MS Exchange/4smartphone

I had heard of Microsoft Exchange, but I didn't know anything about it until recently. As it turns out, it provides an awesome solution for keeping email and other PIM(personal information management) data in sync on multiple systems.

I found myself using 2 different computers as well as a Treo. Checking the same email 3 times seemed stupid and I was always worried I'd sync something wrong and mess up all my data. Microsoft Exchange solves this problem by managing all the info on a centralized server for all your systems to access. This software is expensive and difficult to manage so is typically used in corportations and such. It's not typically a personal solution. That's where www.4smartphone.net steps in. There are other solutions such as www.mail2web.com, but 4smartphone supplied the right balance of features and price for what I wanted. These services offer hosted Exchange services for personal or business use. They handle all the software and servers. For $6.99/month, 4smartphone keeps all my computers synced up and they even threw in a free copy of Outlook 2003. This covers the price for a year of service just by itself.

So now, if I check email on the laptop, read an item, and maybe put it into a certain folder, I'll see it as read and tucked into a folder when I check mail again on the Treo or my desktop. No more looking at the same mail 3 times. Or I can add a task or calendar entry on any device and the other 2 see that change also. AWESOME! Also, it's kinda weird, and I'm not exactly clear on how this works, but you don't have to initate a send/receive in Outlook anymore. It just updates anytime there's something new on the server. Apparently, the Exchange server notifies the clients that are logged in anytime there's a change and pushes that change out. On the Treo, Activesync is used to connect to the Exchange server in the same way. Everything is automatic and pushed to the different devices.

I have found this to work wonderfully and highly recommend it.