I use GMail strictly as a backup email address for the rare time when my domain email server's built-in anti-spam functions block something necessary, like sending or receiving a RAR archive for instance. For 99.9% or more of my uses, my @luthier.ca address and nPOPuk are more than adequate. nPOPuk opens in about half a second, updates my POP server list in a few seconds at most, and with filters set to auto-mark the spam for deletion from the server, I deal with my morning email maintenance ritual in under a minute. Haven't ever used Outlook for email after an initial test in 2000 left me feeling like wow, what a dog... And Outlook Contacts is something I have dallied with as a backup for my Pocket PCs over the years many times. Always ended up frustrated with duplicates, crashes, deleted items on the PPC (though I ALWAYS configure it to keep items on the device and overwrite those on the PC; Activesync simply refuses to obey that command, period.
Thanks to a recent series of horrible errors in Activesync, I no longer have that software installed. No need here for something apparently designed to mangle my contacts list. I use Pocket Outlook Exporter to regularly dump a small CSV file (currently 142KB for 817 contacts, many with notes), then upload that to GMail Contacts. The whole export/upload process takes about 2 minutes. I'm not saying Gmail is flawless in 'synching' contacts in this way, in fact it does tend to make mistakes and my contacts total gets out of whack a bit. So to work around this, I delete all from their server first, then upload afresh. Slightly tricky this, as Google only allows 500 deletions at a time. So I choose a few letters of the alphabet to sort by, G and H seem to work well for me, and searching my contacts for these I eventually get a list of a few hundred which I can select all > delete, then do another select all > delete for the rest of the list. Uploading the renewed CSV file is a perfect way to get my online contacts backup after that.
I won't be using the massive memory store GMail offers simply because I like having local control of my email. I keep local backups in spades, so no worries about data loss. In my opinion, all this talk of 'the cloud' is fine enough for relatively trivial things like keeping up with twitter feeds or social networking sites, but where business is concerned, give me local, multi-format readable email every time. nPOPuk saves in a plaintext DAT, readable in any text editor. That goes beyond mere backup copies, into failsafe text availability regardless of which software comes and goes.
I've nothing against GMail per se, and know what you mean about it seeming to be a bit more professional than the others mentioned, and certainly worlds better than having an @excite.com or @aol.com address... but really, why risk your business with a service which has no particular concern as to your success or failure as an individual or company? If they dumped all your email tomorrow, for example, would they even apologise? Would your cries for help earn you anything more than a form letter? Would it matter to Google if you went to a few forum sites and complained of their lack of concern? Would your clients understand, if you failed to meet obligations due to loss of critical information?
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Gerard Ivan Samija
Microsoft MVP
forum moderator for PocketPCFAQ.com
One of the things I full on HATE about my Android device is that every single stinking person that emails you in Gmail gets added to your contacts. Now if you do not have a phone number associated with the email address or name it will not show up in your contact list when you go to dial a number. However, if you go to save a phone number you can clearly see every annoying email address you never intended to save or wanted in your contacts right there mocking you!
On top of that, if one of my contacts email me from a different email address, the Google suite of apps is not smart enough to associate that email address with the already set up contact that matches the name completely.
This is hands down the biggest annoyance I have with the Android and Google suite platforms.
What I love most about gmail is their excellent spam filter. My personal e-mail (through my ISP account) has no spam catching at all, so I just POP it into gmail and then push my gmail to my phone. If I had my phone set to poll my ISP account, 90% of what I'd get is junk; now I rarely get any.
It's interesting that most free mail domains seem unprofessional (aol, hotmail, even yahoo), but for some reason gmail seems to be respected more.
I'm right behind you Rocco. This and privacy concerns are the single biggest reason I will not use Google to manage my contacts. I simply do not WANT every single person that emails me to be on my contact list. I have no idea why this would ever be desirable to anyone who handles even a small amount of daily emails from one-off contacts, nor why one cannot simply turn this off.
Jon, its funny you should mention this because I just basically did the same thing. Except I started by moving to the G1 and then recently realized it made sense to migrate all my email to Google.
I know what you mean, Jon. As an academic too, I look at my communication needs differently than either a typical personal or corporate user. I've gone through all sorts of contortions to get a good solution to keeping my mail, contacts, tasks and appointments synchronized between two (now three) computers and my WM phone.
IMAP is clunky and I really don't like it, but I still use it for my work mail because our IT folks set us up a mail system that would have been impressive in 1992, but just looks sad in 2009. I have Gmail pick up my work mail via POP3 and then use my college return address on outgoing mail. It works, but the IMAP connections are slow and unreliable so it's frequently a bit irritating.
I lived with it, though, when I was on XP and I physically carried my WM phone back and forth and used Activesync to sync all the rest. But when I got Vista at home, that was the end of that. The mobile device center is so unuseable that it actually makes Activesync look sleek and reliable and I finally gave up on it completely.
That put me in a jam for syncing all my non-mail stuff and so I invested in an Exchange 2007 account. Wow, I should have done that long ago. It is fast, secure, automatic and reliable. Now it doesn't matter which device I use, everything is always there and up-to-date. And if all else fails, I can just pop on with Outlook Web Access. I wish my college would get it, but that's not going to happen.
My only remaining problem is that Outlook isn't a great Gmail interface so I always have to be concious of the Gmail implications of the button(s) I press in Outlook. I hope MS tweaks it a bit to be more Gmail friendly, but that would seem somewhat uncharacteristic for them. darren-lin said something about a conversation view in the next version. There's a conversation view in the current version, but it's just not as elegant as Gmail's.
What I would really like would be for Outlook to have Gmail as an option when you set up an account so that Outlook can have delete and archive buttons and so you don't have all the extra Outlook folders on top of all the Gmail folders and such. Given how many people use Outlook and use Gmail, I'm surprised that some enterprising programmer hasn't put together a Gmail add-in for Outlook that bring full functionality to it. I would totally buy something like that.
Anyway, thanks for the article. It's something a lot of us think about from time to time and it's useful to hear what happened when someone else tried it.
I think this is a network issue, not OUtlook per se. I see the same issues you do when my laptop is at home, but at work, I don't. And my Exchange server is 800 miles away at another office, so both home/work are accessing over the internet.
I agree with Ed, it seems much more network related than Outlook related. I used to have the same things Jon describes in the past, all disappeared when I changed my internet infrastructure provider and got a better plan.
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Helio Diamant
Editor www.pocketpcfreak.com - The Hebrew Windows Mobile and Wireless Website
This says a lot more about you than my @gmail.com says about me. Grow up already.
Amen. I got a GMail account within a few months of the service being offered in the US and have since just about 100% abandoned my personal domain's email service. GMail's spam filters are killer and I actually like the website better than Outlook. I keep it sync'd to Outlook via IMAP for offline access because I've found Gmail's offline to be next to worthless.
I love Gmail, and don't for one second think bad about the @gmail.com address behind my name.
1) Download throttlelauncher for WM5 and set to the Android layout
2) Download SecondToday and configured this to contain my original WM5 today screen layout.
What this gets me?
The functionality of both Google Android and WM5 Today plugins on a HTC8100 (Yes I said HTC8100, with .net 3.5 installed of course)
I now have one screen for all of my shortcuts (no stylus required) and still maintain all of the organizational power of WM5 on the second today screen. I configured the right soft key using KeySwop to automatically launch second today. Hitting this button now flicks between Android and WM5.
What I love about Android? The default widgets. I have a main widget that when touched brings up 8 icons; call history, contacts, pictures, camera, internet, clock, music and messages. I have an office widget that takes me straight to Excel, Word or Powerpoint. And the Throttlelauncher configuration allows me to create any widget for any program on my phone in any folder and set it's location on the Android screen wherever I want.
These two programs are helping me wait until my July upgrade before I finally get my hands on an epix.....
Android Add in to WM5
Linear Mode
LinkBacks (?)
