What Is Your Mobile Email Solution?

Being mobile brings a lot of challenges, staying on top of email being one of them.

I’m using the following set-up:

• Outlook 2007 using the Windows Live Outlook Connector on my Tablet PC. This allows me keep all of my mail and contacts in sync onwith the Windows Live service. I also pay for the premium service at $9.95 which also keeps my calendar, tasks, and notes in sync with Windows Live. Having my desktop client and my web-based account totally in-sync is priceless.
• Windows Live Hotmail – I have all my pop 3 email forwarded to my Windows Live Hotmail address, and have setup additional email addresses in Windows Live so I can send / reply on behalf of that address. Using Windows Live Hotmail also lets me work seamlessly with email in situations where SMTP ports get blocked ( hotels, conferences, various WiFi hotspots, etc). I have found the above to be a much better integrated solution than Google’s gmail / calendar / contacts / tasks solution which is non-integrated and kludge at best. Microsoft should be darn proud of Live Hotmail – it simply rocks.
• Windows Mobile – I am currently using an HTC TyTn II / Tilt and have it set to automatically sync email and contacts to my Windows Live account. The only gotcha here is that my tasks and calendar on the Windows Mobile phone does not sync up to Windows Live or Outlook 2007 – a big hole for me. Windows Mobile Device Center only supports syncing with the main calendar and tasks in Outlook, and does not provide a way to choose other calendars to sync to. Microsoft should fix that, especially for those paying for the premium service.

This is the closest I have come to replicating a hosted Exchange account, and with the exception of the calendar issue I described above, I’m quite happy. I could set up an Exchange account, but I’m trying to avoid the RPC HTTP connections which can get a bit bumpy at times. That said, I don’t think I’m far from going to a full Exchange hosted account to address the calendar sync issue with Windows Mobile.

What do you do? What’s working / not working for you? Are you an Exchange hosted person? A dedicated email / pop 3 / IMAP person? Strictly web-based using Windows Live or Google Gmail?