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I hate to say it, but Exchange Active Sync suddenly just lost a bit of its shine. Google is now offering IMAP for free and it's seriously tempting. The one thing I sincerely wish EAS (or at least my EAS, 1and1) would do is server-side filtering - I want the massing influx of press releases and various group emails I get every day to get out of my inbox and into their little folders.
With Gmail, "folders" are actually "labels," meaning it's technically one giant archive of email split into just two folders: "inbox" and "everything." So you can set up a filter to Label something and then Archive it and you essentially have moved it into that "imap folder," but it's also easily searchable. It's a nice setup.
Will anybody be dropping EAS for gmail now that it has IMAP? Can we really live without push? Can somebody explain to me why Gmail is still in beta? Why is a duck?
Google has upped the ante when it comes to relying on Gmail as a full featured e-mail service with its introduction today of free IMAP access to your Gmail account. In short, this means you'll be able configure Gmail to easily keep your account in sync with your home and work PC, mobile phone, and any other device used to access Gmail with.
Read: Today @ PC World Google Offers Free IMAP Access to Gmail
Thanks to Mike over at Phone different, who was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed this morning at CTIA and caught the news before the rest of us! After the break, a quick setup video he forwarded on, and here's their help site.
You can create server side filtering rules with Outlook if you are using EAS.