Exchange Like Features With Out Ms Exchange Server?

[ozymandious]

Here's a tough one. (Sorry about the long lead up. If you want the direct question it self jump to the bottom.)

I left my old job a year ago and just before I left I got a WinMo device (HTC TyTN II) and experienced the joy of having a homogeneous syncing eco-system. That is Calendar, e-mail and contacts syncing over the air. Nice all in one place and even the web-outlook was just like looking at the client.

After I left I set up my own domain and hosting for my personal e-mail address.

I used Outlook 2003 for my contacts, calendar and mail and set up the e-mail to use IMAP so there would be a basic level of sync with messages that I've read.

That's for business.

On a personal level I have a gmail account that I use for personal e-mail, which I set up Mozilla's Thunderbird to pull the messages into and also my phone using IMAP.

The differences that I noticed between the programs were that Thunderbird was faster to download messages and load them for viewing where as Outlook 2003 would download the message headers, display if I had read it or not (from my phone) and then download the body/attachments as I clicked on the message and it was S L O W.

Was I missing a way to tell OL2003 to download the whole message every time?? I looked but couldn't find it. This was a MAJOR pain if I was off line some where and had to pull up a message that I know I had read on my phone and was ready to reply to it on my computer but, oh no, it's just the header you don't really have the message. This situation is really crap in the offline mode.

I Like Thunderbird but with the WinMo Phone and Windows Mobile Device center it won't sync my contacts or calendar with thunderbird.

The last advantage that I've had with IMAP is that where ever I am I could get to my email either through gmail.com (personal) or through my hosting's web mail interface (Horde, Squirrel mail or Round Cube) for business.

That is until I filled up my server's data quota.

I tried to Archive in OL2003 thinking that it would pull the messages off the server and tuck them away. I don't know if this is the case or not because the bloody thing couldn't do it! It kept telling me that it couldn't archive one folder because it was open/busy or some other BS like that after having every thing shut-down and even multiple re-boots for good measure.

So I switched it back to POP3 and made sure that "leave a copy of messages on the server" was NOT checked. Hit send/receive and walked away for 2 hours as it pulled in all 13,000 emails and 550MB.

When finished I checked in my cpanel for my domain and my available space was still nill?!? His send/receive again and it started to down load the whole 13,000 + 550MB again! OL2003 just wouldn't take it off the server. Eventually after having multiple copies of everything, I went into my web mail and just deleted everything, then went to the long arduous task of cleaning up my inbox.

Question:

Is there a program or solution that would allow me to sync over the air my contacts, e-mail, and calendar with a WinMo Phone and Outlook with out an MS Exchange server?

Is Mobile Me only for the iPhone and not WinMo devices?

Is there a way for me to get IMAP to play nicer with Outlook 2003? Does 2007 handle this better?

Thank you,

-Ozy

[anthos]

I rent a hosted exchange mailbox for USD 9 per month, 3 GB for myself and 4 more mailboxes for my company staff

no need to maintain my own exchange server, we use our own domain name on this mailboxes

works perfectly with WM5 smartphone over MAPI

There are many providers, I use the sherweb.com for 2 years already, very happy and find it worth the money

[ozymandious]

I rent a hosted exchange mailbox for USD 9 per month, 3 GB for myself and 4 more mailboxes for my company staff

no need to maintain my own exchange server, we use our own domain name on this mailboxes

works perfectly with WM5 smartphone over MAPI

There are many providers, I use the sherweb.com for 2 years already, very happy and find it worth the money

Since I own my own domain and currently pay for web hosting as well. will I be able to drop my current web hosting package if a service like sherweb.com is hosting the e-mail? Does that mean that the web pages goes away?

Or will I have to pay for all three? (Domain name, Web hosting & hosted exchange)

I like this hosted exchange idea and will look into it more. Thank you for the tip anthos

[2008bangkok]

I rent a hosted exchange mailbox for USD 9 per month, 3 GB for myself and 4 more mailboxes for my company staff

no need to maintain my own exchange server, we use our own domain name on this mailboxes

works perfectly with WM5 smartphone over MAPI

There are many providers, I use the sherweb.com for 2 years already, very happy and find it worth the money

Since I own my own domain and currently pay for web hosting as well. will I be able to drop my current web hosting package if a service like sherweb.com is hosting the e-mail? Does that mean that the web pages goes away?

Or will I have to pay for all three? (Domain name, Web hosting & hosted exchange)

I like this hosted exchange idea and will look into it more. Thank you for the tip anthos

Hosted exchange is by far the way to go..if you have a unlimited data plan you no need to send reciev just come in automaticly sometime it comes in quicker on my phone than it does on my mail program.

after looking at sherweb which anthos recommends they also do web hosting so you could change over to them otherwise you will have to pay seperately yes..

[anthos]

you can keep the web site hosting with a different provider

if you rent just the exchange mail services you'll need to point the mail dns records for your domain to the exchange provider's server ip

it's not difficult even if you never did this before, it should be in the faqs

[bkkflyer]

Also use Sherweb, only for a couple of months, but works very nice.

Just got an Iphone 3G here in Europe yesterday, and also works nicely with the hosted Exchange.

Very easy to set up. Even I was able to do it myself.