01-06-2003, 11:18 PM
|
|
|
Join Date: 01-04-2003
|
| Posts:
6 |
 |
|
I just signed up for the Office Online from AT&T for $2.99/month.
It is rather cool. It took me less than 15 minutes to setup. Basically, a client is running on your machine whether your Outlook email client is up and running or not.
Once you've configured the client (takes 2 minutes), you can then access your corporate account (email, contacts, and calendar) from your PDA AND from any web browser which is rather cool since it "bypasses VPN" and allows me anytime access. So, the upside is that I am now able to access my email without having to login to my VPN account.
You will create an "online" account to access your corporate account via the web.
So, if you access your corporate account via a web browser, all you've paid is $2.99. We don't use Outlook Web Access (OWA) because it is insecure and against our corporate policy.
If you use your account from your PDA, you can then use your data download and be charged accordingly.
What I like better than the Blackberry, is that I can download attachments from either the web or my PDA (can't do that on the BB).
One downfall that I can see is that it only seems to work with the Outlook Mailbox instead of personal folders. Because of latency, I prefer to use personal folders, but may have to switch to the Mailbox on the Exchange server to be able to access all of my folders remotely.
What I also like is the ability to setup alerts for incoming emails. I don't like the fact that you receive emails ALL the time on the Blackberry. I don't think that most people is important enough that they have to check emails ALL the time the moment that they come in. With the alert system, I can be alerted based on severity, or sender.
Overall, pretty cool product. I think that to get around the personal folder issue, I will "close" my Outlook client when I leave my office so that the incoming emails stay on the server and will only be downloaded when I connect when I come back to the office. That will allow me to view newly incoming emails from my PDA or a web browser while I'm going around.
|
|
|
|
|