I'm sorry, I just can't help it. It's 'The Emperor's New Clothes' all over again. But.... "What's the fuss all about?" Push email. The term has become a tick box feature that every new smartphone HAS to have before it's taken seriously. No push email? No good for a professional then. What rubbish. Read on, and then have your say in the comments!
Read on in the full article.
Its only for people who work for companies, which are not allowing access to their mailboxys from mobile (or any outside company) devices, other than through pushemail server.
For the rest people the solution is stupid and useless...
I quite agree, Steve.
Any e-mail consultant will tell you that the key to managing e-mail is exactly that - managing it, not letting it manage you!
Pick your time, they tell you, to check your e-mails and not reply to everything that just drops into your Inbox as soon as it does so.
My 9300i handles my e-mail just fine with the built in software, thank you very much! Anyone who wants me urgently can call the very mobile I am using to check e-mail!
Hype, hype, hype...
...but very good for Blackberry et al. profits no doubt!
I agree about not letting mail dominate you, although I'd point out that, just because an email arrives, it doesn't mean you have to deal with it. I receive mails all day at work but most are either deleted or left to be dealt with at a more convenient time. Just because the icon is flashing, doesn't mean I'm its slave.
However, the bit you are missing is push-synch. For a couple of quid a month you can subscribe to a hosted exchange account where, not only your mail, but your calendar, contacts and notes are all hosted. You can then set up push to your moble device as well as your home PC. So, any change to your Outlook at all, automatically appears on your mobile and vice versa (or, at least, this is the case for WM5, not used a symbian device in the last year so not sure).
This has the (dubious) advantage that you don't have to plug your phone in to you PC occasionaly to keep it and your PC in synch all the time (not THAT much effort for most of us). However, it has the huge advantage that someone at home (e.g. my wife) can update my calendar, add things to the Outlook note that forms my shopping list, see that I've just been called into a meeting so I'll be home late etc. etc. etc. It is THE single most useful feature of my entire smartphone and I love it. Push mail is handy, but it's all the other bits that come with it that make it a killer app and all for �3 or �4 a month!
It's not all about push-email...
I'd be quite happy with my Nokia E61's imap-client polling my mailbox but I just LOVE MailForExchange! It does several things that basic mail-client doesn't. It syncs not only my mail but my calendar and contacts over the air. I have had my E61 for about 6 months now and have not synced it once locally with my computer. I don't have to do anything manually and MfE keeps my mobile allways synced with my hosted Exchange.
Second thing that built in imap-client doesn't do but MfE (and ProfiMail if you prefer IMAP) does is uploading sent messages to server. I find it a very welcome feature that I can later see what I have sent.
MailForExchange is not perfect. The current version doesn't sync tasks (to-dos) and the only folder that it can see in the Exchange server is Inbox but still I like it a lot. I can allways use OutlookWebAccess or OutlookMobileAccess to see in all mail folders.
=)juha
edit: Ok, Bassey was just a couple of minutes faster than I. I can however confirm that Nokia's ActiveSync-client works quite the same as in WindowsMobile devices.
For me the free ones do everything needed. Yahoo Go Mobile checks my emails, syncs mail folders and my calendar every hour. For non-Yahoo mail I also use Profimail (OK, that's not free) and that has a very nice user-defined checking feature as well. Blackberry? Push email? Pa! Who needs it?
I think the media's obsession with push-email is just that: a media obsessed with push-email.
A journalist might well want a piece of information that relates to a breaking news story delivered to them straight away, and they'd also probably have access to a proper push-email system too, so they're going to genuinely depend on the technology.
The problem is when they start to think that the technology is vital for ordinary people, but it almost always isn't. The vast majority of people only need email as and when we check it, which has been possible on smartphones (and even some non-smart phones) for years before push-email became this big new thing.
Very very few people need or want email the moment it appears on their mail server, yet they're being conned into thinking their email will somehow be better if it's delivered through push-email (or pseudo-push-email) in the same way that people with a single desktop PC at home are being conned into getting wi-fi. If someone needs to reach me straight away they'll phone me or text me, and that's the way most people operate in the real world. Journalists don't seem to spend enough time in the real world but live in some get-it-before-it-happens media circus where information has to be delivered within milliseconds of it being created.
Steve,
I don't agree that mail is not an instant medium - it may not have been in the past - but it is now. If I send an email it usually arrives within a couple of minutes anywhere in the world. This is a could thing and does allow synchronous use.
It is adictive getting mail pushed - in part because peope equate their value to themselves or company through the need to always be in touch (sad maybe). However - when you're waiting on an important piece of information it's reassuring to know it will arrive - once you're back in coverage if necessary (just like SMS) - and can be as long as you'd like.
I think that once mail is used by everyone, and HTML is used as the main format, MMS will die. It does nothing push mail can't do - and push mail does it much better.
regards,
Slart.
> I think that once mail is used by everyone, and HTML
> is used as the main format, MMS will die.
MMS is still alive?!!!
😉
I use Mail for Exchange on my E60 and have it setup to sync every 15 minutes. However, I don't check my phone every 15 minutes for new email and agree that if anything is "That" important, the person should have called. After all, it may be smart, but it's still a phone.
Mark
I 200% agree with you Steve!
OK, I'm biased because my company doesn't use Push mail, but I'd hate to become the slave of my boss, or anyway to have one more chain between him and myself!
IMHO it's good that this technology exists, but there's way too much hype on this particular subject. The E61, for instance is push-mail compatible, so it does qualify for a "business" use, doesn't it? Well, not really, the address book doesn't even let your perform a search on a company name (if you've entered both a family name and company name in your contacts, anyway)... How are you supposed to handle those big business address books, then, with a so-called business smartphone? 😉
If you need to search company names you can just add the free Nokia "Search" application and it will look everywhere in the phone including contacts and calendar items.
Bassey wrote:> I think that once mail is used by everyone, and HTML
> is used as the main format, MMS will die.MMS is still alive?!!!
OT: was MMS ever born? I've never sent MMS (well, once just to see what it was). never received MMS and am yet to meet anybody who actually uses MMS. But i'm maybe living in a parallel world.
Unfortunately for a lot of people working in American offices, the Blackberry has made it such that email is viewed as a substitute for a phone call. If people know you have a blackberry they get angry if you don't reply right away, because they assume you have seen your new email. In my last job I was expected to reply to work related emails at ANY time that I could reasonably be expected to be awake.
Perhaps its just a cultural difference, but I know that to a lot of young corporate Americans, the ability to get that email quicker is something they want. I know plenty of people who have bought their own Blackberry's or Treo's because the company did not issue them one.
This is of course all work related because for personal use push email is a waste of time, there is SMS for that.
I use MMS. Admittedly for silly messages only and even then maybe only 10 a month 😊
I set my phone (N73) to pull emails between 8am and 6pm every 30 minutes and that does the job for me.
More to see if my forum posts have been answered than anything else!
Any e-mail consultant will tell you that the key to managing e-mail is exactly that - managing it, not letting it manage you!
Maybe it's only me, but I find the idea of an"e-mail consultant" slightly scary...
"If I send an email it usually arrives within a couple of minutes anywhere in the world."
In theory, but in practice email frequently doesn't arrive at all. The huge rise in spam has meant a huge rise in overactive spam filters, and lots of email never makes it to the recipient's inbox, even when the mail is from a non-spamming source with its own domain name.
Time after time I've failed to get an important email only to find it somewhere in the spam box, and people I know have failed to receive my emails because they've also been treated as spam.
I would NOT rely on normal email alone for transmitting important information, and would always contact the recipient by phone to make sure the message has arrived.
Polling is the old trick for faking "push", and it works well, and latency is not the real issue, but the issue is that it is not battery/power friendly...
ceo
Err.... how exactly does it take more power to make a small GPRS connection every 30 mins than making lots more network transactions plus similar amounts of GPRS traffic (the emails are going to be the same either way) when using push?
Steve
Steve,
You forget about IMAP IDLE - it's built-in to the E-Series and N-Series Messaging client and offers true push at no extra subscription cost (providing that your IMAP server supports IDLE).
Hype, hype and some more hype. It sometimes sells products that don't even deserve to be sold in the first place, much like an antivirus application for an s60v3 phone. Push email is just being sold because its customers don't even know if they actually need it or not.
True, some corporates might feel their executives need to stay connected as and when its required but thats where laptops and vpn access comes into picture.
I feel the PR team at blackberry deserves a round of applause for creating a demand for a product, people can actually live without but feel they need it.
(Quote)
Maybe it's only me, but I find the idea of an"e-mail consultant" slightly scary... (unquote)
Sadly, I have attended a seminar on more efficient use of e-mail with an e-mail consultant - it was actually very good, but the main thrust of it was that you have to learn to manage your e-mail and not be slaved to it.
One of the main tenets is that you choose a time to deal with e-mail and not respond straightaway as other forms of communciation are more suitable for this. This involves turning off audible and visible reminders that e-mail has arrived.
The whole ethos of push e-mail is the reverse of that and will just lead to more stressed people. So "Push off, push e-mail!"
Is Push email on Symbian truly PUSH? How is it logically possible for servers to initiate a connection to the client? The only way I can think of how PUSH would work is either polling, remote invoking or a keep alive connection.
Anyone care to elaborate.
Boom
After y2K compliance, push email must rank as the biggest marketing swindle ever pulled on the internet. We run a small internet service provider and the only people that ever ask about push email are the not quite tech-literate wannabe businessmen who buy into the high tech persona that they think they should be emulating - and maybe corporate IT types that need to spend their budgets on something. As the man says - pull email once an hour/ half hour/ fifteen minutes is plenty. Anyway email is dying. spam and viruses are killing it. We have seen a trebling of bandwidth consumption this year alone - the mail Servers are creaking under the strain. We are hearing of companies declaring 'email bankruptcy, and other companies banning email altogether. Im not saying email is going to disappear - it will always have a niche, but something better will have to be figured out.
Itai is right - it depends on where you work or rather the industry and culture you are in. It's not just in America - a lot of global corporate organisations expect that instant availability and connectivity.
My personal experience has shown it can be very useful to receive updated documents or presentations (things that can't be done with a phone call) moments before going into a meeting etc.
Quite agree that on a personal level it's not needed though and polling is plenty frequent enough. But that's just maybe because the environement/ messages we recieve aren't as pressured or time dependant? :tongue:
Bassey - I'm currently on WM5 - can you tell me what synch service you use?
Thanks
Jago
I know that the Exchange solution to push email IS push email. A constant SSL connection is maintained between the device and the Exchange server (wifi, GPRS or 3G as the transport). The Exchange server polls the device every 15mins or so to ensure the connection is maintained. Because there is a direct, live connection, when an email, contact, calendar or whatever comes in it can be pushed straight to a service on the device.
To the best of my knowledge Blackberry and the various other solutions are not true push as there is no permanant connection made to the device, though I don't know the technical ins and outs. However, I do know that they are so fast that it really doesn't matter either way.
Far more important that 'when' you get the email (honestly, how many supposedly urgent emails have any of us received that couldn't wait that extra 30 seconds?) is what you can do with it when it arrives.
The mobile phone challenges for email revolve around compensating for its small form factor, comparitively limited storage and comparitively restricted bandwidth not in making sure that you know of an email within 5 seconds of it arriving at your mailserver.
Which is one reason why the work of the IETF 's LEMONADE group, which recently defined extensions for IMAP and SMTP for mobile devices, is so important. They concentrate on sensible email functions like quick reconnect, forward without download and bandwidth efficiences.
www.lemonadeformobiles.com
Declaration of interest: my company is on the working group and our mailservers servers are LEMONADE compliant.
Your full of crap and you don't really know what your talking about. Since when has it been 30 mins out of date? Perhaps when you set it up, but when any normal person sets it up it generally arrives at the phone before the mailbox.
And just because you don't like it, it doesn't make it a bad idea!
Stephan
Hi There,
i just read your comment about how you've set up your N73 to pull mails after every 30 mins, could you also let me know how can i get this done on my latest N91 8GB edition.
Kind Regards,
Sumit
Quote: "OK, I'm biased because my company doesn't use Push mail, but I'd hate to become the slave of my boss, or anyway to have one more chain between him and myself!"
What if you are the boss? =)