[tx75070]

We have about 5-6 users that we want to give the capability to receive email with a hand held device. We have Microsoft exchange server 2003 with service pack 2.

The main concern is retrieving email in China. Although it will be used a lot in HK, email is generally easy to access in HK.

What is the best choice for service and devices?

[rolders]

I'm interested in this as well. Are Symbian based phones any good at connecting to Exchange? The new sony p990 is nice but no use if it does not talk well to Exchange. What other phones would be worth considering?

[tx75070]

I guess what I really want to know is are there any GPRS or BB plans that allow unlimited usage in China?

[shri]

Have you seen this doc about their direct push technology in SP2?

http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/ev...wa_mobile.mspx

Seriously, Symbian and other phones are always going to be playing catchup with Microsoft's udpates which will ensure that things remain oh so slightly broken for their competitors.

[rickyvilla]

Palm Treo 750v launched yesterday. Suitable for Microsoft Exchange server users. Available from all SmarTone-Vodafone stores and selected dealers around Hong Kong.

cheers
RV

[MrMoo]

Originally Posted by shri

Have you seen this doc about their direct push technology in SP2?

The whole push technology is a huge marketing joke though. The press shows that its slower because of gateway services at the phone provider. Existing technologies can emulate the same experience with less delays, like wooh 300ms lag on retrieving a new email, oh no!

The popular email interface paradigm for IMAP is to request the mail when you want to view it, the client receives noticies when a new messages arrive. The different between regular and push is that the push notice includes the email. The client could equally just request the email for a similar effect.

[jgl]

There's something to be said for going the industry default route and using Blackberry. Dedicated devices = less potential for users to stuff up configuration. I work for a company that provides IT support, and one of the biggest headaches for our tech people is mobile phone config. We also do a lot of BB support, and that's a breeze in comparision.

[Morlich]

For ease of use, methinks BBs are the simplest and easy solution for now. I've config'd a couple at work. I had my O2 set for emails for a while, then the novelty wore off and I didn't really want to be that easily contactable after working hours. Plus it ate up a lot of my GPRS bandwidth.

Depending on where you plan to go with it, 3 actually has free access points in some countries.

Best to consider one that has a keyboard on it rather than on-screen ones. It sometimes just takes tooo long to point out a message as compared to using 2 thumbs to do it.

[discobay]

I'd like to know more about '3's free access points. There are BB alternatives in the form of devices with keyboards like the Treo and more recently Dopod 838 Pro.