Mail, calendar, notes, etc. Service Provider?

[Guzzler3]

I've just realized that with W8P you NEED to be cloud based. I had the epiphany when I listened to Windows Weekly podcast #269, and Paul made an emphatic remark that if you want to have your Windows 8 Phone sync with Outlook with a POP account you're SOL. That's old, and you have to migrate to something else.

So... with that realization out of the way. What's your favorite provider that integrates the best with W8P? Google, Hotmail, Hosted Exchange? Anyone else?

 

[TexZenFool]

I've just realized that with W8P you NEED to be cloud based. I had the epiphany when I listened to Windows Weekly podcast #269, and Paul made an emphatic remark that if you want to have your Windows 8 Phone sync with Outlook with a POP account you're SOL. That's old, and you have to migrate to something else.

So... with that realization out of the way. What's your favorite provider that integrates the best with W8P? Google, Hotmail, Hosted Exchange? Anyone else?

Don't know what I would say my fav is but I know one that is my least fav. Yahoo email only supports POP access. No IMAP at all. Only use it because my ISP is AT&T and their email service is delivered by Yahoo.

Wonder if Yahoo's new CEO will fix that?

 

[jimski]

Well this is just a guess as I have only used one on your list of choices. But what would work best with Microsoft's Windows 8 Phone? I don't know, Hotmail maybe.

Sent from my Lumia 900 using Board Express Pro

 

[jfa1]

Hotmail works great for me with outlook connector for hotmail I can use my hotmail calendar in Outlook with the outlook format. I hope this continues with W8P!

 

[Guzzler3]

Hotmail works great for me with outlook connector for hotmail I can use my hotmail calendar in Outlook with the outlook format. I hope this continues with W8P!

Right, because all your information is up in your Hotmail account. Your phone and outlook are just reading from one location (Hotmail) in a "cloud".

I'm guessing the with W8P, they are slowly nudging us to Hotmail (or Live, or whatever they end up naming it). Unless you're in a corporate environment, then it's most likely Exchange (hosted or in house).

 

[SnailUK]

I'm guessing the with W8P, they are slowly nudging us to Hotmail (or Live, or whatever they end up naming it). Unless you're in a corporate environment, then it's most likely Exchange (hosted or in house).

And to be fair, iOS and Android both push you towards Apple/Google services, so its not as if Microsoft are an exception.

 

[dlcpa]

All of a sudden, I am beginning to get text messages on my cell phone from contractors or siding, construction..etc. I wonder if that has come from using accounts like Hotmail where all of a sudden they have to have your cell phone #?

I use Go Daddy and local sync to my laptop and I want to stay away from Hotmail and Gmail for all the information in my contacts. I don't want to be in the clouds.

 

[jimski]

All of a sudden, I am beginning to get text messages on my cell phone from contractors or siding, construction..etc. I wonder if that has come from using accounts like Hotmail where all of a sudden they have to have your cell phone #?

.

Don't know. Have had a Hotmail account for more than 10 years. Also have a Live account for business, along with Yahoo, and my original AOL account, all synced with my phone, and I don't get any unsolicited texts. I also won't give Facebook my cell number. Just sayin.

Sent from my Lumia 900 using Board Express Pro

 

[Guzzler3]

And to be fair, iOS and Android both push you towards Apple/Google services, so its not as if Microsoft are an exception.

True.

Have to admit the one thing I hate is the name "Hotmail" it has some serious ill connotations associated with it in the IT world. I just moved my email address to "live.com" (I only had a Microsoft account for Premier access), but I keep reading rumors that MS is going to phase those out to something else.

I think I wait till they get that done, then figure out how to migrate all my stuff (years of old emails, calendar, etc.) from my local Outlook pst info to the cloud.

 

[doublebullout]

Don't know what I would say my fav is but I know one that is my least fav. Yahoo email only supports POP access. No IMAP at all. Only use it because my ISP is AT&T and their email service is delivered by Yahoo.

Wonder if Yahoo's new CEO will fix that?

May be a dumb question, but why don't you create a Windows Live account and set your Yahoo! account to forward all email to it?

 

[doublebullout]

Because I have so many iOS devices as well as Macs, I switched over to iCloud for email, calendar, notes and reminders. It works really well -- as long as you don't use any other OS. WP7 supports me.com email (somewhat, more on that in a minute) but not the calendar or reminders. Notes, of course, are not supported. Email is received just fine, but push is not an option and deleted/sent messages are saved in extra folders instead of the same Deleted and Sent iCloud folders that iOS devices use. So (unsurprisingly) iCloud is absolutely not a viable solution if you use a mixture of WP7, Windows 8, iOS and OSX environments.

 

[larspassic]

Hotmail works great for me, I use that primarily for email and calendar.

I also use my own domain with google apps, which works just like a gmail account.

My work exchange account is also synced but not part of my linked inbox.

So, all of the above I guess.

 

[jdandison]

I'm an ActiveSync junkie - so I moved my personal mail from hosted IMAP to Office 365, where I keep the majority of my contacts & calendars. Now our company is moving there as well (off of on-prem exchange). I use the ActiveSync endpoint for Gmail, but I really only use Gmail now for website signups & the like - never really got into google cal\contacts\etc.

Office 365 has been rock-solid for reliability so far and it's pretty cheap. Not bad for unlimited email storage & Lync for IM.

 

[textomatic]

I've been using Hotmail for a LOOOOONG time and it is very good. I also have a gmail account and, IMO, Hotmail is better. Hotmail works great with WP7 and I'm sure it will be the same or better with WP8. I also use the Windows Live calendar and anything I enter on it automatically shows up on my phone's calendar. Facebook calendar stuff also shows up on my phone, too.

 

[jfa1]

Right, because all your information is up in your Hotmail account. Your phone and outlook are just reading from one location (Hotmail) in a "cloud".

I'm guessing the with W8P, they are slowly nudging us to Hotmail (or Live, or whatever they end up naming it). Unless you're in a corporate environment, then it's most likely Exchange (hosted or in house).

I'm still thinking hard about going to office365 which will give me the EAS and cloud for about 8 bucks a month or less.

 

[engellion]

Windows Live (Hotmail) [Cloud] and Outlook 2010 with Hotmail Outlook Connector [Desktop] was the setup I chose when I set up my Nokia Lumia 800. I set up a POP3 Account for my personal emails, and another POP3 account for my work emails. All worked pretty well. No issues really.

Now our work has switched to a hosted Zimbra Collaborative Server account. Got my work ZCS mailbox set up on my WP7 device - uses Exchange Active Sync. So now all my Emails (including the Folder tree), Contacts, Calendar and EVEN the Tasks (Yaaayyyy!) sync with my WP7 device.

The Outlook Task synching was something greatly missing when I switched to WP7 from a Nokia E71. Now that it is back (with Zimbra), I'm really happy. This is a DEFINITE feature that Outlook Hotmail Connector and even Hotmail (Windows Live) need to incorporate into their synchronisation with WP7 handsets.

I can't believe that Task synching with Outlook is not a feature of Windows Live (Hotmail).

--Nokia Lumia 800, hosted Zimbra Collaboration Server, Outlook 2010--

 

[jdandison]

I'm still thinking hard about going to office365 which will give me the EAS and cloud for about 8 bucks a month or less.

I also found out yesterday that you can get ActiveSync via hotmail - the default setting is to check every thirty minutes, but when I looked in mailbox settings yesterday on my phone, 'as items arrive' is now an option.

 

[blackfire]

One thing I like about Google is that in the remotely possible scenario of me ending up falling in love with any other platform, that new platform will most probably support syncing of Google Email, contacts and calendars, so my setup is:

All my contacts saved on google, gmail+Hotmail in a linked inbox (Really like that feature and how well implemented it is on WP), Skydrive for all my cloud storage needs (Absolutely love it). Google for my calendar. It all sync perfectly well on Windows Phone.

I also have a second email icon for work (We use Office 365), but although I could, I dont sync the contacts.

As for notes, I know there are a few solutions, but my favorite so far is OneNote itself. I have been able to do a lot of collaboration work through shared notebooks and was very impressed by how easy it is to work with shared notebooks, editing in the phone as well as in a PC, everything updating almost in real time; while simple tasks such as grocery lists are also easy to do, and elegant in my opinion.

Typos brought to you by some sleepiness and a touch soft keyboard.