Better organized....multiple machines and email

[billmce]

Hi All,

Not sure this is the right spot but here goes. I have my own business, domain name, etc. I use multiple machines - laptop, workstation & handheld (iphone3GS). Is there a way to to have all my email, calender and certain directories of files, etc stay synchronized across the laptop and workstation? Also, it would be nice to have the email and calendar synch'd with the handheld as well. I used MS office 2007 on a win 7 laptop and a Win XP 64 workstation.

I currently have a pop email protocol but I believe I could switch it to IMAP (of which I know nothing) if that could help.

Any help or a link or a search criteria would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Billmce

 

[clunkfish]

I had more or less the same requirement, and settled on syncing.net as a solution between laptop and workstation; I sync my Nokia smartphone to the workstation using Nokia's own (pretty poor to be honest) software. Syncing.net works well for me

 

[smc333]

I do this. Across my netbook, laptop, and WinMo phone, for POP servers, I just leave the message on the server until deleted from trash on the laptop.

IMAP pretty much makes this not a problem.

 

[ccatlett1984]

Use Google Mail?

 

[zzz2496]

OpenSource: Zimbra, Google software stack, Yahoo! software stack, eGroupWare, etc - look here.

Microsoft's product: Microsoft Exchange Server.

zzz2496

 

[johngalt]

Hi All,

Not sure this is the right spot but here goes. I have my own business, domain name, etc. I use multiple machines - laptop, workstation & handheld (iphone3GS). Is there a way to to have all my email, calender and certain directories of files, etc stay synchronized across the laptop and workstation? Also, it would be nice to have the email and calendar synch'd with the handheld as well. I used MS office 2007 on a win 7 laptop and a Win XP 64 workstation.

I currently have a pop email protocol but I believe I could switch it to IMAP (of which I know nothing) if that could help.

Any help or a link or a search criteria would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Billmce

If you switch to IMAP that will solve your synchronizing problem, as all the mail resides on the server and and all your devices will see the same thing.

Furthermore, if your email is going through GMail (as I have *my* domain email doing) then you can also set up server side filtering and server-side folders (which GMail calls 'labels') so that you don't have to lose filtering capabilities - and it is tons better b/c you are letting *their* servers handle the filtering.

Using applications to keep your machines synchronized is only as good as the software - if it breaks on one machine, you can easily lose the synchronization, often painfully so. IMAP is really your best solution, provided you don't have any real storage issues (meaning that you're to limited to how much mail you can store on your email server).

As I said, I use GMail for my domain mail, as well as having 2 additional GMail accounts (not associated with my domain). I used to use POP access as well, but over a year ago I took the time to copy all of my downloaded mail back up to the GMail servers, set up all of my filters and folders on the accounts, and let GMail start handling it all. It was a godsend to do this, as in November I bought a Motorola DROID, running the Android OS, and it uses IMAP by default for all GMail / GAFYD accounts. Since I had already performed all of the steps early last year, it was a simple matter of signing in and poof! All of my email from the last several years (that which I have kept, anyway) is there.

it was a time consuming process, especially with one account that has well over 10,000 emails, but in the end, I am much better off for it - I can find any email that I have not deleted any time I want from anywhere I want. This is irrespective of device, too.

 

[clunkfish]

Hi All,

Not sure this is the right spot but here goes. I have my own business, domain name, etc. I use multiple machines - laptop, workstation & handheld (iphone3GS). Is there a way to to have all my email, calender and certain directories of files, etc stay synchronized across the laptop and workstation? Also, it would be nice to have the email and calendar synch'd with the handheld as well. I used MS office 2007 on a win 7 laptop and a Win XP 64 workstation.

I currently have a pop email protocol but I believe I could switch it to IMAP (of which I know nothing) if that could help.

Any help or a link or a search criteria would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Billmce

If you switch to IMAP that will solve your synchronizing problem, as all the mail resides on the server and and all your devices will see the same thing.

Furthermore, if your email is going through GMail (as I have *my* domain email doing) then you can also set up server side filtering and server-side folders (which GMail calls 'labels') so that you don't have to lose filtering capabilities - and it is tons better b/c you are letting *their* servers handle the filtering.

Using applications to keep your machines synchronized is only as good as the software - if it breaks on one machine, you can easily lose the synchronization, often painfully so. IMAP is really your best solution, provided you don't have any real storage issues (meaning that you're to limited to how much mail you can store on your email server).

As I said, I use GMail for my domain mail, as well as having 2 additional GMail accounts (not associated with my domain). I used to use POP access as well, but over a year ago I took the time to copy all of my downloaded mail back up to the GMail servers, set up all of my filters and folders on the accounts, and let GMail start handling it all. It was a godsend to do this, as in November I bought a Motorola DROID, running the Android OS, and it uses IMAP by default for all GMail / GAFYD accounts. Since I had already performed all of the steps early last year, it was a simple matter of signing in and poof! All of my email from the last several years (that which I have kept, anyway) is there.

it was a time consuming process, especially with one account that has well over 10,000 emails, but in the end, I am much better off for it - I can find any email that I have not deleted any time I want from anywhere I want. This is irrespective of device, too.

But the OP wants calendar and file synchronisation too. IMAP is brilliant I agree for multi-platform access and control of email, but won't deal with calendar syncing. My requirement is very similar to the OP's - synced calendar, tasks, and contacts across 3 PCs and a smartphone. The PC side of things is handled seamlessly by syncing.net, which is why I recommended it; I only wish I could say the same for Nokia's syncing software, which is really poor. In fact I am tempted to switch to a Windows smartphone simply to get away from Nokia's PCSync!

 

[johngalt]

Calendar Syncronizing can also be handled by Google - GMail has calendars built in that can be synchronized with Outlook.

Finally, for files, there's DropBox.

 

[billmce]

Thanks for the reply. Very insightful. Me thinks it might be just best to go along as I am. The email thing looks like a ton of work for me to set up out the box. I do have a limit on the amount of data I put up at the hosting service.......and it seems like a ton of work for me at the moment.
Thanks Again,
Billmce

 

[johngalt]

billmce - you may consider letting Google host your email, then, unless you work with government contracts and / or are worried about privacy issues.

 

[billmce]

I have security issues so I don't think I can go that route. Thanks though. YOu would think that it is not uncommon for people to use multiple machine....I was hoping Outlook could have some sort of coordination feature and maybe a directory structure that keeps the latest version of a file and replicates to the other machines - it would not be a lot of stuff that would need that. I might have to check out the software clunkfish suggested. Thanks again though.

 

[surfasb]

OpenSource: Zimbra, Google software stack, Yahoo! software stack, eGroupWare, etc - look here.

Microsoft's product: Microsoft Exchange Server.

zzz2496

Or even better. Micrsoft Small Business Server, which includes Exchange. Or use a hosted service.