Your situation sounds much like mine -- I began paying for my web
hosting service to get away from the poor reliability of the free email
service I'd had through my domain host before.  Even after that, adding
1&1's service is one of the best decisions I've made for my own
productivity.  Yes, 1&1 has had one outage that affected me for about 3
hours during the last 7 months that I've had their service.  Two outages
that affected one of my clients (she was NOT happy), but at $7/month
unless this repeats itself I'm OK with it.  There are NOT frequent
outages of their Exchange service.  Can't comment on the rest of their
offerings.  

Agree that neither the small screen nor the keyboard is ideal for volume
email.  But that's not how I use it. I can quickly read emails from
clients and others and act quickly if needed.  Once a week or so I'll
end up sending a quick email FROM the Treo.  Less frequently I'll end up
sending an extensive one, often from a location where connectivity from
my laptop is not available, but Sprint data service (or Verizon's -
Sprint piggybacks on their data service too) is.  

It is precisely *because* of my email being a work tool, with emails
coming from clients, that I enjoy the 1&1 service, since I can check
email in circumstances and in situations where using my laptop would be
inconvenient or impossible.  An example just today:  I'd stopped into a
local Starbucks and as I was waiting for my coffee I glanced at email.
I saw an email from a client and called him on the spot.  My response
would have been delayed 45 minutes if I hadn't had email on the Treo,
unless I'd wanted to spend $7 to connect to the T-Mobile hotspot there
to check email.

I would NOT depend exclusively on Versamail with POP due to the
possibility of loss of email.  Not sure how well it works with IMAP.
With Exchange it really works quite well.  Even on one occasion when the
Versamail database became corrupt, all I did was reestablish the
connection to the Exchange server and it re-populated my email database
in a couple of minutes.  This has happened twice now with the 755p.  It
did not happen even once in the 5 months I was using it with the Verizon
700p.

If I were a big rich executive or something I'd probably spring for one
of the $25/month Exchange packages from one of the domestic providers,
but 1&1 is the right balance of price/performance for me, for now.  I've
heard good things about 4smartphone.com, who is even cheaper than 1&1,
but their stated support for the Treo is a little sketchy.

Come on, you know you want it!!!

Cheers,
Don


-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of
Jeffrey Kaplan
Sent: Monday, July 30, 2007 3:50 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Treo] Versamail alternatives

Hello, Don Ferguson.

On Mon, 30 Jul 2007 17:11:56 -0400 you said:

> I have tried all of them as a casual user like I think you are.  Once
I
> bit the bullet ("$7 per month for email?  Are you kidding?  Email is
> supposed to be free!!") I was hooked.  I have found it VERY handy to
be

It's not the base cost that turns me off, I moved my domain from my
then-employer (a local ISP) who was hosting me for free (fringe
benefit) to a host I had to pay for precisely because of email issues.
It's paying for +another+ email service that turns me off. :)  Plus,
I've heard of too many outages with 1and1.

> able to just quickly eyeball incoming emails on a regular basis
without
> having to wait for my laptop and Outlook.  YMMV, of course, but I was
> never a big Treo email guy, until hosted Exchange.

I just think that +in general+, and +for me+, the small-screen of the
Treo just isn't condusive to use as a full-time email device.  And not
when I'm not depending on it for work.  If I needed it as a work tool,
I'm sure my feelings on it would be different.

-- 
Jeffrey Kaplan                                         www.gordol.org
The from userid is killfiled             Send personal mail to gordol

"You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair.  Then
I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair and all the
terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve
them.  So now I take great comfort in the general hostility and
unfairness of the universe."  (Marcus Cole, B5 "A Late Delivery From
Avalon")

Reply via email to