ActiveSyncFor the past couple of years we have been using Good Mobile Messaging for connecting our Palm Treo phones back to Microsoft Exchange. Overall, Good has been a reliable and powerful solution but they are changing their pricing structure and costs will be way too high for us to continue with them. I began looking for other solutions and found that our Palm Treo 650 and 700p now support push email and contact/calendar via ActiveSync (note: direct push support requires Exhange 2003 SP2 or newer). We had previously configured RPC over HTTPS for remote Outlook connectivity, but when I tried to get my phone to connect I was having certificate issues. Turns out that the Palm only recognizes known certification authorites (which my internal certification authority is not), so we went ahead and purchased a SSL Certificate from GoDaddy.com. With the new certificate I was able to connect easily.

I wiped Good Mobile Messaging off of my phone and started running soley with ActiveSync. So far it is working pretty smoothly, there is no memo or tasks sync, but I don’t use those much. I also miss the access to other folders in my email, ActiveSync only shows the inbox. Overall, it isn’t perfect, but considering that there is no extra cost involved, I think we can live with it versus shelling out the big bucks for Good.