What will Microsoft Exchange do for me??? - iPhone 3G

seb481 · 03-17-2008, 07:05 AM

Will I be able to get push email? I'm not sure I really understand this MS Exchange Server thing.

Is it just for companies?

Please someone educate me ;-)

Thanks

Ohmster · 03-17-2008, 07:20 AM

If you/your company has an Exchange Server, you will be able to wirelessly sync your calendar and contacts. You will also get push mail (either through IMAP's IDLE command or part of EAS, not sure) .

I hope that they implement IDLE for the .mac mail so that this also becomes realtime.

rennyn · 03-17-2008, 07:26 AM

Not necessarily just for companies.

You can get privately hosted exchange email for $6-10/month. It would mean automatic instant real-time syncing of your contacts and email, possibly even notes.

ColsTiger · 03-17-2008, 12:46 PM

Contacts, email, and calendar straight off your MS Exchange server at work. Your boss, or administrative assistant could schedule an appointment, or enter a new contact on the Exchange server back at the office and you could instantly read them right on your phone. The big difference will be that you don't have to physically sync your phone to your computer to get these updates; they'll be automatically delivered to your phone over the at&t wireless network. For the average consumer without MS Exchange, there won't be any advantage, but for millions of consumers that have jobs that use MS Exchange it will be a way to dump those crackberries and go with a REAL smart phone.

j/k of course. Crackberries are pretty nice phones.

seb481 · 03-17-2008, 03:35 PM

Thanks for all of you guys' replies. I understand better now.

My company doesn't and won't have an exchange server (I work for a tiny company and it just wouldn't make sense). So if I understand right, I will have to use a service ($6-$10/month) just to get push email?? Push email is the only think I want. I don't care much for calendar.

ColsTiger · 03-17-2008, 07:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by seb481

Thanks for all of you guys' replies. I understand better now.

My company doesn't and won't have an exchange server (I work for a tiny company and it just wouldn't make sense). So if I understand right, I will have to use a service ($6-$10/month) just to get push email?? Push email is the only think I want. I don't care much for calendar.

Wouldn't hardly be worth it just to get push email. The yahoo push is better than nothing, but it's not very dependable.

electoman · 03-17-2008, 07:16 PM

A hosted service for a small company would be good. I personally can't wait for EAS. I have used it on WM devices for a while now. I have set up several for our company. We won't be springing for BES so this makes sense. I am looking forward to adding the iPhone to the list.

Now if we just had "copy/paste", we would have a really solid device.

seb481 · 03-17-2008, 07:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ColsTiger

Wouldn't hardly be worth it just to get push email. The yahoo push is better than nothing, but it's not very dependable.

Yahoo sux! I mean, the push email thing works ok but I don't have a yahoo account and I don't want to create one. Yahoo emails are marked as spam by many email clients, that's why I don't want to switch. I actually started switching to yahoo mail a couple weeks ago. I started sending emails to my friends from my new yahoo email letting them know about my change of email. About 1/3 of my emails came back undelivered because my friends' email clients wouldn't accept emails from yahoo as it wasn't considered as "safe".

I love my blackberry so much for that. I had push email (instantly, not like yahoo, which sometimes takes a couple minutes). I want the same thing with my iPhone. Is it too much asking from a $600 phone?

psylichon · 03-17-2008, 08:41 PM

Before I got the iPhone, I was using a free service called mail2web. They have a pay service, but you don't need that.

I would forward all my gmail to my mail2web address, and it would push it to my WM phone (Cingular 2125) via activesync. I could also set it to sync my contacts and calendar on the fly but I didn't often use those features (too much data swapping... email was good enough for me).

It did save my butt one time when I accidentally wiped out all the contacts on my phone AND in Outlook on the computer (frighteningly easy to do)... just resynced with the free exchange server and I had everything back. Phew!

Something tells me Google will offer this service free with gmail soon... just a guess....

Yeah, I'm looking forward to these features BIG TIME with the iPhone...

psylichon · 03-17-2008, 08:45 PM

Ya know, the more I think about it, the more I realize how smart it would be for Google to implement Exchange push into their service by the time v2.0 rolls out in June. The two most popular smartphones in the world right now are Blackberries and iPhones. BBowners will generally be using their blackberry addresses to get push email, but I'm sure TONS of iPhone users are gmail users as well. Food for thought.... for google....

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