SmarterMail 11.x BETA Now Available

January 24, 2013 by 1 Comment

We’re excited to announce the BETA of the next version of our popular Windows mail server: SmarterMail 11.x. Over the last few major releases we focused on providing an incredibly powerful and user friendly Web interface that users would enjoy.  With this latest release, we kept the same look and appearance but rewrote the underlying architecture with the latest Internet technologies to dramatically improve the speed, reduce the size and increase compatibility with all the latest Internet browsers and tablets.

In addition, SmarterMail 11.x brings several new features, server side optimizations and fixes that continues to make SmarterMail compatible with the latest Internet trends.  As with all releases, we worked closely with customers and partners and while we couldn’t incorporate everyone’s ideas into this release, we prioritized our users’ wants to create a new version of SmarterMail that we think you’ll really like.

So let’s take a look at what’s new…

Tremendous Performance Increases

We spent a great deal of time benchmarking SmarterMail and then making changes to increase the level of performance across the board. In many instances we’ve seen increases of 70% or more in the speed and responsiveness of the SmarterMail 11.x interface. We’ve also seen huge decreases in memory and CPU usage, even under extremely heavy loads. All of this means that the product runs much quicker and much more efficiently than previous versions. Some of the changes we’ve made include:

  • Re-factored and completely re-wrote many areas of the web interface to reduce the amount of JavaScript code, CSS and HTML, making the entire web interface much faster, much more responsive and much lighter weight.
  • CSS files have been converted to LESS, making stylesheets much smaller and more efficient.
  • The button bars were re-factored to be lighter weight controls.
  • The context menus were re-factored to be lighter weight controls.
  • The date pickers were re-factored to be lighter weight controls.
  • The tree view controls were re-factored to be lighter weight controls.
  • Greatly increased the performance of the Web interface.
  • Replaced the message editor control with a more lightweight control.
  • SmarterMail Service memory has been drastically reduced using SpamAssasin.

As we mentioned in a blog post late last year, we feel efficiency IS a product feature, and SmarterMail 11.x really proves that point.

Simple Customization of the Webmail Interface

personalizationSmarterMail 11.x introduces a much simpler way for users to customize the look and feel of their webmail experience. Now, rather than having to access system files to create custom styles, users can simply override existing SmarterMail styles with their own variables or, more simply, by modifying the overall color scheme of the primary, secondary and hyperlink colors. Users can even drastically revise the look of the webmail interface. For example, by moving the navigation icons to a horizontal position versus their default vertical position. Of course, if the Domain Admin prefers the defaults, customization at the user level can be disabled, thereby preserving branding and corporate identity.

Significant Improvements to Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync

Note-2-Calendar_smCustomers using the Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) add-on enjoy the industry standard in syncing technologies for all mobile devices and will be ready for the next version of Microsoft Outlook for Windows that’s coming in Office 2013. With SmarterMail 11.x we’ve made some significant changes in how SmarterMail integrates EAS, including better handling of the most popular devices from Samsung, the Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note II, and seamless integration with their native email clients.

Changes to how SmarterTools products work with add-ons are often only available with major upgrades due to the agreements we have with our vendors and partners. Customers who stay current with Upgrade Protection are able to take full advantage of these changes and modifications, not to mention receive full version upgrades at no additional cost. In addition, with SmarterTools, you can reinstate your Upgrade Protection at any time and still receive a discount. And unlike our competitors, SmarterTools doesn’t force customers to purchase each incremental upgrade that’s available when reinstating Upgrade Protection.

IPv6 Now Available

With the dwindling availability of IPv4 addresses, more and more hosting companies and service providers are moving towards utilizing IPv6 addresses. In addition, there will come a point where businesses of all shapes and sizes need to begin using IPv6 addresses as well. SmarterMail 11.x is here to help ease that transition. In fact, implementation of IPv6 with SmarterMail 11.x is just as simple as IPv4 – there’s no learning curve, no hassles and essentially the same functionality is available for IPv6 addresses as for legacy IPs. End users won’t even be able to tell the difference!

Greater Calendar Control

new_calendar In SmarterMail 10.x we greatly increased the functionality of our calendaring, and with SmarterMail 11.x we’re continuing that trend. In this latest version, users can not only set the default view for their calendars in the Web interface (either daily, weekly, monthly or all appointment views) but users can also automatically clean out old calendar entries. Domain or System Administrators can also default the auto-clean feature for calendars, making it an ideal solution for those admins who want to keep their mail servers manageable and running as smoothly as possible.

spell_checker

Improved Spell Checking

No one likes to send emails with spelling errors. With SmarterMail 11.x we completely revised how spell checking works, greatly increasing the accuracy and adding in grammar support. In addition, the new spell checking ignores things like URLs and email addresses and users can select an option to force spell checking before their email is actually sent, which should help with those awkward misspellings and grammar mistakes. You can also add your own words to your own dictionary to further customize and simplify your communications.

contact_pictures

Personalize Your Contacts

With the growth in popularity of social networks, people are used to see whom they’re talking to when typing up messages. SmarterMail 11.x allows users to add pictures to their contacts, thereby putting a face to a name, as it were, when typing up emails or using the included live chat. Contact pictures will even carry over to third-party live chat clients like Adium or Pidgin so users always see the person they’re communicating with, regardless of medium. In addition, ActiveSync and CardDAV will synchronize contacts with your choice of Third-party applications.

New Features for System Administrators

As if the incredible performance increases won’t make their jobs easier enough, we’ve also included several new features, tools and improvements for System Administrators. Some of these include the ability to utilize an abuse detection rule that allows blocking of IP addresses that exceed a set number of authentication failures over a variety of protocols, the ability to delete IP address that no longer exist right from the IP address bindings page and the implementation of the UIDPlus extension for IMAP. System administrators can even search log files written to the MRS\App_Data\Logs folder from within the management interface and much more.

17 Different Spell-check Dictionaries Included

In addition to the improved spell checking, SmarterMail also includes dictionaries for 17 different languages. The languages supported include:

  • English (US+UK Combined) – DEFAULT
  • English (US), (Australia), (Canada), (UK)
  • French
  • German/German (Switzerland)
  • Greek
  • Hungarian
  • Italian
  • Norwegian
  • Polish
  • Portuguese/Portuguese (Brazil)
  • Russian
  • Spanish

Greater Support for International Customers

SmarterMail is a truly international product. With customers in well over 120 different countries, support for languages other than English is a priority. In addition, as SmarterMail’s adoption across the globe continues to rise, support for non-Western character sets is also essential. With SmarterMail 11.x we’ve not only included support for right-to-left languages in our Web interface, but we’ve also gone through the entire product and greatly simplified our language strings to make things much easier for automated translations and for customers who create their own translation files.

Is that it?

Of course not! SmarterMail 11.x has many more features and improvements. You’ll find them in the release notes we’ll post in the SmarterMail 11.x BETA forum, but here are a few more that might be of interest:

  • A new content filter action was added for flagging messages and setting their priority.
  • Print preview now includes a list of attachments, perfect for regulatory compliance.
  • Users can now set start dates and end dates for their auto-responders.
  • Status messages and tip text now drops down from the top of the page and no longer disrupts page flow.
  • Language strings have been simplified so that they are much easier to translate.
  • In the webmail interface, the message grid now adds a color to the subject of unread messages to better distinguish them from messages that have already been read.
  • The ability for SmarterMail to detect missing attachments when they should be present. For example, when a message contains the word “attachment” but no files are attached or the subject is empty.

Getting started with the BETA

To get your hands on the BETA simply visit the SmarterTools BETA release forum, where you’ll see how to:

  • Sign up for the BETA
  • Get a special BETA license key
  • Download the latest BETA release (we update it regularly)
  • Communicate with other BETA testers and the SmarterTools development team
  • Stay up-to-date on the latest release note and BETA news

Sign up for the BETA

Filed under SmarterMail, SmarterTools Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

SmarterTrack 9.x BETA Now Available

January 24, 2013 by 2 Comments

We’re excited to announce the BETA of the next version of our popular help desk: SmarterTrack 9.x. Over the last few major releases we focused on providing a Web interface for SmarterTrack that agents, managers, administrators and end users would find as simple as it was powerful.  With this latest release, we kept the same look and appearance but rewrote the underlying architecture with the latest Internet technologies to dramatically improve the speed, reduce the size and increase compatibility with all the latest Internet browsers and tablets.

In addition, SmarterTrack 9.x brings several new features, server side optimizations and fixes that continues to make SmarterTrack compatible with the latest Internet trends.  As with all releases, we worked closely with customers and partners and while we couldn’t incorporate everyone’s ideas into this release, we prioritized our users’ wants to create a new version of SmarterTrack that we think you’ll really like.

So let’s take a look at what’s new…

Tremendous Performance Increases

We spent a great deal of time benchmarking SmarterTrack and then making changes to increase the level of performance across the board. In many instances we’ve seen increases of 70% or more in the speed and responsiveness of the SmarterTrack 9.x interface. We’ve also seen huge decreases in memory and CPU usage, even under extremely heavy loads. All of this means that the product runs much quicker and much more efficiently than previous versions. Some of the changes we’ve made include:

  • Re-factored and completely re-wrote many areas of the web interface to reduce the amount of JavaScript code, CSS and HTML, making the entire web interface much faster, much more responsive and much lighter weight.
  • CSS files have been converted to LESS, making stylesheets much smaller and more efficient.
  • The button bars were re-factored to be lighter weight controls.
  • The context menus were re-factored to be lighter weight controls.
  • The date pickers were re-factored to be lighter weight controls.
  • The tree view controls were re-factored to be lighter weight controls.
  • Greatly increased performance of the Web interface.
  • Replaced the message editor control with a more lightweight control.

As we mentioned in a blog post late last year, we feel efficiency IS a product feature, and SmarterTrack 9.x really proves that point.

color_customization

Simple Customization for the Portal and Management Interface

SmarterTrack 9.x introduces a much simpler way for users to customize the look and feel of their management interface as well as the entire customer-facing Web portal. Now, rather than having to access system files to create custom styles, users can simply override existing SmarterTrack styles with their own variables or, more simply, by modifying the overall color scheme of the primary, secondary and hyperlink colors. Users can even drastically revise the look of the management interface. For example, by moving the navigation icons to a horizontal position versus their default vertical position. Of course, if an Administrator prefers the defaults, customization at the user level can be disabled, thereby preserving branding and corporate identity. Regardless, with these changes to the customization experience, web developers can more fully integrate a SmarterTrack help desk into an existing Web site.

kb_suggestions

Streamlined Knowledge Base Suggestion Process

Both live chat and ticketing are integral parts of any company focused on customer service. However, they shouldn’t be barriers to customers finding out information on their own. In fact, companies can cut support costs by better positioning self-help resources, making them more apparent and easier to use for their customers. With that in mind, SmarterTrack 9.x better integrates self-help options for issues prior to a live chat being sent to an agent or a ticket being submitted from the Web portal. After an end user types in their initial query they are presented with a new page that lists suggested knowledge base articles based on keywords and phrases that are contained in the live chat or ticket text. End users can then see potential solutions before communicating with customer support agents and possibly resolve their issues themselves.

spell_checker

Improved Spell Checking

No one likes to send replies to tickets or live chats with spelling errors. SmarterTrack 9.x offers a completely revised spell checking engine that greatly increases the accuracy of the spell check as well as adding in grammar support. The new spell check also ignores things like URLs and email addresses and allows agents to add words to their own personal dictionaries.

Better Mobile and Tablet Support

SmarterTrack was architected so that the experience a user gets from a browser on a tablet mirrors their experience in the browser on their desktop. With this latest release, the experience is even more fluid and enjoyable due to a complete revision of the HTML editor used to create and/or reply to tickets, create knowledge base articles and more. Now it’s even easier, and more efficient, for agents to work from anywhere, at any time, using the laptops or tablet devices. And of course, the mobile interface is still available for devices with smaller screens, like smart phones.

Greater Support for
International Customers

SmarterTrack is a truly international product. With customers in well over 120 different countries, support for languages other than English is a priority. In addition, as SmarterTrack’s adoption across the globe continues to rise, support for non-Western character sets is also essential. With SmarterTrack 9.x we’ve not only included support for right-to-left languages in the management interface and on the portal, but we’ve also gone through the entire product and greatly simplified our language strings to make things much easier for automated translations and for customers who create their own translations files.

17 Different Spell-check Dictionaries Included

In addition to the improved spell checking, SmarterTrack also includes dictionaries for 17 different languages. The languages supported include:
configure_dictionary

  • English (US+UK Combined) – DEFAULT
  • English (US), (Australia), (Canada), (UK)
  • French
  • German/German (Switzerland)
  • Greek
  • Hungarian
  • Italian
  • Norwegian
  • Polish
  • Portuguese/Portuguese (Brazil)
  • Russian
  • Spanish

These dictionaries are fully editable as well, so agents who speak multiple languages and use the dictionary of their choice and add words as needed.

Is that it?

Of course not! SmarterTrack 9.x has many more features and improvements. You’ll find them in the release notes we’ll post in the SmarterTrack 9.x BETA forum, but here are a few more that might be of interest:

  • Phone numbers now carry over from the login and user creation external provider.
  • Incoming or outgoing tickets created by agents can now be pinned to an agent when they are created.
  • Status messages and tip text now drops down from the top of the page and no longer disrupts page flow.
  • Language strings have been simplified so that they are much easier to translate.
  • SmarterTrack Communicator users can now designate calls, either incoming or outgoing, as “Personal” in order to prevent automated call logs.
  • Canned replies are now inserted into a ticket or chat wherever the cursor is located.
  • Duration now appears in the ticket grid so that agents and managers can see the total time a ticket has been worked on.
  • All default system emails were reviewed and rewritten to make them easier to understand.

Getting started with the BETA

To get your hands on the BETA simply visit the SmarterTools BETA forum, where you’ll see how to:

  • Sign up for the BETA
  • Get a special BETA license key
  • Download the latest BETA release (we update it regularly)
  • Communicate with other BETA testers and the SmarterTools development team
  • Stay up-to-date on the latest release note and BETA news

Sign up for the BETA

Filed under SmarterTools, SmarterTrack, SmarterTrack.com Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Apple throws down the social gauntlet

June 13, 2012 by

There’s already a ton of press about Apple’s WWDC, and a lot of discussion about the next generation MacBook Pro, iOS 6, Mountain Lion and more. Some things of note: Engadget has a good review of the new MacBook Pro, John Gruber at DaringFireball breaks it all down into 3 main takeaways, and of course, there’s all the coverage from the Verge. I won’t rehash any of what’s been discussed, but there are a couple of things that I found particularly intriguing that don’t seem to be getting much coverage.

Apple made a big deal about being able to share maps, photos and web pages through social networks and the integration of Twitter (the deeper integration, that is) and Facebook that’s coming in iOS 6. This means that more people will be able to share things with their existing social accounts. Not terribly earth shattering, but it’s something that all of the iOS users I know have been clamoring for. In the background, however, is something that’s even more intriguing.

The first is Apple’s sharing capabilities beyond just Facebook and Twitter. Apple is placing a ton of  importance on Apple IDs and the complement of Mountain Lion and iOS 6 seamlessly integrating the desktop and mobile experiences. Take a picture on your iPhone and it appears on your desktop. Create a document on your desktop and you can not only view it on your mobile device, but edit it as well. Microsoft is moving in this direction with Windows 8, but from what I’ve seen and heard, their efforts aren’t nearly as seamless. Apple is truly blurring the lines between the desktop and mobile in a way the others can only hope to do.

Beyond that, however, and even more interesting, are the new sharing features for photo streams. You will soon be able to share pictures with people in your address book, and those people will not only get a shared album in their own photo stream but they will be able to comment on these photos as well. That is HUGE! That means that Apple users have the ability to share with true friends – NOT Facebook friends, or business associates, people you knew in the 7th Grade or other acquaintances and followers that you’ve accumulated since you signed up for Twitter and Facebook. These are actual friends of yours. These are people you regularly call, message and interact with. This, more than anything else, is the beginning of the Apple social network.

Look at it this way: one of the major uses of Facebook is photo sharing. However, photo sharing was never easy in Facebook. Have you ever tried to share a photo with just a few Facebook friends? It’s difficult at best. Photo sharing is so popular that Facebook bought Instagram and then released their own camera app (and what platform got the Facebook camera first?). However, the iPhone is one of the most popular cameras out there and with the new sharing and commenting features in photo stream, Apple takes the primary Facebook hook and brings it back into iOS and the desktop. Users can now share pictures with JUST true friends and the people they are closest to. They are filling in the gap between sharing with “friends” and sharing with friends.

Finally is Passbook. This is Apple moving into Square and Google Wallet territory. It can’t be anything but…especially since it already mirrors Square’s Card Case. The implications of this are huge, and Dan Rowinski over at ReadWriteWeb does a much better job of breaking it down that I could. Suffice it to say that Apple is moving towards processing transactions, just as a Visa or Amex do, but couple that power with the ability to provide services that neither Visa or Amex could ever hope to provide.

There are some that are saying that Monday’s keynote at the WWDC was an attempt to throw down the gauntlet with Google. Well, that could be, but it may have been an even subtler jab at Facebook. Apple looks to be moving towards creating their own social network. I guess only time will tell.

Filed under SmarterTools, Technology Reviews Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Road Testing the iPad – Final Thoughts

April 3, 2012 by

Derek Curtis and I on a conference call with the office.

With only 48 hours left on my trip, I feel I have experienced enough to write the last blog post and finish up my thoughts on the iPad and how it performs on the road. So, as I sit here in a cafe in Rome I offer you a summary of my almost 3-week experience with the new iPad while traveling through Germany, France, the Netherlands and Italy.

The miles have been plentiful and transportation methods varied: plane, train, automobile and boat. The locations have been as different as can be with heavily populated cities, very rural cities and even cities set on water, such as Venice’s different islands. The one constant, however, has been the iPad and its impeccable performance. Overall I am really, really impressed with how it’s performed for me, regardless of the circumstances of its use.

Review of the new iPad for consumers

As a consumer, I’m concerned about some of the hardware aspects and how they affect standard usage. I’m also an avid user of various media (movies, video chat, photos, etc.) and the iPad excels in this area. Add in the simplicity and power of iOS and you have a pretty powerful combination. That said, there are a few items I want to note:

  • With over 50 different wi-fi connections that I’ve used, including the one on the train from Amsterdam to Paris, the iPad has performed flawlessly. This is contrary to a few of the Android devices I’ve used, including the Android phone I carry with me every day.
  • The AT&T cellular service has stayed well connected all throughout Europe.
  • Battery life was impressive, giving me a good 6 to 8 hours of continued use. However, I did notice the 100% battery issues some people are reporting. This will hopefully be resolved in a future update.
  • The new iPad does get hotter than the 1st and 2nd generation iPads. It’s not awful but it’s probably as hot as it should get without being uncomfortable.
  • The higher-resolution screen makes many tasks, like remoting into my iMac, much easier and more efficient. It also makes reading easier on my aging eyes.
  • Having access to a data plan and using the GPS functionality allowed me to always have maps and directions on a big screen. However, turn-by-turn navigation is much better on my Android phone. Even so, having an interactive map on the big, beautiful iPad screen  was awesome.
  • I used FaceTime and Skype to talk to the kids back home. So while I was away from home, using these on the iPad made is feel like I was still there with them.
  • Photostream allowed the family to see all of the pictures we took. Images went to our iMacs at home, to the iPhones of our children and even to the iPad my grandparents (try to) use–all in real time. I originally thought that Photostream was going to be a less than useful feature when it was announced. Boy, was I wrong! Allowing us to keep our family up-to-date on what we were doing and giving them the ability to see what we were seeing, practically in real time, was a great way to share the whole experience.
  • During downtime, it was nice to watch a movie or TV show on Netflix or Hulu or listen to music on the device or using iCloud/iMatch.

Review of the new iPad for business and the enterprise

Now, from a purely business perspective, here are some additional impressions:

  • VPN worked perfectly with our Microsoft RAS servers, unlike the constant issues we have when connecting with Android. I’ve been using VPN not only for business, but also so that I could watch Netflix and listen to Pandora–services that can’t normally be accessed from international IPs. It’s a great work around and the iPad worked flawlessly!
  • The native NT authentication in Safari is another lifesaver. Android’s lack of compatibility with NT authentication is one of the main reasons it isn’t being adopted in the enterprise.
  • The cellular data efficiency of iOS is outstanding. Using data on an international plan is VERY expensive, but iOS did a great job managing data activities and using wi-fi as the default alternative whenever it was available. As a result, I was able to keep the iPad on and get emails and notifications immediately while traveling overseas. I see this as a major benefit over using a MacBook Air on a trip like this.
  • I can’t say enough about the applications that are available, not to mention their quality. Dropbox, WebEx, Evernote, LogMeIn, RDP Lite, Kindle, Facebook, Tweetbot, IM+, Around Me, Quick Office, Hulu, Netflix and Atomic Web were among the most common third-party applications I used the last few weeks. The quality and usability of these apps played a major role in an overall great experience.
  • The ability to work on servers when necessary, write or review any document at the office, do simple coding in PHP or jQuery mobile, instant message with employees or even have conference calls and view presentations with and without video were all possible with the iPad, much to my surprise.
  • And usability isn’t the only area that is impacted but efficiency is as well. For example, something I appreciate in the Atomic web browser is the ability to remove images from webpages and also use the Google web mobilizer to strip webpages down to just the necessities (namely just to display content). This probably saved me hundreds of dollars on the trip, as condensing pages down to just text decreased my data usage.

So after all of this, how is the new iPad for business use?

I’m absolutely amazed at how capable the iPad is and I have to say that the results gave me a greater insight into the future of computing and where things are headed. Just like many others, I wondered what role a tablet can play in both our business and personal lives. I used a tablet for testing our products or reading the occasional website or even reading a book at night, but this test helped me see that the much-discussed “post PC era” is really here and the tablet will replace the computer for a large percentage of consumers. This is especially true for consumers who are on-the-go.

More importantly, this was primarily a test of a business use case, and I can easily state that the iPad (and eventually tablets in general) are more than capable for business use. I’m a bit of a unique case as I tend to want to do more with a tablet than most business owners. I can’t see the CEO of a management consulting firm, for example, needing to VPN into a server to modify DNS or other items; but even with my advanced testing, the iPad performed flawlessly. Tablets are here to stay and the post-PC era is creeping ever closer.

Filed under SmarterTools, Technology Reviews Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Road Testing the iPad – Part 2

March 30, 2012 by 3 Comments

What a great trip so far! WHD.global was a fantastic conference and we got to meet with a number of customers and partners. For the few days the conference was running, the city of Rust, Germany, became a small town full of true computer and hosting geeks. Definitely our type of people! Interestingly enough, a local Rust resident remarked that they would be glad when the conference was over so that they could get their WiFi back… That should be a good indication of how we took over the town!

As I’m still traveling through Europe, I’ve had plenty of opportunity to further evaluate the iPad as a replacement for a standard laptop computer and road testing its effectiveness in that capacity.

Observations on the iPad for Business

  • Right off the bat, I needed to use LogMeIn… into a 27-inch iMac with the incredible resolution of 2560×1440.
  • I can’t discuss the new iPad without mentioning the resolution and display. On a normal iPad, you need to zoom in and out constantly to work on documents, read websites, etc., but this is no longer necessary with the new high-resolution iPad display. Word documents, spreadsheets, image files and websites are all completely legible and unbelievably crisp and clear. I can honestly say there is a clear business benefit to the new iPad because of the improved resolution and display.
  • I have an Android phone and have constant issues with our standard Microsoft RAS VPN server. However, with the iPad and with the iPhones I’ve had, there is never an issue. I’m not sure how this continues to be a problem for Gingerbread devices, but it’s a shame.
  • Speaking of issues with Android and Microsoft compatibility, we use NT authentication to protect our development sites, internal reporting servers, etc. Working with this authentication schema is also a challenge for Gingerbread devices, although it seems that BETA versions of Firefox work around this on Android. By comparison, the standard Safari browser on iOS works flawlessly.
  • I did hit one snag working on the iPad. It’s not a hardware issue, but more of a software one. Many of our corporate documents are in Dropbox. Some of our Word and Excel documents are password protected as they contain sensitive information. Unfortunately, the Dropbox viewer on iOS doesn’t support this level of security and neither does Quick Office for the iPad. Therefore, I had to contact the office to have some documents and information sent to me instead. There is another app that may work (Documents to Go), but I have not tested it to see if it has a similar limitation.
  • Another thing I noticed, although it’s not a limitation of the iPad so much as it is a call to action for website owners and their designers: To prepare for customer and partner meetings, I review their websites and other materials in order to better understand their businesses. Unfortunately, I found that nearly 50% of the sites were not able to handle the browser on the iPad very well. Areas where pull downs were being used on their sites would not work, making it nearly impossible to read those sections if there wasn’t an alternative navigation scheme in place.
  • Our Exchange ActiveSync and iOS integration is awesome, but I get some pretty largeHTML emails from time to time that I have to review and provide feedback on, etc. Unfortunately, when you reply to emails like that, the iPad carries the HTML over to the reply and slows down the compose window. In some cases, this butchers the entire message. I wish there was a way to reply and strip the HTML to prevent this from happening.
  • As good as our Exchange ActiveSync implementation is, there isn’t a method to create folders in mail on the iPad. When I work with a new partner, I normally create a folder and move communication into the new folder. I can’t do that using the iOS mail client. However, our webmail interface (which works on the iPad) and our new mobile interface coming in SmarterMail 10 (which we are currently ALPHA testing on our production servers) DOES allow you to create folders and move messages into them.

That’s just a little bit of what I’ve learned so far. There have been a number of benefits from a consumption standpoint that I might discuss in my next post, including things like integration with my Plex media servers at home and using Photostream throughout the trip.

All-in-all, the iPad has really worked out well no matter which country we’re in or the connections we use. However, the overall impression, while positive, leaves me feeling a bit lost without the power and flexibility of my computers. We’ll see if that dissipates over time.

Filed under SmarterTools, Technology Reviews Tagged with , , , ,

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