Related
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
Hi,
I am currently with a company that has an exchange server and I use it to sync with my phone. However, I am moving to another company that doesn't. I am therefore forwarding email into a gmail account until I sort myself out and can filter my email into another account for mobile use.
I am after software that allows me to sync in a exchange kind of way. I don't mind paying for the software, but I do not really wish to pay a service charge as they usually seem a little expensive imho.
I have looked at windows live (10.6.0034.0800), but the contacts and calendar don't seem to sync properly, so I might as well use imap to collect email, and Google doesn't currently seem to have a WM client.
Any ideas or suggestions welcome.
Cavey
It's not software per se but check out mail2web, they will offer you the full ActiveSync OTA experience for free. Just forward everything to this account and they push it to the phone. Sign up for the free live account. This will give you OTA sync of mail, contacts, calendars and tasks.
IMO, what's really needed for these phones, and might even be on the cards with Google's licensing of the Exchange ActiveSync protocol, is a BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server)-like relay package.
A piece of software that sits on a computer or server (or the server) in the office, and stays logged into each of your user's Exchange mailboxes via MAPI, then syncs messages, calendar, contacts etc. realtime to the Google Mail / Gmail account.
Shouldn't be very hard to create, especially for those who have written apps like GsyncIT.
I believe there already is one such package, I found it a few days ago, can't remember the name - it has an M in it ( ), but it looked a bit pricey and like it was intended to do more than just Exchange -> Gmail (was a generic Cloud-sync package).
A fairly simple extension of something like GsyncIT I should think. The Exchange Information Store ACLs would be modified so that user "GoogleSyncAdmin" has Full Mailbox access to the mailboxes concerned, and the users would be mapped to GoogleMail accounts. Job done, proper push synchronisation on Android. The handsets would just be registered to a Gmail account.
The alternative, which may also be on the cards for the same reason, is that Google develop a BIS (Blackberry Internet Service)-like extension to Gmail, whereby Gmail stays logged into your Exchange Account via ExchangeActiveSync, and pulls changes down. This would require working EAS on the user's Exchange Server, and would require providing Exchange credentials to Gmail. I guess it'd be just like their current POP-downloading facility, but for Exchange, and hopefully including Calendar & Contacts sync.
I prefer the BES-like solution personally. No ports need to be opened on the user's Exchange server, you could run multiple Exchange servers behind a no-inbound firewall, and it's probably less troublesome overall. The BES-like package could also inject hidden instruction-messages that control features of the handset, IT policy, block downloads, wipe data etc.
Doing exchange->[beslike software]->gmail->phone would mean that any messages sent from the device would come from your gmail account though, not your exchange account.
Much better to have a true exchange client on the device, then it works both ways.
Deicist said:
Doing exchange->[beslike software]->gmail->phone would mean that any messages sent from the device would come from your gmail account though, not your exchange account.
Much better to have a true exchange client on the device, then it works both ways.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, they would just allow you to set Reply-To/From: just like they do with your other existing emails addresses at the moment.
I think this device rapidly needs Exchange/Activesync support, Office Documents and USB internet sharing for free and quick.
I am testing this device for our company and unless it can do these well and ideally free then its a non-starter for us.
This is the product I had seen: http://www.cemaphore.com/index.html
Lowest pricing is $325/yr for 5 users with the online service, which isn't so expensive, but annual pricing is a pain, and can't buy less than 5 users.
cemaphore is buggy.
Their client crashes constantly, and says mail is sent that never really was. Avoid or wait till it's more stable in later versions.
I tried the MyTouch 3G last year and found that it's email sync with Hotmail was poor. If you deleted/read something from the device, it would not delete it/mark it read on the server. I tried the K-9 program, but it was pretty lame as it did not fix the above issues.
Has this been fixed? I really enjoyed all other aspects of Android, but this issue is a necessity for a phone for me.
Also, the native MS exchange server support only covered email. Have they added contacts and calendar syncing? When I had the MyTouch 3G, I bought the program "Touchdown" and that worked slick.
I am just curious to see if the Android people had advanced into the core MS functionality yet.
Thanks for any input.
POP is notoriously hard to keep in sync among multiple clients. There's usually a 'mark as read on download' setting that works ok if you only have one POP client downloading mail. When I last checked Hotmail didn't have that ability but maybe they've done some improvements. If they have an IMAP or ActiveSync option that would be the ideal solution.
In my case I don't use my Hotmail as my primary account but I still have email that goes to it. I use Gmail's ability to sync with external POP accounts to download and label my Hotmail email. This way I get my Hotmail email pushed to me like my Gmail email and I don't have to use separate email clients to read them. I also prefer Gmail's web interface and spam filter so I don't even bother going to Hotmail's site any more. The problem with this approach is that Android's Gmail app doesn't allow you to change the 'from' field so if you reply to a Hotmail email it will be from your Gmail address. This isn't an issue for me since I essentially use my Hotmail as a read-only account. If you have a similar use case then this method would probably work well for you.
Thanks for the input. It sounds like things are about the same as what I was experiencing.
Currently, I fall on the WinMo side of the coin.
All my email is hosted by Google Apps, and is pushed to my WinMo device by GoogleApps using the MS Activesync (MS Exchange Server) protocol.
If I move onto an ANDROID device, what mechanisms are available to me, to have 'always on' push-email? Will my GoogleApps account have to MS ActiveSync to my Google Powered phone? Seems a bit weird. I know there are some 'constant connected' implementations of IMAP too, but apparently they're particularly resource / data hungry.
Can anyone advise - I'm likely to buy my first Android phone quite soon.
The default gmail application does push. There are also several options and settings for push or timed queries for other mail services, exchange or otherwise through market applications or the stock email application.
Android phones usually have 2 mail apps. One for gmail which automatically pushes mail to the app and works absolutely brilliantly. The second is for all other types of mail accounts eg pop, Imap, and exchange ActiveSync. This can be scheduled or set to push under ActiveSync.
Thanks folks, for all the input.
This sounds like it would actually work better for me, as it seems I'd be able to have instant push email through the gmail app, for my google-apps domain, and the second mail client could be pushed email directly from an exchange server.
Wonder how it'll handle contacts from both!
I think all that remains now, is do I get the HTC Desire, or the SE Xperia X10,
and that's a question out of scope for this thread, I think.
Has anyone tried setting up gmail as an activesync account so all email will be in one app? I've tried different things for the username and domain and can't get it to connect.
I actually switched from having a hosted MSexchange account to a Googleapps GMail acct, and push works great.
n0ahg said:
Has anyone tried setting up gmail as an activesync account so all email will be in one app? I've tried different things for the username and domain and can't get it to connect.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
according to googleapps, username is your FULL email address - [email protected] or [email protected]. domain should be blank. the 'Exchange' server is m.google.com. The option for using security should be selected.
Having never laid hands on Android, I can't tell you how to input these; but this is what I use on WinMo, and on my Nokia with the MailForExchange client.
youbrokeit said:
according to googleapps, username is your FULL email address - [email protected] or [email protected]. domain should be blank. the 'Exchange' server is m.google.com. The option for using security should be selected.
Having never laid hands on Android, I can't tell you how to input these; but this is what I use on WinMo, and on my Nokia with the MailForExchange client.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The email app on android doesn't have a seperate domain box and keeps putting a '\' on the front of the '<mail name>@gmail.com' :-(
I know this is some sort of thread necromancy but I have a question regarding setting up google mail while also using the standard google account for synchronisation.
Both methods offer also synchronisation of contacts and calendars. While having both calendar synchronisation options active it will clone your entries. What about the contact synchronisation? It seems reasonable to have both options active as adding a new contact over the email app (which will use the exchange active sync) would synchronise with the google contacts which in turn should fill up your contacts handbook. Or is it obsolete as the stock email app will already add the contact to your google account even using seemingly another account?
I would appreciate any attempts to clear this confusion
Nevermind. Found it out myself: just stay with the google account, the stock email app takes it info from there and does integrate it.
issue im facing on the GMail app that comes built in with the OS, I cannot move emails to a specific folder. Any overcome ?
Some of this needs to be done from a PC......
well moving to a folder is a basic function, and being a google phone i feel the GMAIL app is lacking in quite alot of basic needs, not mentioning the UI.
Been an iphone user, and GMAIL was awesome on iphone. Can say, gmail on iphone mail app been an awesome experience. The push mail is quite similiar to BlackBerry on iphone. Quite disappointed on my email experience with android.
ratta77 said:
well moving to a folder is a basic function, and being a google phone i feel the GMAIL app is lacking in quite alot of basic needs, not mentioning the UI.
Been an iphone user, and GMAIL was awesome on iphone. Can say, gmail on iphone mail app been an awesome experience. The push mail is quite similiar to BlackBerry on iphone. Quite disappointed on my email experience with android.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Same here.
With 4 email accounts, i feel like the only one that works correctly with push is Gmail.
Other emails have to be set through independent apps, if available, which is very annoying.
The native email app doesn't have a push option, draining battery every time it goes fetch.
Android is a powerhouse.
There's gotta be a solution for this.
I would like emails on the same app, and push.
I need a phone for business and the best email phone is still the Blackberry.
Hi guys,
For all those who are looking for having your private domain mails pushed to your phone, without having an Exchange setup, GMAIL does it!
Here is a step by step guide for adding POP/IMAP mail accounts into your GMAIL account and therefore getting the mails pushed to your phone.
Only thing is that the mails take around 15-20 minutes to come through, as GMAIL fetches your POP/IMAP mails into its server every 15 minutes.
http://www.androidcentral.com/using-gmail-your-own-personal-push-mail-server
---
Next alternative is using SEVEN MAIL! this is a brilliant app, very very easy to setup, and gives you mails in 5-10 minutes max!
here is the page where they have a direct download link for the SEVEN app
http://techie-buzz.com/mobile-news/seven-a-push-email-client-released-on-android-2-1.html
and above all, like Gmail, its also FREE!
Airosa said:
Same here.
With 4 email accounts, i feel like the only one that works correctly with push is Gmail.
Other emails have to be set through independent apps, if available, which is very annoying.
The native email app doesn't have a push option, draining battery every time it goes fetch.
Android is a powerhouse.
There's gotta be a solution for this.
I would like emails on the same app, and push.
I need a phone for business and the best email phone is still the Blackberry.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have to agree with you. How could google let us down? the email app is crap.... I miss iphone email client but i hate APPLE
Problem push mail motorola Razr
Hello i just got my razr 3 days ago is running 2.3.5 I just notice that i dont get my emails on time i have to keep refreshing every-time i happen either with gmail app nor email app i try to modify the settings but is not too much to set i try to delete the gmail update and still the same problem, i have also a blackberry and the emails goes straight away to my blackberry and after 30 or 40 to my razr which is very annoying i want to get rid of blackberry, Somebody knows how to fix it? thanks