I'm waiting until there's a system that will zap the mail directly into
my brain without any stupid belt-hung device.  I don't receive much of
anything but Spam anyway.

Ed Crowley MCSE+I MVP
Technical Consultant
hp Services
"There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems."


-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Dupler, Craig
Sent: Thursday, November 21, 2002 9:28 PM
To: Exchange Discussions
Subject: RE: PDA recommendations for access to Exchange 2000 mailboxes


As you can see, like most technologies, PDA's are surrounded by lots of
opinions.  Often people like what they have used, even if it is only one
type and have no real basis for a comparison (i.e. valid opinion).

Ok, the ugly truth:  None of the systems out there are very good yet.
You've heard the positives for Blackberry and PocketPC's.  Palm devices
and the various phone/PDA combinations have their benefits as well.
Everyone of them costs too much for what they do, and have some major
design flaws. Also, the carrier based services are designed to try and
nudge subscriber billings upward, as opposed to delivering desired
services.

In my view, the right thing to do is to design a target remote access
architecture for your network and then fit your Exchange system into it,
along with your other key services.  Portals are popular, but lots of
people are doing terrible portal designs.  The current fad is for a PHB
committee to form a portal team or project and b figure out what a
"community" should see.  They virtually never ask the users what they
need, and they never do quality checks by metering the usage and
measuring what is working or not.  Finding a decent portal
implementation is like looking for a single marble in the sand at Fort
Lauderdale beach.  Portal stupidity is the current hallmark of CIO
resumes.

Ideally, you would link Exchange to your portal, and then your PDA would
hit it from the other side and give you both on-line functionality and
optional synchronization services.  However, I have yet to see a portal
that does synching, and the PocketPC, which ought to be better at this,
is still saddled with its ridiculous "PC Companion" paradigm, which
assumes that you want to talk to your desktop PC, and not the servers
directly, even though that is a security violation in most enterprises
if it is done remotely.

There is some good news, but it is out a ways.  The next generation of
PocketPC devices that start appearing next summer should be a lot
better, and address some of their current short comings.  I believe that
just as soon as a really good combination of tools is available, that it
will be so compelling that everything else will have to quickly conform
or disappear from the market.  But alas, that is not this year.

Sorry.

-----Original Message-----
From: Pennell, Ronald B. [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, November 21, 2002 7:33 AM
To: Exchange Discussions
Cc: Pennell, Ronald B.
Subject: PDA recommendations for access to Exchange 2000 mailboxes


Has anyone had any experiences with using PDA's for
accessing user mailboxes?  Our company is starting to
research use of PDA's.  So far I have done some research
on the BlackBerry site.  

Any recommendations as to server software for E2K SP2.
Any hardware recommendations for the PDA's

Thanks in advance

Ron Pennell 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

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