SMARTPHONE/PDA BUYING AND CONFIGURATION GUIDEThis guide is designed to assist you with purchasing a new Smartphone or PDA device that will best work with your Wharton email account. Whether you are looking to purchase a device for the first time or looking to switch to a new device, this will help you find something that is compatible with Wharton's current email environment. Also included in this guide are email configuration instructions for most of the email clients that are installed on Windows Mobile and Palm based devices. After reading this guide, you should be able to purchase a mobile device, configure it to work with your Wharton email account and satisfy your other mobile computing needs.
Preliminary Steps for Purchasing a Smartphone or PDA
Smartphone Devices that will best work with your Wharton email accountWharton Computing does not recommend one specific type of Smartphone or PDA device. However, the guidelines listed below should help you determine which type of device will be compatible with the Wharton email environment. Specifically, the operating system and email clients installed on the device are important in determining how well it will synchronize with Wharton's environment. In the Spring 2008 Wharton plans to offer an alternative to its traditional Microsoft Exchange email account. Called Wharton Live, this service includes email, calendar, contacts and more. The account will be accessible through any standard web browser on most phones. Currently, the ability to push email from your Live account to your mobile device wirelessly is not available. It's likely this feature will be available for Windows Mobile devices in the future. Note: When purchasing a Smartphone, please be aware that you need to purchase a data plan in order to retrieve your Wharton email account wirelessly if your Smartphone does not have a wireless card. Please speak with your phone provider about the data plans they provide.
Most Blackberry service providers have "push mail technology" available which allows users to push their Wharton email to their Blackberry device wirelessly. Before purchasing your Blackberry device, you should contact your service provider to see if this service is available. Email is the only service that can be synced wirelessly. To sync your Wharton Contacts, Calendar and Tasks with your Blackberry, you will have to directly attach it to your computer and sync it with Outlook. If your service provider doesn't provide the push mail technology then you will need to have your computer running with both Outlook and the Blackberry software open, otherwise email will not forward to your Blackberry. This is not the ideal choice for students who are purchasing laptops and plan on bringing them to campus. It only works well when you have a computer configured with Outlook and the Blackberry software, that can be on and running all day long.
Note: Please keep in mind when purchasing a Blackberry that Wharton Computing does not support the 'push' email functionality from your Wharton account to your device. You will need to speak with your phone provider before purchasing the device to see if they will provide this functionality to you. Also, for email support issues you will have to contact your phone support provider for additional assistance. Currently, IMAP is the only mode available on the iPhone that will allow you connect to your Wharton account. This means you will have access to your Exchange mail but will not have access to your contact and calendar information stored on the server. There is no over-the-air push technology for iPhone's connecting to an Exchange server. You will also have to manually sync your account with the server to receive new mail on your phone. In June 2008, Apple is scheduled to release the iPhone 2.0 software update which will allow you to connect to an Exchange account and push email, contacts, and calendar items wirelessly to your iPhone. When this happens, you should be able to sync your phone with your Wharton account and receive all of your information wirelessly. This functionality has not been tested in our environment so we can't say how it will work and if there will be any compatibility issues that would cause synchronization problems.
Also, the client software needed to connect to Penn's AirPennNet wireless network is currently not compatible with iPhone's. You will not be able to connect to the wireless network on Penn's campus to access the internet or your email from your phone. Email Configuration Instructions-Updated: 4/23/08 MDM
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