Lost-in-omniA, on Jul 13 2009, 02:24, said:
So if i want to use this Exchange Server do i need to have premium accounts of Hotmail and yahoo or i can use the normal accounts (they don't have pop3 access).
Nope - no premium accts needed. I have only normal (free) accounts for Hotmail, Yahoo, and Gmail. All of them will allow you to setup forwarding of incoming mail to another address, which is what I do. Therefore, I never need to directly access any of these accounts anymore, either through their Webmail interfaces or via POP3.
To me, a hosted Exchange mailbox in combination with your own personal domain is the route to email Nirvana. Everything is automatically kept in perfect sync, regardless of how many PCs with Outlook you have (i have 3), WM phones, or Outlook Web Access (via any browser anyplace you might be). Folders, email rules, etc. are all server-based, so there's no need to duplicate these on each PC. You get true 'push' email to all devices instantly as messages arrive. All of your Contacts, Tasks, and Calendar data is synched automatically onto every machine, and any change you make on any device instantly appears on the others.
The other thing I like about using Exchange is that all email lives permanently on the host. If one of your systems dies or has a disk crash, after repairing all you have to do is merely resync your data and you're back to normal. So there's no danger of ever losing your personal data. I don't know about anyone else, but losing my email, contacts, etc. would rate as a major-league disaster for me!
Another nice thing is that as of WM 6.1, Pocket Outlook can do full searches on your host-based Exchange mail. I keep every email I've ever sent in my Exchange mailbox, and many of the ones I receive as well. Right from my phone, I can quickly retrieve any messages of interest from the present going back over two years ago!
Anyway, enough of that - I think that anyone who's really serious about email and has more than one device (PC, phone, etc.) needs an Exchange account. My mailbox is hosted by SherWeb (happens to be a Canadian firm), and they are 100% awesome in every aspect - lowest price, large mailbox, quality of the service, support, etc. I've tried a couple other hosted Exchange providers, and they didn't even come close. I think my Exchange service costs a whopping $8.95/month, and it is worth every penny. They even throw in a free hosted Sharepoint account with 100mb of storage.
I use this in conjunction with a personal domain, which I purchased from 1&1 (they're the least expensive registrar I found for .com domains). It only costs $7 or $8 per
year, so it's a no-brainer to have one. That way, you're completely independent from any particular ISP. I recently changed my broadband service to Verizon FiOS, but because I had my own domain and hosted Exchange, there was absolutely zero change -- unlike the people who have to send emails to everyone they know saying "I changed my email from Comcast to Verizon, so here's the new address..." You can also setup as many incoming email addresses as you want at no cost, as long as they're all flowing into your Exchange mailbox.
Probably more than you ever wanted to know, but maybe this will help others who are moving into the world of mobile email and trying to figure out how to manually keep everything in sync!