Guest Paul [MVP] Posted July 6, 2004 Report Share Posted July 6, 2004 Fellow MVP Jason, of SmartphoneThoughts, writes: I'm ready to throw my E200 out the nearest window. Here's the scenario: I took Thursday and Friday off for a little "work on the house and yard with my wife" vacation, so my email accounts have gotten very full. I was at a family gathering tonight, and with some downtime I checked my Pocket PC Thoughts email accounts - 72 new messages. Email triage time! One-handed email triage with a Smartphone is an awesome thing. When it works that is, and this is what my rant is about. Evil or Very Mad I opened up my email account on Pocket Inbox, Smartphone 2003 version, and did a SEND/RECIEVE. It took a while, but eventually all the messages were downloaded onto the phone. I went through all 72 of them, deleting spam, responding to a few, and deleting the messages I didn't need to act on. I then did another SEND/RECEIVE to process the changes. No new messages showed up, so I was done. The first problem is that I shouldn't have to do a SEND/RECEIVE to process the changes. When an email client makes a connection to an IMAP server, it stays connected as long as the TCP/IP connection is available. When you open Outlook and switch to an IMAP email account, is connects up to the server and downloads the messages - and it stays connected. If you move/mark a message for deletion, it's moved/marked for deletion immediately because it's connected. It doesn't disconnect until you shut down the software. That's the way email clients are supposed to work with IMAP. So why am I so angry? Because when I sat down at my computer tonight and opened Outlook, all of the messages I had processed where downloaded from the server, fresh and marked as unread. That's right, it's like my email triage never happened! I wasted my time and have to re-do everything. I've seen this before with the Pocket PC email client, and the only way to avoid it happening there is to connect to the email account, do the email traige, do a send/recieve, then press the connect icon to disconnect. That usually works, but why should I have to resort to such voodoo to process my email? The problem that makes this scenario worse is that there is no CONNECT function on the Smartphone Inbox client - just a SEND/RECIEVE. It's like the Microsoft software developers don't know there's a difference between POP and IMAP. The Smartphone client works perfectly my Exchange account, but for me it's highly problematic with IMAP accounts. Frankly, at the moment I'm livid that once again Microsoft has released software that works great with their software, but is completely dysfunctional with what the rest of the world is using. If you can't make an email client that can process email via IMAP, what's the point of saying it can do email? There's some serious room for improvement here, because right now the Smartphone Inbox application is at the rock bottom of functionality if it can't do something this simple. I have to confess I don't have this problem because I use Server ActiveSync with Exchange, but I know some people feel the pain... Are you one of them? If so, fill in this poll... people power and all that! :D P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest great Posted July 6, 2004 Report Share Posted July 6, 2004 i cannot with any way to access my imap SSL account from my qtec8080!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest pd.ryder Posted July 6, 2004 Report Share Posted July 6, 2004 With the greatest of respect Paul, did the poll about unmetered GPRS / flat rate ever GO anywhere?? :roll: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Paul [MVP] Posted July 6, 2004 Report Share Posted July 6, 2004 No, not as yet, purely on the basis that we don't have what I feel is enough signatures to make it worthwhile at this stage. Independent of the petition, I have been lobbying the networks at the highest level on the issue, so they ARE aware of the wishes of the community, but in a more constructive way than the petition at this stage. That's not to say the petition won't ever be sent... P Posted from my SmartPhone! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest fraser Posted July 14, 2004 Report Share Posted July 14, 2004 i cannot with any way to access my imap SSL account from my qtec8080!!!! I know, this irks me. My mail password is being sent over the air unencrypted. Not good!! I've used IMAP on my smartphone for over a year now. I've had no problems, except I gave up on deleting mails on the phone right at the start. It just doesn't work. However, marking them as read has worked flawlessly over the whole period. I've used cyrus-imap and I'm now using courier-imap. I've got around 1000 messages in my inbox generally, with the phone set to sync the last 7 days worth. Deleting mails is pointless, diskspace is worth less to me than my time. I use about 6-7 meg a month for this, syncing every two hours. IMAP is the way to go for e-mail. I access the same mailbox from three PCs regularly as well as the mobile, so I've pretty much got the whole e-mail thing sorted... 8) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Paul [MVP] Posted July 14, 2004 Report Share Posted July 14, 2004 I disagree, Exchange Server Activesync is the way to go, you can even DELETE mails ;-) P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest beersoft Posted July 14, 2004 Report Share Posted July 14, 2004 The only problem i have with smartphones IMAP is the delete+purge thing it does when you delete a message other than that i cant fault it, just not delete anything :D later Owen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest fraser Posted July 14, 2004 Report Share Posted July 14, 2004 "]I disagree, Exchange Server Activesync is the way to go, you can even DELETE mails ;-) IMAP costs nothing. Exchange server costs a fortune (plus the server OS), is grossly insecure and very buggy. My mind is made up!! :twisted: The only thing I miss is syncing contacts around my three PCs, which I could do with exchange. The smartphone activesync will only allow two PC associations. Besides, as I said, I don't delete e-mails. What's the point? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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