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We were very surprised to see Gmail announce last week that they'll soon end support for Exchange ActiveSync (EAS), unless of course you're willing to pay Google for your email. It means that many people currently using Gmail for free are facing a situation where they might have to degrade their mobile email experience by downgrading to an older protocol that doesn't sync your calendar or contacts, doesn't give you direct push of new email messages and doesn't have all the benefits of Exchange ActiveSync.
So if you want a better email, especially on your phone or tablet, it's time to join the millions who have already made the choice to upgrade to Outlook.com.
To learn more about how to get started with Outlook.com, check out the technical spec for Exchange ActiveSync in Exchange 2013 just follow these simple steps:
To learn more about setting up Outlook.com on your mobile device, see our simple instructions here.
For those still on the fence, a quick introduction to why EAS is so important for a seamless experience across devices could be helpful. There are many protocols for sending and receiving email. POP and IMAP were designed decades ago, were considered state-of-the-art at the time, and are still used by millions of people. Both were created before mobile phones really even existed. To have a great email experience in 2012, a protocol needs to do more than just send and receive messages on a PC. It needs to work really well on a variety of mobile devices, to sync not only email but also your calendar and contacts, to do this automatically, and in a way that preserves battery life.
Exchange ActiveSync was first introduced in 2002 as a way to help you have a great mobile email experience. Since then, it has continued to improve, with a number of optimizations specifically for mobile devices, including tablets:
You can read more about these innovations and a whole host of other nitty-gritty details in the history of Exchange ActiveSync. It's because of these advanced consumer benefits that many devices choose to natively support Exchange ActiveSync-whether that's a Windows Phone, iPhone, iPad, or even a number of Android devices. You can see more detail in this chart of some of the other devices that support EAS.
We hope you have a wonderful winter holiday. As you enter the New Year, we encourage you to seize the opportunity to upgrade your mail to a service that puts the consumer first and gives you a great mobile email experience.
--Dharmesh Mehta, Senior Director, Product Management
Comments: (84) Collapse
You gotta be the world's biggest internet troll. That has to be the most inappropriate statement to make during a time like this.
Office 365 would suit your needs just fine. It offers syncing to Windows 8, iOS and Mac OS X using Exchange ActiveSync (meaning it offers Direct Push syncing of your email, contacts, calendar and tasks.) It also offers syncing to BlackBerry devices using BIS (email only) or BES (email, contacts, calendar, tasks).
Office 365 also offers an import tool that will import all the emails from your Google Apps account automatically. You will have to import your contacts and calendar entries manually though.
I made the transition from Google Apps to Office 365 a year ago. It is relatively straightforward, and Office 365 does everything I need.
Microsoft has added two-factor authentication to the Microsoft Account service. It is used to authenticate request to make changes to your account, for example if you want to change or remove an email address or phone number on your account.
Look, I'm a heavy user of Google's services. They probably know more about my online comings and goings than I'd like.
Switching mail to outlook.com would be tempting, but for one snag: My desktop mail program doesn't support your proprietary protocols.
I really like the way outlook.com looks, and it does seem to do everything else I need. But without IMAP, it's just a non-starter.
So I have to choose now between using Gmail/Google calendar or using Windows Phone?
As long as the web-interface of Outlook.com is so unresponsive and you don't offer IMAP that's just not an option and also no what you call "upgrade".
You may not believe it, but I don't switch email addresses or other web services every other year, just because some smarty pants at Google or MS came up with a new idea how to fight each other on the back of you costumers.
Thanks for the reply, I know they have that, but useful two-factor authentication should add an extra layer in preventing malicious users from being able to sign in to the account, not just stop them changing the account details once they've already signed into it.
If I pay for the upgraded Outlook.com, can I get exchange sync with OSX? I'd do that. I'd migrate from Gmail tomorrow. Having no ads on the web client would be gravy! You should create a consumer bundle. Ad free Outlook.com mail with exchange sync and 100GB of SkyDrive for $60. Advertise it like crazy. I'd bite. I'm paying $99 to Dropbox now for 100GB and I don't get any email with it.
Chris,
You don't need to pay for anything to get Exchange sync with Outlook.com. Simply add your outlook.com account as if it were MS exchange, ignore the domain name, and in the place of server name simply put "m.hotmail.com". This will also work if you use Microsoft's free Live Domains service to host your own private email domain on Microsoft's servers. You'll have ads in the right hand column of the outlook.com interface, but they're minor, don't mine your data like Google does, and if you live primarily in client software on your phone and PC, you'll never see them anyway.
As for your cloud storage, you can get 100GB of SkyDrive storage (technically 107GB, since the first 7GB is free, or 125GB, if you got in before the switch) for only $50 per year. For that price your data will sync to all PC's you have the client software installed on, be web accessible AND remotely accessible, shareable and editable on your Windows Phone 8 device.
Looks like you'll save hassle AND money by telling Google and Dropbox to take a hike :)
Please define "unresponsive" ? :). I'm a heavy, daily user of Outlook.com across multiple accounts and devices, and it's always fast, fluid, and easy for me. I'm curious as to the issues you have :)
What desktop mail program do you use that doesn't support Exchange activesync? Just curious.
You can use Microsoft's free Live Domains email hosting service to get those features, and it's easy to setup your private domain to point to Microsoft's servers. I put as many clients as I can onto Microsoft's servers, and so far it's all worked out superbly.
http://domains.live.com
You have an iPhone and yet complain about "walled garden"? LOL. You're living in the most rigidly controlled "walled garden" there is :). More importantly, this article addresses the issue of GOOGLE refusing to support EAS, not Microsoft.
All right. I would like to move completely my mail account from Gmail to Outlook. Unfortunately my Microsoft account is attached to my gmail. So is there any way to change my Microsoft account, preserving all my settings, from gmail to outlook?
hotmail - the free email service called outlook / windowslive / live / hotmail ... whatever - DOES NOT DO EAS as efficiently as iOS or Google. In this link: <answers.microsoft.com/.../a38dfa82-69fd-4319-bc2d-6b89b682b1f4> i am yet to hear from microsoft about why HTML mails are stripped to plain text when using EAS on hotmail in symbian devices. i tried office365's EAS, the HTML pages are rendered correctly. ALL OTHER EAS providers - google, zoho, gazeta etc - do EAS far more efficiently, including HTML email rendering, than hotmail itself. shame on microsoft.
this is the link: <answers.microsoft.com/.../a38dfa82-69fd-4319-bc2d-6b89b682b1f4>
Comments: (loading) Collapse