Move from a berry to droid?

[ffeingol]

Sorry if this has been covered already, but it's a bit hard to search for. I'm a server admin and I use my berry primary for server support. It gets used as follows: - receiving email (server monitoring software sends out emails) - check on server status (web interface) - respond to support tickets (web interface) I'm not too worried about the last two becuase I've seen / tested the web browser on the VZW droid and it works fine (much better than the berry). email OTOH, has me a bit nervous. My berry currently monitors 3 email boxes: - blackberry account - gmail - corporate server (pop/imap) My questions are: - How many accounts can the Droid monitor? - Can different accounts have different notifications (i.e. corporate vibrate, gmail just flashes in indicator) - If I'm using IMAP how long does it take for email to show up. Thanks in advance.

 

[JOHNNYG]

I have the following email accounts set up on my Droid.

Mac
Road Runner
GMail
Corporate Email

All set up very easy

I have had no problems with delayed emails. I get them very quickly.

The exchange settings were easy to set up, and the Droid synced automatically.

 

[ffeingol]

Hello,

Any idea how 'quickly' they show up? Can different email accounts notify you in different ways?

 

[Randomocity]

I know with my gmail and my corp account, the emails show up faster on the phone than they do my inbox. Its to the point where my phone tells me when new emails come in, even if I'm sitting in front of gmail on my PC. The only thing that does not work particularly well are pop3 accounts.

 

[JOHNNYG]

When I sent test messages, I received the email in 60 seconds or less. Mayeb quicker, but I know I wasn't waiting around for the email to arrive.

Regarding different notifications, for different email accounts. Each account you set up has it's own individual setting for Tone.

 

[ffeingol]

Thanks guys, this is sounding good.

 

[DroidFan]

I have 2 gmail accounts, a ymail account and my .mac account loaded on my Droid. I find that my gmail gets "pushed" through instantly, while you have the option of setting how often you want the "non-gmail" accounts to be synced.

 

[shcommish]

What about having a different mailbox for each email? Is there a way to do this instead of having a combined?

 

[Brokenartist]

Why not just use gmail as your main source for email and have all existing email accounts come through your gmail with specific labels and filters?

 

[ffeingol]

gmail 'may' be the final solution but it's a security / data concern. The emails are a combination of support tickets and server notices. We prefer it to go to our own mail server and not have anyone else with access to the email.

 

[dro0g]

I switched from a Curve to the Droid and am very happy. BES is among the most horribly written pieces of software ever created and I've had to deal with BES support since the 2.x days so I'm thrilled to be off Blackberry.

Support for non-BES accounts is better on the Droid than Blackberry (Blackberry has no native IMAP client for instance, you have to connect to a BIS server run by the carrier and there's all kinds of weird compatibility issues) The two issues on the Droid for me at the moment are not being able to accept calendar invites on an Exchange account, and not auto downloading mail from folders on an Exchange account (which is still better than Blackberry's support for folders)

From a monitoring standpoint, you're connecting directly over the Internet vs. through RIM's servers which removes a point of failure for troubleshooting (though it's usually on the news when RIM is having a service problem)

I highly recommend playing around with Android Scripting Environment, you can do some very cool things to help automate support and monitoring tasks.

 

[fr4c]

What about having a different mailbox for each email? Is there a way to do this instead of having a combined?

You can have different mailboxes for each account, or choose to combine them. IMAP folders will also be available within each account.

Since Gmail is the only account with true "Push" mail, IMAP/POP accounts are setup with a Fetch schedule, with intervals of 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, etc. Each time you browse to your inbox the phone also refreshes and downloads any new content.

I came from a BB, so I was used to the near instant email notifications. I think the Droid does it just as well, and the 15 minute fetch schedule is more than good enough for me.

If you have any more questions about the two devices, let me know. I'm a IT/Project Manager so I use and deal with the same things as you do.

 

[ffeingol]

OK, a 15 minute refresh could be a deal breaker. Our monitoring system notifies us after a 5 minute outage. If we 'hit the cycle wrong' it could take another 14m 59s before the Droid gets the email. That could be 20 minutes of downtime before an email notice.

I'm very surprised that the Droid does not use IMAP IDLE. Even our 'self hosted' email (via IMAP) shows up within a minute or so on the Berry.

 

[fr4c]

OK, a 15 minute refresh could be a deal breaker. Our monitoring system notifies us after a 5 minute outage. If we 'hit the cycle wrong' it could take another 14m 59s before the Droid gets the email. That could be 20 minutes of downtime before an email notice.

I'm very surprised that the Droid does not use IMAP IDLE. Even our 'self hosted' email (via IMAP) shows up within a minute or so on the Berry.

The reason it shows up on our Berry so fast is because the emails are being pushed from the RIM servers themselves. That why when we set up emails we do not put in any server settings at all, just our account and password information (for IMAP accounts).

I just did a test email to my Droid; Gmail was instant, while the IMAP took about 10 minutes or so (15 minute cycle).

 

[fr4c]

OK, a 15 minute refresh could be a deal breaker. Our monitoring system notifies us after a 5 minute outage. If we 'hit the cycle wrong' it could take another 14m 59s before the Droid gets the email. That could be 20 minutes of downtime before an email notice.

I'm very surprised that the Droid does not use IMAP IDLE. Even our 'self hosted' email (via IMAP) shows up within a minute or so on the Berry.

What I have done is to forward my corporate email to my Gmail account, since Gmail is Push. I have found that based on this setup I would get the forwarded emails almost simultaneously, with the original email on my corporate account arriving minutes later.