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I took my Droid back.

I returned my Droid to Verizon today.

I just can't have a device that is so difficult to work with Exchange and/or Outlook. Google will never be a significant player in the small business market until they fix their sync software.

I don't want to buy 3rd party apps and I don't want my information on Google. For them to advertise that this is possible and even easily done is just ridiculous.

They lost $1000 on me today since we were going to buy these for all of our employees. There were 3 other people in the store with the exact same thing - all small business owners running exchange -- all exchanging their phones -- all who would have been multiple purchasers as they have employees -- all wasted many, many, many hours (over 40 for me not including my IT bill which will be hefty I'm sure) trying to get this working.

It's a shame. Shame on Google.


Bye Bye puddin :rolleyes:
 
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Thanks. But that's way over my head. I'm your typical non-IT user. I know very little about this thing. I'm the person who wants to buy something, follow the instructions, and then have it work. I just admittedly don't have the knowledge to be conjuring up my own solutions and implementing them when configuration fails. And that's my major beef with this product I guess. It's a beef, in part, at their refusal to cater to the ill informed... which is definitely me.

I've already ordered the Touch Pro 2. It has a cable. You hook it up and hit sync. That's what I'm used to with palm. It still beats payphones and returning to the office to check email I guess.

Thanks for everyone's input. It's extremely kind of all of you to attempt to help. I hope others who have issues find their solution.
 
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I just wanna clear something up here. Verizon does NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT charge extra for Exchange REGARDLESS of whether or not you are a business account. I'm sick of seeing this misinformation spread around this form.

Here is the deal -- if you have a smartphone that supports Exchange ActiveSync (which the Droid does -- albeit a partial implementation for now) then this will work with the $30 unlimited data plan. You do NOT need to pay for ANYTHING else...PERIOD. Verizon has nothing to do with Exchange support other than providing you with a connection to the internet. ActiveSync runs on ports 80 and 443, which is what HTTP and HTTPS run on - so Verizon has no way of blocking all of the Exchange servers out there specifically without some signifcant work on their back end. If they did this then it would be a HUGE fiasco and people would be all over them for it. Just like Comcast got in hot water for throttling p2p protocols. Its called net neutrality and in a nutshell means that if you are supplying a connection to the internet that you have to treat all traffic the same. Your problem with Exchange may have been that your Exchange server requires features that the ActiveSync implementation on the Droid does not currently support.

If you have a BLACKBERRY and want to connect to your company's Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES), then you have to pay for an unlimited data plan and then you have to pay MORE on top of that each month to have your account provisioned for BES access. This is due to the fact that the entire Blackberry infrastructure requires additional hardware on Verizon's and RIM's backends that you are paying to use.

If you have a Blackberry and only want to use Blackberry Internet Service (no Calendar or Contacts sync -- just e-mail) then you just pay for the unlimited data plan. No further costs necessary.

I think a lot of people are under the false impression that all corporate or Exchange accounts require an additional fee because they have always associated Corporations with Blackberries and Blackberries with Exchange. BUT, in reality, while all BES users are corporate, not all corporate users are on BES.

Hopefully this rant educates a couple of people so that we can put this issue to bed.
 
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i work for a major university (corporate account). exchange with activesync works fine with the basic $30 data plan. perhaps our security is not at the level of say, lockheed-martin, but we're not insecure either. granted, i had trouble with droid's built-in corporate email (wouldn't sync my calendar). i'm hoping they'll fix that soon with an update. in the meantime, touchdown works great for just a few bucks.

.
Didn't Lockheed Martin have a security breach recently? It's probably a good thing your university's security is not at their level :D
 
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If you have a BLACKBERRY and want to connect to your company's Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES), then you have to pay for an unlimited data plan and then you have to pay MORE on top of that each month to have your account provisioned for BES access. This is due to the fact that the entire Blackberry infrastructure requires additional hardware on Verizon's and RIM's backends that you are paying to use.

Agreed.... Amen..... and good night.
 
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After massive amounts of research, I believe Sublim is correct.

Ocean: I need my contacts. I don't use my calendar. And I guess therein lies part of the crux of the problem... everyone has different needs and obviously no one product will please us all. The Droid is great. No doubt. I just need what I need, and my experience has been unfortunately different from the others here. It could be operator error as well... undoubtedly that is possible if not likely.
 
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Ocean: I need my contacts. I don't use my calendar. And I guess therein lies part of the crux of the problem... everyone has different needs and obviously no one product will please us all. The Droid is great. No doubt. I just need what I need, and my experience has been unfortunately different from the others here. It could be operator error as well... undoubtedly that is possible if not likely.
well, i'd be happy to test out the contact-sync for you. i'm pretty sure it would work since everything else works. but i think it's moot at this point since you already returned it, right?
 
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It took me two tries and 5 minutes to set up my exchange account. It took a minute or two (or more) to sync everything. I have all my contacts, calendar and can send and receive emails. It syncs fine, as a matter of fact, I get a ding on my phone before it shows up on my outlook.

I know that doesn't help you, but I just wanted to chime in to defend the Droid/MSExchange issues. My server is running 2003 btw.
 
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For my part, I am connected via Activesynch. I gave mine to my IT guy and he came back with it literally in a few minutes and calendar, contacts and email were all working just fine.

A day or two later, I wanted some additional functions of Touchdown so I bought it and set it up myself in less than 3 minutes. Again, calendar, contacts and email work just fine. I was shocked at how easy it was.

Mine was sooo easy but I think maybe that depends on the individual server. I believe that in most (but not all cases) if your colleagues are using iPhones than the Droid should work OK. YMMV.
 
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i'm told exchange servers are crazy complicated. even some seasoned pro network-admins don't know all the ins and outs of all the settings.

but i also think that there is something going on with android's native corporate email app. there's been widespread problems. i bet they'll fix it up in an update though.
 
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Data Center Outsourcing-ANS Online Co-Location Server Hosting

This is the home page for the company that hosts my corp email. Notice, that I can connect to it via Microsoft Outlook Web.

I called the IT people to ask how I could set up to push my corp mail to my Droid. They told me that I might be able to set it up as a POP3 account, and gave me the incoming and outgoing server names.

I have tried for hours to get this thing to work. I can get the incoming server to "go through" but the outgoing says that it cannot connect.

The IT people know nothing about Droid or Motorola and are not interested in being educated.

So I turn to you all, the holders of the real knowledge, to help me figure out if I can in fact get this thing working so that I receive my corp email on my Droid, WITHOUT paying an extra monthly fee.

Thank you so much :)
 
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I returned my Droid to Verizon today.

I just can't have a device that is so difficult to work with Exchange and/or Outlook. Google will never be a significant player in the small business market until they fix their sync software.

I don't want to buy 3rd party apps and I don't want my information on Google. For them to advertise that this is possible and even easily done is just ridiculous.

They lost $1000 on me today since we were going to buy these for all of our employees. There were 3 other people in the store with the exact same thing - all small business owners running exchange -- all exchanging their phones -- all who would have been multiple purchasers as they have employees -- all wasted many, many, many hours (over 40 for me not including my IT bill which will be hefty I'm sure) trying to get this working.

It's a shame. Shame on Google.
That is a shame... Well, bye.
 
Upvote 0
I returned my Droid to Verizon today.

I just can't have a device that is so difficult to work with Exchange and/or Outlook. Google will never be a significant player in the small business market until they fix their sync software.

I don't want to buy 3rd party apps and I don't want my information on Google. For them to advertise that this is possible and even easily done is just ridiculous.

They lost $1000 on me today since we were going to buy these for all of our employees. There were 3 other people in the store with the exact same thing - all small business owners running exchange -- all exchanging their phones -- all who would have been multiple purchasers as they have employees -- all wasted many, many, many hours (over 40 for me not including my IT bill which will be hefty I'm sure) trying to get this working.

It's a shame. Shame on Google.
Why would you ever be an "early adopter"?
Neither android nor iPhone do email as well as blackberry.
Give android a few months and check back. Android is the future of pocket email.
 
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I'm even more baffled by all the responses that say it's easy to do. That frustrates me even more. I'm glad things worked for you guys, and I wish they worked for me. Just trading out the phone with Verizon has hardly been an easy feat. They wanted to charge me a restocking fee for exchanging a phone THEY RECOMMENDED given my requirements. Crazy talk. Ultimately they agreed to change it when I agreed to buy more phones if we could ever find one that woudl work with our exchange.

I wish I was more knowledgeable and could carry out some of the fixes you guys have suggested. Thanks again for everyone's help. Enjoy your new phone... it's truly a cool device.
 
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