Advice - PDA Vs Blackberry

Hi Guys,







I know you guys will probably get bombarded with PDA newbies asking the same old questions, so I'll apologise in advance for doing the same. I'll also apologies for the length of the query.







The company I work for has developed 2 separate needs that I think could be solved with mobile technology such as PDAs/Blackberrys. I am struggling to find the info I need to establish which is the most appropriate solution so would really appreciate any advice from experienced users.







The first requirement is reasonably straight forward. We require a device that will accept POP3 email (forwarded on from our company POP3 mail server), and also act as a mobile phone (possibly to be used abroad). Internet browsing would be a bonus but is not essential. For this, I thought a Blackberry would be suitable. the only potential hindrance I see with this is that users would have to have a 2nd email address. Our POP3 mail server is in a VPN which is not accessible via the internet. We could not connect to our POP3 mail server from the Blackberry. We could forward copies of email from the mail server to a internet based webmail account that we could access which would allow us to receive emails. But replying from a Blackberry would show up as a non-company email address and end up causing confusion. Can anybody suggest a way around this?







The second need would (I think) be suited to a PDA of some description. When UPS/Business Post etc deliver a parcel to you, you can quickly scribble your signature on their handheld device so they have a record of your signature without having piles of paperwork. This is what we would like. When we deliver a product to a customer, we would like to have an electronic copy of their signature which we can then email to various departments in the company. If it means storing the signature on a memory card of some description and transferring it when we are back in the office, that would be fine. It does not necessarily have to be sent immediately. GPS would also be useful on these for the delivery drivers, but not essential. I am unsure what device would be best as I believe most have handwriting recognition, but don't know if you need separate software to do anything with the signature. Can anybody offer an insight into what product(s) would fulfil this requirement?







I'm guessing there will be something out there that can meet all these requirements in one but have no idea what it would be. I know in Outlook 2007 on a PC you can enter a reply email address so a recipient would not be aware it as actually being sent via another POP3 email account. Is this included in the version of Outlook used on PDAs?







Obviously, we'd like to keep costs to a minimum and aren't looking for cutting edge technology that is difficult for your average (not a techie) company director to use.







Again, apologies for going on a bit, but your help and advice would be greatly appreciated.







Thanks in advance,



Neil.

[Martin Laverty]

I have a couple of models you could look at.
http://www.totalpda.co.uk/ProductVie...id=6250&mode=0
http://www.totalpda.co.uk/HP-iPAQ-6815.aspx
http://www.totalpda.co.uk/HTC-TyTN-PDA-Phone.aspx
http://www.totalpda.co.uk/HTC-P6300-...-PC-Phone.aspx

These would all give you a good spec PDA phone that would let you do the signature capture. We dont actually sell the signature capture software but there are a couple you could get for these pda's. The range of PDA's I've shown have different size screens so you might want to look at each one with a view to the signature capture.

The only problem I can see is accessing the POP3 server from behind the VPN. I'm not sure how or if you can do this. I dont see any settings in outlook on the PDA that would let you access this.

Originally Posted by neilo

Hi Guys,







I know you guys will probably get bombarded with PDA newbies asking the same old questions, so I'll apologise in advance for doing the same. I'll also apologies for the length of the query.







The company I work for has developed 2 separate needs that I think could be solved with mobile technology such as PDAs/Blackberrys. I am struggling to find the info I need to establish which is the most appropriate solution so would really appreciate any advice from experienced users.







The first requirement is reasonably straight forward. We require a device that will accept POP3 email (forwarded on from our company POP3 mail server), and also act as a mobile phone (possibly to be used abroad). Internet browsing would be a bonus but is not essential. For this, I thought a Blackberry would be suitable. the only potential hindrance I see with this is that users would have to have a 2nd email address. Our POP3 mail server is in a VPN which is not accessible via the internet. We could not connect to our POP3 mail server from the Blackberry. We could forward copies of email from the mail server to a internet based webmail account that we could access which would allow us to receive emails. But replying from a Blackberry would show up as a non-company email address and end up causing confusion. Can anybody suggest a way around this?







The second need would (I think) be suited to a PDA of some description. When UPS/Business Post etc deliver a parcel to you, you can quickly scribble your signature on their handheld device so they have a record of your signature without having piles of paperwork. This is what we would like. When we deliver a product to a customer, we would like to have an electronic copy of their signature which we can then email to various departments in the company. If it means storing the signature on a memory card of some description and transferring it when we are back in the office, that would be fine. It does not necessarily have to be sent immediately. GPS would also be useful on these for the delivery drivers, but not essential. I am unsure what device would be best as I believe most have handwriting recognition, but don't know if you need separate software to do anything with the signature. Can anybody offer an insight into what product(s) would fulfil this requirement?







I'm guessing there will be something out there that can meet all these requirements in one but have no idea what it would be. I know in Outlook 2007 on a PC you can enter a reply email address so a recipient would not be aware it as actually being sent via another POP3 email account. Is this included in the version of Outlook used on PDAs?







Obviously, we'd like to keep costs to a minimum and aren't looking for cutting edge technology that is difficult for your average (not a techie) company director to use.







Again, apologies for going on a bit, but your help and advice would be greatly appreciated.







Thanks in advance,



Neil.

Excellent. Thanks for the help Martin. Much appreciated.

I think we can get around the POP3 VPN problem just by forwarding email to a webmail account that we can setup on the PDA. The only downside is that it will get messy with the PDA having a different email address when replying. Thats where I could do with a little bit more help.

In Outlook 2007 on my laptop, you can specifiy a different reply address so when I send an email, it can show as coming from another email address (by going into Tools, Account Settings, Change, More Settings and entering it in the Reply Email Address). Does anybody know if you can do this in the version of Outlook used on PDAs? That would probably be the deciding factor in whther we use PDAs or stick to the cheaper alternative of Blackberry's.

Cheers,
Neil.

[getsurfers]

Setting up a VPN in WM5 is quite a simple task.

There are plenty of good guide on the net

Originally Posted by neilo

Does anybody know if you can do this in the version of Outlook used on PDAs? That would probably be the deciding factor in whther we use PDAs or stick to the cheaper alternative of Blackberry's.

Cheers,
Neil.

You can set the reply address to your "real" email on the POP account settings in WM5.

We have setup our WM5 PDAs this way - the exchange server forwards all emails to an external POP mail service eg user@company.com get forwarded to user@companywebmail.com
When you send & receive to the user@companywebmail.com POP account on the PDA and reply to an email, the message still looks as though it has come from user@company.com

Great. Sounds as though PDA's would be the way to go. Thanks so much for your help guys.

[getsurfers]

You'd prob need a smartphone (ie XDA/MDA etc) more than a PDA, so you can use mobile GPRS/3G network to get the email, and wi-fi if available.