I find that the app lacks a ton of features and is just too kludgy to use. I started speaking with different people using the same tablet as me and I found that a few people were using an app called TouchDown made by NitroDesk.

So I gave it a download from the Android Market (free trial) and I have been testing it out. Needless to say, I love it! It’s got everything I wanted in an email app and the user interface for it just feels more efficient than the default app that came with my Galaxy Tab.

If you’re having the same problems as me, I suggest you give it a try.

-RP

I have to say that I’m quite impressed with Outlook for the Mac. It works great and it’s easy to get around in the application for a user like myself that is used to the Windows version.

Everything is pretty straightforward, and creating meeting requests is a breeze. The one thing I did notice is that it seems it takes longer for the Mac to synchronize folders with the server than it does for my PC. I’m not sure if this is a MacBook Air thing, or Outlook however. In any case it’s not that much longer that it’s an issue but it was something I noticed.

The rest of my Microsoft Office experience is great as well, Word, Excel, PowerPoint are all great apps that work great on their Mac counterpart.

-RP

As long as you are backing up your Exchange server with a program that is Exchange application aware (such as Backup Exec for example), you cause the Exchange Recovery Storage Group (RSG). This is a special area where you can restore your mail database without having to overwrite the production one.

Once this is restored you can then merge your mail from the RSG into your production database. It’s quite handy in an emergency. All you have to do is follow the instructions here.

-RP

Well Zimbra is an email and collaboration alternative to Exchange and it is open source. Now Zimbra can offer to us an alternative for those of us that prefer not to go down the Exchange path. Don’t get me wrong, I love Exchange and I’ve used it since the dawn of time. But it’s always nice to have a competitor in the market!

Zimbra is available in a VMware virtual appliance that you can try out so if you have a demo environment you can set it up in, then I encourage you to try it out. You can read more about it here.

-RP

You can host your email at an Exchange hosting provider. Believe it or not, a lot of people don’t know Exchange hosting exists and are surprised when I first mention it. You need not own your server to get the benefits. All you need to do is pick an Exchange hosting provider and they will take care of managing and maintaining all of your email.

There are many options out there to host your email, so take your time researching all of them and then you can see what works for you.

-RP

Well I say it is! With Exchange 2010, there is one overriding reason to migrate to Exchange 2010 from your old Exchange 2003 setup. That reason is DAG! Exchange Database Availability Groups! This allows you to have replication of your Exchange databases so there is no single point of failure.

In the past users have always said that email isn’t important but then they lose their email and realize it really is a critical app that they need. Isn’t that the way it always goes? Well now with DAG you can rest easy and know you have some redundancy in your Exchange environment.

You can read more about it here.

-RP

For example, push technology is when you get a new email or a new calendar appointment and the server side pushes down the changes to your mobile device without your device having to continously poll the server for changes.

Microsoft introduced this tech to Microsoft Exchange 2003 with service pack 2, and it also exists in Microsoft Exchange 2007. No longer do you need to worry about polling the server for changes, instead you can get instant updates as they happen thanks to push technology.

Unfortunately your older Microsoft based phones will not support this as you require newer Microsoft Windows Mobile software which is usually only supported on newer devices. The new Palm Pre for example also supports this technology and is poised to be quite the phone based on all the hype I’ve been hearing. It will be very interesting to see what portion of the market share Palm can steal from the iPhone and the BlackBerry Storm!

-RP

Why do you need access to the console? With access to the console this gives you the ability to troubleshoot larger support issues when things aren’t working the way they should and it also enables you to run some pretty cool scripts that are available out there on the Internet.

The ESXi console uses BusyBox so it is different from ESX even after you get console access. To enable SSH access to the shell, please do the following:

• From the ESXi console hit Alt-F1
• Type in the word unsupported and hit enter (you will not see the characters appear on the screen)
• Type in your root password
• Edit the /etc/inetd.conf file by typing in vi /etc/inetd.conf
• Scroll through the file until you find the line that says #ssh and delete the # sign
• Save the file
• Now you can reboot the ESXi server and you will have shell access
• Alternatively you can run the /sbin/services.sh restart command to restart the management services without rebooting the box.

-RP

The obvious way to do this is to go to the properties of the Contacts folder and then check off the Show contacts in address book box. This usually fixes the issue.

However once in a while users will run into a problem where the option is grayed out. This happens if there is no Outlook address book in existence in the profile. To fix this issue, add a new address book to the profile and then try it again. This time you will notice that the option is no longer grayed out.

-RP

Well the first thing that usually goes wrong is that you can activate everyone but you can’t get certain things such as appointments to sync correctly from the BlackBerry device to Outlook. This is because BES can only look at one GAL. That’s right, you heard me correct, only one GAL. Don’t fret, there is a way around this.

Create a third GAL that incorporates a filter that lists all the users of the other multiple GALs. This way you have one GAL that covers everything. Then give the BES service account permissions to access that GAL. Also make sure you add the Exchange Domain Servers Group full access to the GAL as well. Then in offline address lists you can add that GAL to the offline address list as well. Then don’t give access to the BES service account to the other GALs. This forces the BES service account to only use that one all encompassing GAL you just created.

Then go into your BlackBerry server and when you go to add a user to the BES server you will notice it is seeing all the users from your multiple GALs. That’s it, hope that helps!

-Cheers, RP