vB Easy Archive - "Good" (tm) mobile messaging vs. pocket outlook

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"Good" (tm) mobile messaging vs. pocket outlook
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Posted by: b3p0

Hi,

My company has a Goodlink server, and also has an exchange server supporting directpush.

Has anyone used both Good and Directpush? I hear good things about the Good client, and Im wondering what peoples thoughts are comparing the standard WM Outlook vs. Good.

Thanks!

Posted by: -DZ-

I don't know if you're gonna find a whole lot of folks who have used both messaging platforms, but I have. I have the Cingular 8125 with some flash of AKU2 or better (I used to play with my ROM a lot..)

I'm the network technology manager at our company and I needed a good way to get network alerts E-Mailed to me. Unfortunately, our current messaging platform is Lotus Domino (I don't need to get into what's wrong with that or why we still used it).

I started out using Mail2Web and their free hosted Exchange service. I'd have my monitoring tools send an E-Mail to my mail2web account and then I'd receive the E-Mails on my handheld. If I was logged into the Mail2Web OWA and I had my phone sitting right next to me, the E-Mail would usually be available on my phone before it would show up in OWA. I was VERY impressed. Contacts and calendar entries were almost instantaneous.

Then a couple of months later another guy I was working with got into a discussion with our CEO and our CEO asked why all his other "CEO-Like" counterparts were always getting E-mail on the go and such. That's all it took for us to download a demo of Goodlink. My buddy and I were the first two on the service when we got the demo. I had the 8125, and he had the HP6515 I think, which is a WM2003 Second Edition device.

Installing Good is not as easy as setting up DirecPush, but it's not that difficult. Your Goodlink Administrator will set you up on the Goodlink server, and then you get an activation E-mail in your regular inbox. That contains your E-Mail address you have to use to sign up (Some companies have multiple aliases.. this tells you what you have to use), a PIN, and the address you have to browse to on your phone to get the GoodLink software. Some of our more savy users did this themselfs, others just hand us their phones and ask us to make it happen.

Once you get Goodlink setup, it installs a whole new messaging client on your phone. You get a new mail program, a new contacts handler, and a new calendar program. If your phone has dedicated E-Mail and calendar buttons, Goodlink takes care of setting them up that they automatically launch Good software instead of the Pocket Outlook equivilent.

Goodlink is easily as fast as Pocket Outlook. E-Mails always show up faster on my phone than they do in my Domino Inbox (I use the Domino Access for Microsoft Outlook program to allow me to use Outlook instead of the god awful Notes client.) Calendar entries show up right away as well. Contacts with Domino is a challenge as the contacts you enter on your desktop aren't the contacts that are synced with the server (automaticallly at least.) You have to manually initiate a sync every time you change your contacts in the Lotus Notes client.

Overall, after using both I'd say that DirecPush is the winner. Direcpush works with the applications that are part of Windows Mobile, which is a huge plus for two reasons. The first being that it doesn't install something else in what precious little memory space is on the phone. The second is that if you like to tinker with your phone, a lot of aftermarket Today Screen plugins will read from Pocket Outlook, but not Good Mobile Messaging databases. Oh yeah, one more huge pro for Pocket Outlook is that if your company already has Exchange 2003SP2 or better, you don't have to pay anything additional for this to work. No Goodlink licenses to buy.

Goodlink is not without it's pros though. If your company has Lotus Domino, then Goodlink is your only answer. If your company has Exchange but if you have people running handhelds other than WM5/AKU2 then Goodlink is your answer. Goodlink supports Windows Mobile 5, PalmOS, and I think even Symbian. Now with the news that PalmOS is adding support for DirecPush, the necessity for Good Mobile Messaging is lessened.

(Though why anyone still uses PalmOS in this day and age is beyond me.....)

If you have any other questions, I'd be glad to answer them.

- DZ

Posted by: b3p0

Excellent feedback, thanks!

Posted by: nskgti23

Another thing you have to take into account is storage and resources on your phone. Goodlink is a rather large application and depending on the size of your mailbox/contacts can easily put a heavy strain on your device. Personally, I would also suggest DirectPush for that reason alone. I've used DirectPush on 4 different devices (2125, 3125, 8125 and 8525) and Good on 3 (all except 8525). Good always strained the memory of the device after a couple weeks.