Always-On E-Mail Battle Heats Up

[Jerry Raia]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.mobilepipeline.com/159400011' target='_blank'>http://www.mobilepipeline.com/159400011</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Mobile software vendor Intellisync, which has been positioning itself as a competitor to Research In Motion's (RIM's) popular always-on e-mail server software and devices, said Wednesday that its software will soon work on RIM"s BlackBerry devices."</i><br /><br />I guess no matter what, Blackberrys just wont go away! To me they are just throw backs to two-way text pagers. Please forgive the little rant. :)

[seaflipper]

Yeah but you know what? Push email on the Treo650 is so darn sweet, it REALLY makes the Blackberry's look like 2 way pagers! I tried psuedo "push" on my SMT5600 by doing the "every 15 minute pull" job, but it was flaky at best. Then I got the Treo650 and have never looked back.

For $32 you buy Chatteremail
for $20 PER YEAR (not month) get a 600MB Fastmail.fm email account and you are set. That works out to $4.33 a month for the first year for TRUE push email on the Treo650 versus a minimum of $40 a month for Blackberry service or $59 a month for a Goodlink hosted solution (if you don't have goodlink at your work already).

[guardedthought]

Yeah, but finding a non-work related Exchange server that really has Always Up To Date enabled on their end is hard to find. Once that has become almost universal, I think blackberry's will peacefully go extinct just like pagers did.

[seaflipper]

Yeah, but finding a non-work related Exchange server that really has Always Up To Date enabled on their end is hard to find. Once that has become almost universal, I think blackberry's will peacefully go extinct just like pagers did.

That's where fastmail.fm comes in. I thought the same thing as you, but all you need is IMAP, not exchange, although for Windows based devices exchange is still proabably required, isn't it? The guys at fastmail know what they are doing!

http://www.fastmail.fm/

And it's SUPER cheap. Free or $20 a year for more storage, or $40 a year for killer storage.

[irishmikev]

everyone does need to wake up a little and smell the market share. Blackberry is the device to beat in power consumption, features and reliability. GoodLink is essentially a knock-off of Blackberry and the only other product that comes close.

We've worked with AUTD, Server Activesync, scheduled pulls, and Blackberry. From an enterprise perspective, the reliability and management of the Blackberry solution is pretty unbeatable. Here are just a few things that make me feel that way:

1) Where is the remote kill command for wireless devices? A number of our devices have been lost/stolen/etc. Without being able to remotely kill all data on the device no security sensitive enterprise is going to want to come within a mile of smartphones for email. There may be 3rd party products that can do this but at what cost and why isn't this a core feature in the product?

2) AUTD is flawed because it's based on SMS wake-up messages to be received by the client. If I'm somewhere and have my phone turned off, if the time between when the Exchange server sends the AUTD email and I receive it is more than a certain amount (30 minutes? I forget the exact time) AUTD gives up on me and will wait until I manually sync before sending any more text messages. This was mostly not to deluge phones with incoming SMS messages that customers could be paying per incoming message. The end effect though is that someone who has a Blackberry just turns it on and it works. It catches up with no manual work by the user. A smartphone will have to have activesync launched, click sync, see if you successfully synchronize, and THEN the AUTD will start again.

3) The fact that there's no key exchange between the server/wireless device means that the device has been written to accept incoming commands to sync from any sender that inputs the correct string of characters in the body. I can send AUTD emails all day long to someone's smartphone until they run out of juice. This lack of a key exchange is I think what limits them from doing device control like 'Kill' commands remotely. Since there's no way to verify the source of the incoming command, the functionality that those commands can kick off has to be crippled. The Blackberry does a key exchange with the server and has a wide array of remote IT Admin functions that can be performed against it. MS has used SSL to make up for the over-the-wire encryption, but I think they've missed the point of how much more key exchange and ID verification could open up for them.

4) Attachment handling - The Blackberry attachment service handles a WIDE array of files. If you want any office file viewing on a Smartphone, guess you better buy ClearVue. The 220 does have some office format file viewing but this isn't something that exist across the board in MS smartphones yet.

5) Email receipt verification - The BB server is able to track on a message by message level whether the device has received an update or not. This has come in very handy as an admin being able to verify that a user has in fact gotten something when they claim the contrary.

There are a number of other advantages as well. Look, I love my Audiovox 5600 and I use AUTD, but if I was a user in my enterprise that was communicating with clients continually during the day, you'd have to pry my Blackberry from my cold dead hands. Now let's see how interesting things get with the licensing game with both MS and RIM. I know that MS is probably planning some interesting changes with Magneto, because they have got to be able to do better than AUTD in it's current state.

Just my .02 (or maybe that was more like a buck or 2). :)

[Kris Kumar]

Just my .02 (or maybe that was more like a buck or 2). :)

The most valuable 2 cents. :-) Thanks.

BlackBerry does one thing and does it well. Luckily there is life beyond e-mail and that is where our Smartphones come in. ;-)

[Kris Kumar]

Blackberry is the device to beat in power consumption, features and reliability.
Absolutely...I also love the color screen on the newer 7100 BlackBerry.


1) Where is the remote kill command for wireless devices?
I have heard about carrier's planning to offer this feature. But have not seen it happen. I would love to have this standard on my Smartphone.


2) AUTD is flawed because it's based on SMS wake-up messages to be received by the client.
I wonder what kind of sync functionality the next version of Exchange will have.


3) The fact that there's no key exchange between the server/wireless device means that the device has been written to accept incoming commands to sync from any sender that inputs the correct string of characters in the body. ... MS has used SSL to make up for the over-the-wire encryption, but I think they've missed the point of how much more key exchange and ID verification could open up for them.
I never realized this.

4) Attachment handling - The Blackberry attachment service handles a WIDE array of files.
When Pocket PCs were launched, Microsoft had an edge in this topic. But over the years Microsoft has not done much to improve the viewers and left it to the third party vendors. And on the Smartphone its all third party.

5) Email receipt verification - The BB server is able to track on a message by message level whether the device has received an update or not.
:)

I guess the reason why I don't carry the BB is because I don't need always on e-mail. I need a phone, that looks like a phone, feels like a phone and works like a phone. And can do lots of cool stuff. ;-)