Why, you may ask, is Exchange compatibility so important to me? At heart, it’s because I travel. And when I travel, I don’t always want to carry a laptop with me or be reliant on Internet cafes to catch up with email and my diary. For several years, I have carried an IPAQ combined PDA/cellphone that runs Windows PocketPC operating system – this wonderful device has GSM (mobile phone) Bluetooth and 802.11b WiFi access built in and does a pretty good job of providing me with telephony (expensive cellphone and cheap VOIP), email, contacts database, diary/calendar, todo reminders and all my notes on which I rely so much. It synchronises with Outlook and my desktop file system as soon as I get it in reach of my desk.
For the past year, I have also carried a Nokia N70 mobile phone. This has most of the functionality of the IPAQ (lacking the WiFi connectivity and decent screen size) including all the essentials of email/calendar/notes. Again, it synchronises automatically and seamlessly (via Bluetooth) whenever it’s near my desk. The advantage of the Nokia over the IPAQ is its size and its 3G plus quad-band cellular access.
2007 is looking likely to be the year when these two devices get replaced by a single device like the soon to be released Nokia N95 that (if its screen is as good as claimed) should offer everything the combined IPAQ/N70 provides in a smaller (read “more pocketable”) package and with better integration of the cellular and VOIP telephony for good measure.
This mobile access to all my important data at all times has been a personal holy grail for over 25 years. And my quarter-century-old prediction that we would all, one day, be wirelessly interconnected with access to data held privately back at home or publicly has become a reality.
In fact, there’s quite a choice of devices that you can carry round with you to gain remote access to data and people using email, web, file transfer, speech and video calling. And they use a fair variety of platforms and technologies to achieve these goals. But regardless of platform, technology, vendor or format, the one common denominator among them almost all of them is that when it comes to synchronising data changed while you are on the move with the master copy back at the ranch or getting updates of data added or changed on the servers, they will all work with Outlook/Exchange.
Moan as we may about monopolies, the fact is that the makers of these devices (sensibly) follow the market … and the market is led by Microsoft – so strongly in fact that even devices that don’t use Windows based operating software (such as the Nokia, Symbian based phones, Blackberries, Palm Treo etc.) all sync up with Outlook/Exchange.
And very, very few offer any kind of alternative – and none will sync with (say) Thunderbird or other non-MS email/PIM clients.
My researches did reveal a few projects and even a couple of working programs that replace the ailing ActiveSync technology that MS foists on mobile users with a more flexible and open alternative. But – here’s the rub – with mobile device technology moving at a pace that sees new devices released daily with an expected life cycle of maybe a year or two at best, the alternatives are never going to keep up. What works today will almost certainly not work tomorrow. Or, an update to the phone/PDA firmware will suddenly break that all important connection with home.
Like it or not, Outlook/Exchange – for me at least – is a must-have. Or at least compatibility with OE …
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