Help with concept of Exchange!

[Guest Dr Who]

I have just upgraded my free mail2web.com account to its $5.99 exchange account but reading some of the info I am not sure it will work the way I want. I have two 'desktop' versions of Outlook 2003 and my Vario II and basically I want to be able to receive my email on all three.

The way I would like it to work is that I get an email to my gmail account and this forwards to mail2web. This email can then be received on all three devices. Is this how it works? Or if I view it on, say, Desktop A is this then regarded as 'read' and not viewable on Desktop B or my PPC? 'Cos this is the way it works at the moment using POP access! Unfortunately my account isn't live yet so I can't find out, but I have a 30 day money back guarantee.

On a side note it would appear that you have to get the $8.99 account if you actually want Outlook 2003 to fully synchronise with Exchange, i.e. Contasts, Tasks and Calenders, which I may well want. So how would the mail account for the $5.99 exchange be configured? DO I get a new mail account added which is configured to use an exchange server and therefore do I need to do send/receive or will activesync just be constantly active?

I don't get it, and the more RTFM I did last night the more confused I became!

[Guest jimbouk]

I dont know your service provider, but with my 4smartphone account I have mail on two pc's and my device.

My exchange server account is set to recieve my work emails. This it syncs with a pc, a laptop and my device. In addition, if I collect any emails from pop accounts on any device and leave them in outlook, then they are all sync'd up to the mail server and backdown again to the other two devices.

I can thus leave my pc connected and set it to poll any pop accounts I have, knowing that they will be sync'd up to the server and thus pushed to my phone.

If I read a mail on any device/pc/laptop, it is shown as read on the other two a few minutes later, similarly any mails deleted on one are then deleted off the other.

[Guest chucky.egg]

I'm in a similar position - I want Exchange for Direct Push, but they all seem to have slightly different terms

It sounds like 4Smartphone pull email from your existing mailbox, which presumably is polled at intervals. That seems to defeat the speed advantage of Push

Is that how it works? Or does 4Smartphone replace your MX record with their own and pull emails from other mailboxes?

What's the speed like? They're in the US, so is there a noticeable delay between sending and delivery? (beyond what you typically get with Google, which I'm used to)

Is anyone using 1and1?

They're my current hosts, and in some ways it'd be easier to go with them I suspect.

[Guest Dr Who]

I dont know your service provider, but with my 4smartphone account I have mail on two pc's and my device.

My exchange server account is set to recieve my work emails. This it syncs with a pc, a laptop and my device. In addition, if I collect any emails from pop accounts on any device and leave them in outlook, then they are all sync'd up to the mail server and backdown again to the other two devices.

I can thus leave my pc connected and set it to poll any pop accounts I have, knowing that they will be sync'd up to the server and thus pushed to my phone.

If I read a mail on any device/pc/laptop, it is shown as read on the other two a few minutes later, similarly any mails deleted on one are then deleted off the other.

Cheers Jim. So for your pop accounts I take it they go straight into the top level Outlook inbox? Or does it sync subfolders also? How about seperate .pst folders? If I have the exchange account running and then pop the gmail account these will arrive to the Outlook inbox at the moment, so will I end up with duplicates of everything? Or will I have duplicates but in different folders, i.e. in exchange account folder and also the Outlook inbox (gmail pop folder)? I won't be able to fiddle around with this until the weekend but would like to know what I am facing. It took me about an hour just to figure out how to sign up last night! Don't know whether it is because it is an American website but it is appallingly laid out. If it doesn't work I may try 4smartphone.

[Guest Dr Who]

OK, so I think I have figured out the account structure with mail2web, confusing to me as it was.

For free you can forward email to the mail2web account, which you can access online or via exchange on your PDA. All emails you send will originate from mail2web.com.

For $5.99 you get the option of imap or POP mail access to desktop Outlook and can change your settings to have email originate from your original account.

For $11.99 you get full MAPI access for full desktop Outlook 2003 exchange support.

This is too much for it to be worth it for me and I am going to retrench back to the free service for now. Does anyone know of the cheapest acceptably good solution for full exchange access from Outlook 2003????