thinks not but YMMV.
Seven ! that's it !!!
WOW...
Tried the solution offered , using SEVEN, and it is great. Was not only able to pusg Gmail and Exchange at the same time, but I am getting rid of ActiveSync I never liked...
Thanks guys. Prompt answer, and a damn good one too..
bigE
Hey guys,
I'm on Windows phone temporarily while my HTC OneX is being fixed.
I'm having a frustrating problem with my email on a Nokia Lumia 610.
Using a POP account the windows phone downloads my emails without any problems. But, once I download the same emails on my PC, the windows Phone decides to remove(from the phone) the same emails rather than leaving copies like both Ios & Android. This is highly frustrating when forwarding Airline tickets or schedules you want to save for later reference. Today I missed a bus because of it. Thanks Microsoft
Anyone know how to fix it? The email settings seemed too dumbed down to be of any use.
Cheers.
First suggestion would be to use an email protocol that is merely old, instead of completely obsolete. POP3 is from the 80s, and it shows. Does your provider seriously not offer IMAP access? There are plenty of perfectly good and free emails providers which do... Some of them will even pull email from other inboxes for you.
Second suggestion, if you absolutely must use POP3, would be to make sure that both the phone and PC are configured to "Leave a copy of messages on the server" when downloading. My best guess as to what's happening is that your PC is configured to download and remove the messages from the server. Then, when your phone syncs with the server again, it sees that the messages it had previously downloaded were deleted from the server, so it deletes the local copies as well.
That's exactly what is happing. I just think its the wrong way. Even my old Nokia dumbphone from 5 years ago left copies of downloaded emails on the phone. As does the Iphone & Android.
Thanks for the help anyway. I don't think Imap is an option.
Gmail, as one example, supports IMAP (for free) and I believe it can retrieve mail from a POP3 server for you too (although I haven't tried). Alternatively, you may be able to set up your POP3 account to forward mail to a Gmail account. IMAP really is just a superior protocol.
Is there some reason you're not keeping the messages on the server after download? I guess I can see why you'd prefer that the phone not remove messages that were removed from the server, but given how little synchronization is possible in POP3 anyhow, I actually think that behavior is better than nothing (although perhaps it should be configurable and for some reason isn't).
I was able to switch to IMAP, but my WP is still deleting the mails after the PC downloads them. UGH.
If I let my PC email client leave the messages on the server, it will constantly re download them. (I think).
I'm sure this is a WP problem/oversight as multiple other devices work correctly.
If your PC email client constantly re-downloads message that it itself has chosen to leave on the server, you're using a truly outrageously bad email client! Even with POP3, it's quite possible for a client to list the messages on the server, and then only download the ones it doens't have. This is how all major email clients work (Outlook, Windows [Live] Mail, Thunderbird, Apple's Mail app, the WP7 email client, etc.) Even better, though, would be to also use IMAP on the PC client, as that way you could truly keep things in sync between the phone and the PC (for example, if you read a message on the phone, it would be makred as read on the PC when you got home, and if you send a message on the PC at home, it would be visible in the Sent Items folder on the phone too).