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Treo 650 Email Gripes  The Treo 650 is a cellphone and a Palm Pilot that does email

A Treo From Verizon Wireless

February 5, 2006. The phone comes with an email program from Verizon called "Wireless Sync". This program can do POP and IMAP email but it can not talk directly to a Microsoft Exchange 2003 Server. Anyone who uses Outlook Web Access for email needs to talk directly to the Exchange server. To talk to Exchange, you have to install another email program called VersaMail. It is on the CD that comes with the phone. 

The feature of VersaMail that talks to Exchange servers is called Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync. 

Exchange servers handle email, calendars and contacts. 

1. The version of VersaMail provided by Verizon can not sync contacts between Exchange and the Treo cellphone.
2. It can sync email, of course. 
3. Calendars are bad news. The software assumes the server-side calendar information is always correct and slaps it on the Treo. That may be fine for someone with a single email identity. However, someone who is not an employee of the company with the Exchange server is screwed. If they use it only for email, every download of email to the Treo will wipe out the calendar in the phone.

Outgoing POP3 SMTP servers are often secured based on the computer used to connect to them. For example, an EarthLink customer can only send email through an EarthLink SMTP server if they do so from a computer connected to EarthLink. In my experience, this is the norm. Thus an Optimum Online customer, for example, wouldn't be able to send email from the Treo because it's on Verizon's network not Optimum Online's. To solve this, Verizon Wireless provides their own SMTP server. The gripe: it doesn't do secure email. 

If the email you send is not secure (encrypted), it can be read (the techie term being "sniffed") by bad guys while it's traveling over the air. To combat this, good SMTP servers support SSL or TLS access. This makes a secure encrypted connection between the user (you and me) and the SMTP server computer. SSL is the same protocol used to secure web pages. Verizon customers send their email in the clear, roughly the same security as a postcard. 

The phone does not include a VPN client. Verizon neither provides nor supports a VPN client. 

VersaMail

The user interface for a POP3 based email account and an Exchange ActiveSync based account are different.

VersaMail is not supported by Verizon, instead Palm supports it. Finger-pointing when problems occur is thus a possibility.

By default, synching to an Exchange 2003 server involves downloading the last 7 days worth of email to the phone. This may be too much for some people.

Also by default, synching to an Exchange server results in messages on the phone older than 7 days being deleted. You are not given an option to save old messages.

The VersaMail User Guide says that you can customize this number of days. If you get a lot of email then lowering it is a nice option to have. The manual makes it seem that this also lowers the retention date. That is, if you set it to 3 days, then email messages 4 days old are deleted when you synch to an Exchange Server. 

Is this Microsoft's way of nudging people to buy Windows based cellphones rather than Palm based models? 

VersaMail on the Treo 650 has no option to change this number of days. Thus someone who gets a lot of email messages may not want to use this setup.