finnigantodd
01-30-2008, 08:32 PM
I like staying in touch with close friends. I used to use a regular mobile phone (Pre-History). And it was just that. A phone. It worked great. But then I lost it… along with all my names. Oh well. Never did like inputting those anyhow. Although that was the only place I had some of them. Some were on the phone, some in my computer (in a separate database).
Then I got a Palm PDA. Nice. I could put numbers in there and sync to any computer, a PC or even a Macintosh. Unless I forgot. And I had to carry it and look at it to dial the phone. Carrying two things around was OK. But things were never totally in sync… some numbers were in the phone, some in the PDA. And of course it always seemed to crash or break or somehow escape my belt holder before some really important number or calendar event got synced.
Sure I wanted one of those cool phones (I don’t know if they were called Smartphone’s then) that did everything, email, integrated phone numbers, calendar. But I never did get a Treo 180 although I sure wanted one. That was just too much money for personal use, in my mind. They were $600 without a service plan and $400 with. Mostly for corporate users (No one had figured out how to get the average Joe to spend that much on a phone yet). And I heard rumors they didn’t live up to the promise. Why does that sound familiar?
And then the day came... I Got a Treo 650 for $99. And an unlimited data plan. Wow. It was as if the seas parted, and the sun came out! People would call, their names would pop up, I could receive and send emails easily, and if I lost it, well, all the names were backed up at Verizon. And it got my email from yahoo, hotmail and my work account. Wow. I could send text messages, email, and with a free account from SpinVox, it even transcribed my voicemails and sent them to me as text and emails!
I should mention that I'm part green - I ride several hours a day back and forth to work on Public Transportation (there is no room to hold a laptop), and it was nice that when I got home, I’d answered all my emails, read and copy/pasted voice messages from SpinVox to emails, sent a few text messages (I try to be considerate of my fellow passengers and not use the phone) and even got some work done. I’ve actually created two extra hours a day for myself. At least that’s how I justified getting it!
But again, like anything, cracks appeared. I was deleting email on my phone, but then I would have to delete a lot of it again on my yahoo account and account at work. And at Hotmail. Hmmm. One problem solved, two more appear. Sure, I could work around it, server settings. And I did exactly that. But my calendar never seemed to be completely in sync. Or my contacts. I had some things in Outlook on a PC at work, some on a Macintosh at home, and other stuff on the Treo, which involved a lot a patching to make work. I never did use the Palm desktop OS.
In a step backwards, I started using a paper day planner for the really critical things. And people wonder why I’m skeptical of tech marketing promises… lol!
And then I heard about Exchange Server. It truly seemed like it might integrate everything. We shall see I thought.
BTW, now might be the time to confess that I’ve been trying to find a simple solution to this… integrating my phone, email, calendar, laptop, desktop, PC and Mac, Yahoo account, and everything else for quite a while. I even tried a Newton when they were new. It came out in 1994. Newton Message Pad 110 - $600 dollars. I think a client gave me one. Surely I didn’t pay that much for it? Newton was a product from Apple, a PDA, before the word PDA or Smartphone or iPhone certainly even existed. In fact, I think the Newton was before Dinosaurs. It was way ahead of its time. But I’m dating myself.
Wow, have I really been trying to solve this problem for 13 years?
Back to Exchange Server. It appeared to be the solution, the Holy Grail. But it was super expensive, and without a trust fund, there was no way I could take advantage of it for personal use. Who can hire an Exchange Server Engineer for $75,000 a year to keep their phone going? Well. Maybe Bill does.
Enter Hosted Exchange services, a more recent development. After a lot of research, I signed up for an account with IT Solutions Now. It was cheap - $9.95 a month. Although there are a number of vendors out there, I picked them because I read nothing bad and actually reached someone on the phone.
http://www.exchangemailhosting.com/
The result is nothing short of amazing.
In a nutshell, everything is in Sync… and backed up all the time. My email, contacts, calendar…did I mention email? Everything’s accessible on the Phone, in Outlook, and even on a Macintosh if need be in software called Entourage. And if you’re in a coffee shop without your phone or computer (one crashed and one escaped), there is the web interface – Office Outlook web access, which looks very much like Outlook on your desktop. And its backed up!
Word of warning – Entourage is very good, but its not Outlook. Look here - http://www.entourage.mvps.org/articles/entourage.html
One thing confused me in the setup. I didn’t understand at first that I needed my own domain. They are cheaply available lots of places though.
Once that was done, things went quickly; Beth at IT Solutions Now was quite personal, and not in India… she actually got my jokes! And laughed at them. She helped me get my yahoo.com routed through my domain transparently. What’s nice is that all my Yahoo mail in both directions appears as “yahoo.com”, even though it’s routed through my domain. Some providers told me that wasn’t possible, but they got it working.
My understanding is that Hosted Exchange service will work with a wide range of phones - including Windows Mobile, Palm OS, and Blackberries. I’ve only experienced it with my Windows Mobile Samsung SCH-i760, which I got at a great discount through Verizon (I think it was somewhere around $99. Notice a pattern?) I love the phone too, but that’s another story.
Did I mention everything is backed up? A friend of mine has a small business, and the other week he lost his phone. He has a number of employees, and their calendars change literally on a moment to moment basis. He still hasn’t recovered from it, and called me the other day from the carrier store. His parent company has an Exchange Server, but their IT department can’t keep it up and running consistently, so his team doesn’t use it for the day to day stuff. Granted, I’m not a big time user, but its all about who’s running it for you. I’ve never has a single issue.
Well, maybe Beth was being kind in laughing at my jokes.
Bottom line. For the price of a few cups of coffee a month, I’ve found my Holy Grail. Now I wonder when I can get Exchange Server working with an iPhone on Verizon? Hmmm.
Then I got a Palm PDA. Nice. I could put numbers in there and sync to any computer, a PC or even a Macintosh. Unless I forgot. And I had to carry it and look at it to dial the phone. Carrying two things around was OK. But things were never totally in sync… some numbers were in the phone, some in the PDA. And of course it always seemed to crash or break or somehow escape my belt holder before some really important number or calendar event got synced.
Sure I wanted one of those cool phones (I don’t know if they were called Smartphone’s then) that did everything, email, integrated phone numbers, calendar. But I never did get a Treo 180 although I sure wanted one. That was just too much money for personal use, in my mind. They were $600 without a service plan and $400 with. Mostly for corporate users (No one had figured out how to get the average Joe to spend that much on a phone yet). And I heard rumors they didn’t live up to the promise. Why does that sound familiar?
And then the day came... I Got a Treo 650 for $99. And an unlimited data plan. Wow. It was as if the seas parted, and the sun came out! People would call, their names would pop up, I could receive and send emails easily, and if I lost it, well, all the names were backed up at Verizon. And it got my email from yahoo, hotmail and my work account. Wow. I could send text messages, email, and with a free account from SpinVox, it even transcribed my voicemails and sent them to me as text and emails!
I should mention that I'm part green - I ride several hours a day back and forth to work on Public Transportation (there is no room to hold a laptop), and it was nice that when I got home, I’d answered all my emails, read and copy/pasted voice messages from SpinVox to emails, sent a few text messages (I try to be considerate of my fellow passengers and not use the phone) and even got some work done. I’ve actually created two extra hours a day for myself. At least that’s how I justified getting it!
But again, like anything, cracks appeared. I was deleting email on my phone, but then I would have to delete a lot of it again on my yahoo account and account at work. And at Hotmail. Hmmm. One problem solved, two more appear. Sure, I could work around it, server settings. And I did exactly that. But my calendar never seemed to be completely in sync. Or my contacts. I had some things in Outlook on a PC at work, some on a Macintosh at home, and other stuff on the Treo, which involved a lot a patching to make work. I never did use the Palm desktop OS.
In a step backwards, I started using a paper day planner for the really critical things. And people wonder why I’m skeptical of tech marketing promises… lol!
And then I heard about Exchange Server. It truly seemed like it might integrate everything. We shall see I thought.
BTW, now might be the time to confess that I’ve been trying to find a simple solution to this… integrating my phone, email, calendar, laptop, desktop, PC and Mac, Yahoo account, and everything else for quite a while. I even tried a Newton when they were new. It came out in 1994. Newton Message Pad 110 - $600 dollars. I think a client gave me one. Surely I didn’t pay that much for it? Newton was a product from Apple, a PDA, before the word PDA or Smartphone or iPhone certainly even existed. In fact, I think the Newton was before Dinosaurs. It was way ahead of its time. But I’m dating myself.
Wow, have I really been trying to solve this problem for 13 years?
Back to Exchange Server. It appeared to be the solution, the Holy Grail. But it was super expensive, and without a trust fund, there was no way I could take advantage of it for personal use. Who can hire an Exchange Server Engineer for $75,000 a year to keep their phone going? Well. Maybe Bill does.
Enter Hosted Exchange services, a more recent development. After a lot of research, I signed up for an account with IT Solutions Now. It was cheap - $9.95 a month. Although there are a number of vendors out there, I picked them because I read nothing bad and actually reached someone on the phone.
http://www.exchangemailhosting.com/
The result is nothing short of amazing.
In a nutshell, everything is in Sync… and backed up all the time. My email, contacts, calendar…did I mention email? Everything’s accessible on the Phone, in Outlook, and even on a Macintosh if need be in software called Entourage. And if you’re in a coffee shop without your phone or computer (one crashed and one escaped), there is the web interface – Office Outlook web access, which looks very much like Outlook on your desktop. And its backed up!
Word of warning – Entourage is very good, but its not Outlook. Look here - http://www.entourage.mvps.org/articles/entourage.html
One thing confused me in the setup. I didn’t understand at first that I needed my own domain. They are cheaply available lots of places though.
Once that was done, things went quickly; Beth at IT Solutions Now was quite personal, and not in India… she actually got my jokes! And laughed at them. She helped me get my yahoo.com routed through my domain transparently. What’s nice is that all my Yahoo mail in both directions appears as “yahoo.com”, even though it’s routed through my domain. Some providers told me that wasn’t possible, but they got it working.
My understanding is that Hosted Exchange service will work with a wide range of phones - including Windows Mobile, Palm OS, and Blackberries. I’ve only experienced it with my Windows Mobile Samsung SCH-i760, which I got at a great discount through Verizon (I think it was somewhere around $99. Notice a pattern?) I love the phone too, but that’s another story.
Did I mention everything is backed up? A friend of mine has a small business, and the other week he lost his phone. He has a number of employees, and their calendars change literally on a moment to moment basis. He still hasn’t recovered from it, and called me the other day from the carrier store. His parent company has an Exchange Server, but their IT department can’t keep it up and running consistently, so his team doesn’t use it for the day to day stuff. Granted, I’m not a big time user, but its all about who’s running it for you. I’ve never has a single issue.
Well, maybe Beth was being kind in laughing at my jokes.
Bottom line. For the price of a few cups of coffee a month, I’ve found my Holy Grail. Now I wonder when I can get Exchange Server working with an iPhone on Verizon? Hmmm.