The PocketTV Team
11-01-2003, 02:13 AM
I hope MSFT has done some serious home work, because I must say that for me, Inbox is really unusable on any of the 2002 devices.
Before today I had *never* tried configuring and using Inbox on any of the dozen Pocket PCs (and Smartphones) that we have. Now I can say it was a good idea to stay away from Inbox, because it is *very* broken - and for me, totally unusable.
Here are some of the most serious problems with 2002 InBox :
1) IMAP4 folders problem:
I use IMAP4, and my mail folders, on the server, are not under my home folder (they are under ~/mail , which is often the case on Linux/Unix servers).
The problem is that on 2002, there is no way to tell Inbox where the IMAP4 folder are located (and should be searched for synch'ing).
So at each sync, the stupid InBox will scan all the files and folders in my home directory (on the server), i.e. it will cause the IMAP server to look at a large number of failes that are not email folders. and that takes about 15 minute!!! and after 15 min, it stopped scanning and still does not show me my IMAP mail folders. Crap!!! That's a total show stopper for anyone having their mail on a Linux/Unix server.
2) No way to use different user-names and passwords for IMAP4 server and SMTP (send) server.
Like many others, I use different servers for sending email and for IMAP4. This trivial case is not supported
3) If there is not enough memory to download all the headers from the IMAP4 Inbox, Inbox just silently gives up and display an empty Inbox.
4) ActiveSync is not capable of sync'ing the Inbox of Outlook Express (the mail client that we use on all our Windows stations).
From what I heard, there is a third-party commercial software (http://www.syncdata.it/syncexpress.html) that you can purchase to work around this issue.
Conclusion:
I imagine that I'm not the first to discover all those shortcomings, but I really hope that MSFT adressed ALL of those in the Mobile 2003 Platform.
It would be nice to be able to use my Smartphone or Pocket PC phone edition to read my mail... not possible today!
Before today I had *never* tried configuring and using Inbox on any of the dozen Pocket PCs (and Smartphones) that we have. Now I can say it was a good idea to stay away from Inbox, because it is *very* broken - and for me, totally unusable.
Here are some of the most serious problems with 2002 InBox :
1) IMAP4 folders problem:
I use IMAP4, and my mail folders, on the server, are not under my home folder (they are under ~/mail , which is often the case on Linux/Unix servers).
The problem is that on 2002, there is no way to tell Inbox where the IMAP4 folder are located (and should be searched for synch'ing).
So at each sync, the stupid InBox will scan all the files and folders in my home directory (on the server), i.e. it will cause the IMAP server to look at a large number of failes that are not email folders. and that takes about 15 minute!!! and after 15 min, it stopped scanning and still does not show me my IMAP mail folders. Crap!!! That's a total show stopper for anyone having their mail on a Linux/Unix server.
2) No way to use different user-names and passwords for IMAP4 server and SMTP (send) server.
Like many others, I use different servers for sending email and for IMAP4. This trivial case is not supported
3) If there is not enough memory to download all the headers from the IMAP4 Inbox, Inbox just silently gives up and display an empty Inbox.
4) ActiveSync is not capable of sync'ing the Inbox of Outlook Express (the mail client that we use on all our Windows stations).
From what I heard, there is a third-party commercial software (http://www.syncdata.it/syncexpress.html) that you can purchase to work around this issue.
Conclusion:
I imagine that I'm not the first to discover all those shortcomings, but I really hope that MSFT adressed ALL of those in the Mobile 2003 Platform.
It would be nice to be able to use my Smartphone or Pocket PC phone edition to read my mail... not possible today!