November 25, 2007
Now that I’ve successfully recovered from the feast-o-rama that was Thanksgiving here at the Funcave, here’s a recap of my latest Response Point encounter..
The day before Thanksgiving, yours truly made the 8 hour roundtrip to the swank-ola Microsoft offices in the Atlanta suburb of Alpharetta for a half-day Hands-on Lab delivered by Joe “Captain Unified” Schurman himself. Yes, that means I finally got my grubby mitts on some genuine Response Point hardware, at least for a few hours
In all, it was well worth my time and fuel to attend. Simply getting the chance to compare the different OEM flavors of Response Point was a big plus.
Admittedly, the labs were super short, and barely scratched the surface of Response Point. But that’s only an issue if you are the type of person who simply does what’s laid out for you in the given labs and isn’t willing to explore any more on your own. Most of all, I was itching to dig into the administrative interface for Response Point. Thanks to the brevity of the provided labs, I had plenty of time to do some Official Funcave Dissecting on the Response Point software tools.
The real saving grace tho, was having someone like Joe, who is an MVP in Office Communications Server with loads of experience and a true breadth of knowledge of VoIP, delivering the training. He dropped several nuggets of info for anyone who was paying attention that were pure gold.
Best of all, thanks to the exposure to RP I had on Wednesday, I’m already mapping out system configurations for several RP prospects that I’ll be contacting this week.
|| posted by chris under business, freebie, hardware, unified comm || comments (3) ||
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November 25, 2007
I’ve received a couple of e-mails recently from folks running Exchange Server 2003, either standalone or as part of SBS, who have been asking about HTML e-mail on WM6. Long story short, they are still receiving plain text versions of their e-mails. Worse, they’ve heard from various and sundry sources that they have to run Exchange 2007 to get HTML e-mail support.
Well, I’ve got some good news and bad news on this one.
The good news…
Exchange 2007 being required isn’t entirely true.
The bad news is…
Exchange 2007 being required is mostly true.
HTML e-mail support in Windows Mobile 6 is actually one of the few new Messaging features that doesn’t necessarily require Exchange 2007, but there’s a hideous catch.
Windows Mobile 6 supports HTML e-mail over pretty much any transport you want, including POP, IMAP and ActiveSync. You simply set the type of e-mail you want when you configure a given e-mail account on your device, as shown in this example of a POP account…
So where’s the catch? Grab hold of a chair and get ready to throw it in the general direction of the 98052 zip code.
When using Exchange 2003 OTA AKA Over The Air via Direct Push, HTML e-mail is NOT supported…
However, using Exchange 2003 via a local AKA cabled/Bluetooth/IR ActiveSync connection does support HTML e-mail…
Show of hands for everyone who wants their e-mail synchronization to only happen when they are connected via a cable or other local ActiveSync connection?
Yeah, didn’t think so.
However, if you are using Exchange 2007, then you have full HTML e-mail support OTA using Direct Push to your Windows Mobile 6 device.
I think the key to this confusion is some semi-misleading info in some of Microsoft’s released WM6 collateral. You’ll note that on most of the Windows Mobile 6 collateral, HTML e-mail is not indicated as a feature that requires Exchange 2007.
That’s because…well, technically it doesn’t. But since 99% of WM6 users using Direct Push have their e-mail synching OTA, it’s pretty ludicrous that this fact isn’t better documented. One strategically placed asterisk would have made this as clear as a steam whistle.
In the meantime, for those of you who want to view HTML e-mails coming in over Direct Push to a Windows Mobile 6 device, but aren’t running Exchange 2007 for one reason or another…
You can always forward your mail to a secondary POP account as an OTA workaround.
Is that an ugly solution? Oh, you betcha!
|| posted by chris under clueless, hardware, mobility, unified comm || comments (7) ||
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November 12, 2007
Response Point officially jumped out of the gate today. Officially.
As part of the launch, the product site got a big huge facelift.
Also, D-Link announced a price drop already! $400 off their announced base unit price of $2999 and $100 off their announced handset price of $149. Looks like someone done graduated from the Steve Jobs College of Windshield Repair and Product Pricing!
Also, the Response Point video demos available on the site will teach you the following…
- Office tech guys are creepy, narcoleptic dweebs who can barely whistle.
- Male black co-workers are lying Momma’s boys who look a lot like that cop from Die Hard, who was also the dad on Family Matters.
- Saleswomen show lots and lots of cleavage if they want to be successful.
- Customers are encouraged to be pervy lotharios, provided they double their orders.
- Receptionists are dead ringers for Prissy from the Foghorn Leghorn cartoons and don’t ever know their company’s fax number.
Hey, we’d give you some more substantive info, but we’re still waiting on the hardware to arrive at the Funcave.
|| posted by chris under business, hardware, migration, unified comm || comments (5) ||
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November 2, 2007
So the 100 Response Point systems MS gave away at Symposium are officially on their way.
If you happen to be among the lucky 100 recipients, best be nice to your FedEx lady/guy.
So it doesn’t mysteriously get diverted to a former employer, or eBay, or something else spooky mysterious.
|| posted by chris under beta, freebie, hardware, unified comm || comments (1) ||
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October 7, 2007
At long last…
According to the RP team blog, Response Point RTM’d this week.
Woohoo!
Looking forward to getting our grubby little servos on the RP bundle here at the Funlab.
Expecting it to arrive any day now…
<twiddle thumbs/claws/pincers>
|| posted by chris under hardware, unified comm || comments (0) ||
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