Push-email now available

[geoffreycross]

Hi,

I'm rather excited to announce the very early stage alpha release of my push-email client which has been an ongoing fun project of mine ever since I dumped my Blackberry for an i-mate Jam (actually I went via a Treo with Chatter which was almost as good as the Blackberry).

What I have implemented is a IMAP transport which supports the IDLE extension. Therefore if you mail server provides IMAP access (many do) you can probably have push-email on your Pocket PC without running exchange and without any intermediaries. And obviously as this is IMAP, all new email and changes are synchronized both directions on your desktop and your PDA. This is only a 'transport' and so you will still use Outlook (or any other MAPI client) as your user-interface.

Now a few comments:

The code is in a pretty early stage, but I have personally been running it for a while now without any problems. I know of a few bugs, and will put up a bug-tracker sometime over the next couple of days; in the meantime, please post here for help and bug reports.

I have tested the IMAP implementation against a few different servers, but there might be some issues. Please post here if you have problems and I'll provide you with a debug version which will allow you to help me diagnose the problem.

A few of the main limitations of the current release: 1) only incoming email (sending is now my top priority for the next release); 2) only one mailbox (and it must be your INBOX) can be synchronized; 3) no attachments at the moment.

Battery life of your PDA will obviously be limited, as a socket connection is kept open. However, I have personally found there to be very little difference under normal usage.

Clearly you need to have a 'data plan' from your provider, and under normal usage the IMAP client will be transmitting data on a regular basis. So if you pay per MB, this is going to cost you. I have been careful to keep this to an absolute minimum, but it will obviously depend on how much email you receive. In 'idle' mode (i.e. with no incoming or outgoing email), the traffic will be less 0.5kB per hour.

There is no particular reason why this shouldn't run on other Pocket PCs. However as I have only tested it on my i-mate Jam, I'll have to leave that up to the patient and brave for the moment (if you do try and have problems, please post or email me, as I'm hoping to provide support for as many phones as possible including Smartphones).

I will eventually support WM5. Why bother as there is already push-email provided with WM5? Because this way you don't have to have an Exchange email server!


So enough from me. If you're still willing to give this ago, I'd very much appreciate your feedback. I've put the downloads and some brief installation instructions here:

http://www.vgsmail.com/ppc/

Hope this works for you!

Geoff.

[Pyrofer]

Hi, the 512bytes an hour sounds good, but some providers 'round up' the data, im not sure what rules they follow, and by how much or how often. But you may find that it ends up being 100k an hour because of this rounding.

Does anybody know how to find out the rounding rules for networks in the UK such as Orange and O2 ?

[geoffreycross]

FWIW, T-mobile UK don't round and simply compute the 'total' over a full month.

[bruins3]

I'm verry glad I live in The Netherlands. T-mobile NL has a flat rate plan for GPRS/WIFI/UMTS only €9,50 without limitations, even no fair use. As much data as you want. The only limitation is the max. bandwith for UMTS (64KB). Doesn't matter since the MDA has no UMTS.

Greetz,

Giovanni

[oltp]

Hi geoffreycross,

This could be what I'm waiting for. But i cannot get it to work properly. First installed it to storage following your steps and got an error that it couldn't get a socket. After soft-reset I got the error that it couldn't open MAPI interface. Reinstalled it to main, recreated the mailaccount in different orders nothing changed. Errorlog is greyed out, so please send some debug code.

I'm on flatfee TMO, so the data costs or no problem.

Looking forward to your answer,

M

[geoffreycross]

oltp:

I have PM-ed you with a debug version. I forget my email address on the original post. If you have bugs, you will get the fastest turnaround if you email them to ppcbugs@vgsmail.com

The transport can definitely not be installed onto a storage card and I would recommend trying. I'm not sure about the client executable, but I doubt it (and it's pretty small anyway!). I am surprised it worked at all. However the problem does not sound like it is related to the storage card. I'll give a full diagnosis when I see the debug trace.

Geoff.

[herman3101]

only just installed this program, seems to work with Leeds Uni imap accounts. excellent solution to a much overlooked inconvenience.

Who needs BlackBerry with this little gem.

Cheers

[k_kirk]

Geoff, this looks great! Thanks for your efforts! Question I have is how this solution differs from the existing functionality in the built-in mail client to connect and get mail every x minutes? My understanding is that this is still a pull solution driven by the pocketpc keeping an open socket and querrying the IMAP server on a regular intervals. Am I missing the obvious here? Regards & Thanks

[k_kirk]

Edited to remove duplicate post. Have no clue how I did that. Apologies.

[FOSA]

GREAT WORK!


Make it works with Gmail and Yahoo Mail and it'll become GREATER!


Keep up the good work

:D

[DocteurN]

I've got a problem with WebIS Mail 2
I can't choose vgsmail (choice is between POP3 and IMAP) there :

http://www.vgsmail.com/ppc/index_files/image032.gif

Is there a way to make it possible ?

[geoffreycross]

Geoff, this looks great! Thanks for your efforts! Question I have is how this solution differs from the existing functionality in the built-in mail client to connect and get mail every x minutes? My understanding is that this is still a pull solution driven by the pocketpc keeping an open socket and querrying the IMAP server on a regular intervals. Am I missing the obvious here? Regards & Thanks

There is an extension to IMAP called IMAP IDLE which I am using. In this mode, you keep the socket open but you don't need to actually do any polling as the server pushes messages down the socket as soon as they arrive. So when a message arrives you will generally receive it within seconds, and when no message arrives there is no data being sent in either direction (with the exception of a keep-alive message very 30 minutes or so). This is exactly how Blackberry and push-email with WM5 works (although they use their own proprietary protocols which require you to use their servers).

[geoffreycross]

DocteurN:

I have just tried out WebIS2, and it seems that they don't use the standard 'MAPI' interface for email (this is slightly surprising and disappointing as the API is designed to be available to 3rd parties). Therefore my transport won't work currently with WebIS. I'm going to have a look and see if I can reverse engineer their storage format and if I can I will be able to support WebIS. In the meantime, I'm afraid you will have to use the built-in Pocket Outlook.

Geoff.

[geoffreycross]

FOSA:

Unfortunately gmail and Yahoo both provide POP but no IMAP which means that you're back to polling on a regular schedule (and that is not 'push-email' really). There are a number of groups trying to pressure Google and Yahoo to implement IMAP support (apparently it is the most requested feature of gmail).

In the meantime, have you considered using a mail provider like www.fastmail.fm which would pull email from the various servers and provide IMAP access to them all?

Geoff.

[BaldBoy]

Isn't this how Seven (Smartner) works?

http://alwaysonmail.com/

[geoffreycross]

Isn't this how Seven (Smartner) works?

http://alwaysonmail.com/

Yes and no.

Seven does use IMAP, but the connection is made via an intermediary server owned by Seven and your PPC will then connect to the Seven server using a unspecified protocol. Therefore you need to give them your userid and password. The code I have written connects directly to your own mail server and cuts out the 'middle man'. To be honest, I have no idea why Seven implemented it this way (other than to allow them to charge a yearly subscription).

[herman3101]

Using the software, so far seems excellent but I've noticed two things so far:

- The setting to only pull messages within X days doesn't seem to work, it's downloading all the messages
- When you connect to the server after losing GPRS connection for a while, when it reconnects it displays new email message despite them not being new. Would you be able to limit the new email message to unread emails only?

Cheers for this excellent application, your effort is much appreciated

[geoffreycross]

herman3101:

1) Yes, there are a number of settings which are currently ignored. The size limit of the initial download is also ignored. I have these on the bug-fixes list. The date limit on the downloads is slightly more complicated as the synchronizing is now constantly happening and so it might appear a bit strange if your messages suddenly disappear as their age 'expires'. I will think about that one.

2) Yes, the 'new email' notifications are a bit screwy. I will fix that asap.

[testdebug]

hi. this push email idea is excellent. despite your warning about wm2005. i still install on it and it doesnt work. my inbox when create a new account. i can see your mail option but after finish creating. the account doesnt appear and gprs cannot connect anymore after that. hard reset again. i really hope u will release a beta version for me to test. thank you.

[testdebug]

hi. you said that wm2005 already support push email but need the exchange server. how to do that? i need to suscribe to who? is it free? thanks

[geoffreycross]

hi. you said that wm2005 already support push email but need the exchange server. how to do that? i need to suscribe to who? is it free? thanks

Yes, as far as I understand WM5 does provide push email, but you have to be receiving your email through an Exchange server. If you are, it's free. If not, you'll either have to buy a license (about $1000, I think) and host it on a machine somewhere (probably about $30-40 a month) or move your email to one of the 'public' Exchange servers (still costing in the range of $20 a month). So not cheap and definitely not free :(.

[MMaster23]

Bit OT and more FYI:

There IS push mail in Windows Mobile 2003 and 2003 SE but not in the way WM5 does it. You'll need Exchange 2003 SP2 for it (like the WM5 version) and your operator has to support a certain protocol.

More info on it:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/2003/sp2mobility.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/2003/autd.mspx


They call it Always Up to Date Notifications (AUTD).
Ps. I won't be using your program but I think it's great to see some freeware alternatives! Thanks

[k_kirk]

There is an extension to IMAP called IMAP IDLE which I am using. In this mode, you keep the socket open but you don't need to actually do any polling as the server pushes messages down the socket as soon as they arrive. So when a message arrives you will generally receive it within seconds, and when no message arrives there is no data being sent in either direction (with the exception of a keep-alive message very 30 minutes or so). This is exactly how Blackberry and push-email with WM5 works (although they use their own proprietary protocols which require you to use their servers).
Geoff, thanks for your kind explanation! I am sold!!! When do you think you'll be able to support WM5? Additionally is it possible to support mailboxes? Today I have 2 mailboxes I keep separate and poll regularly. It would be a great time saver to implement your solution for both. Best Regards

[cychiam]

I have created another account using the steps you described. Able to successfully pull the emails from IMAP fastmail.fm server. However, unable to send because there isn't an account item (vgsmail) under the account drop-down list box for me to choose in the "NEW" email window.

Any idea what went wrong?

Anyway, good effort and idea.

[geoffreycross]

cychiam:

The transport currently does not support sending, although I am testing a version which does. Expect it to be released within the next couple of days. I will post here.

[geoffreycross]

k_kirk:

I imagine it is a pretty easy step to support WM5, but I need to get myself a phone first. I'm waiting for my back-ordered M600 to turn up and as soon as it does I'll see what it will involve.

Support for multiple mailboxes is coming very soon. It's just a matter of designing the UI.

[geoffreycross]

All:

Please post your experiences. I'm looking to improve and continue to develop this application.

Judging by the number of downloads there must be plenty of people out there who are either using this (in which case it would be great to hear any complaints and problems) or not using it (in which case it would be useful to know why not).

[heretic]

Hi, Geoff!

I have installed your transport and created a fastmail account. All I can say - it works. There are a couple of issues, though. First of all, there's a known "new email" issue. Can live with that. Another thing is, as it seems, your software does not have a proper international code page support. I use your transport to push Gmail to my device via the fastmail mailbox. I am Russian, so I do write some Russian emails ;) And that's usually a KOI8-R codepage or a Windows CP-1251 codepage. Well, when I send a test message in Russian, the text in it becomes garbled when I finally receive it on my Magician, rendering it totally unreadable. For instance, like that: =?KOI8-R?B?9MXT1A==?= (subject) and 8NLP18XSy8E= (body). On both Gmail and fastmail ends everything is fine (I check via web interface). I also happen to have Smartner solution installed. It is provided by my employer for us to be able to get corporate email (IBM Lotus Notes) on the go. Well, Smartner Always-on mail doesn't have the codepage issue.

I hope you'll have a chance to look into it and fix the issue with copepages. I am gettin addicted to your software. ;)

[geoffreycross]

heretic:

Thanks for that. I am currently ignoring the mime headers which would explain the problem. But I will add a specific bug report for the codepage issue. Can you possibly send a 'russian' email (anything you like) to ppcbugs@vgsmail.com and then have an example of the problem?

[heretic]

heretic:

... Can you possibly send a 'russian' email (anything you like) to ppcbugs@vgsmail.com and then have an example of the problem?

Done.

[geoffreycross]

I just posted a new version on the website (http://www.vgsmail.com/ppc/) which includes (amongst other minor, and probably invisible fixes) a fix for the spurious and often unnecessary 'new email' notifications.

There is no need to update the 'transport'; just 'shutdown' the client control panel and re-run the client installer.


Geoff.

[heretic]

I just posted a new version on the website (http://www.vgsmail.com/ppc/) which includes (amongst other minor, and probably invisible fixes) a fix for the spurious and often unnecessary 'new email' notifications.

There is no need to update the 'transport'; just 'shutdown' the client control panel and re-run the client installer.


Geoff.

Hi, Geoff!

Looks like you overdid it with the new version... :) Followed your installation instructions, but after installing a new version I still get notified of new mail every time I connect, but now messages don't show up in the mailbox.

Hope this bug report was helpful. Or am I doing something wrong?

[herman3101]

if your doing something wrong then so am i. came on to describe the exact same problem but you've done it for me :D. i like the new notification style, seemed different to me in a good way. but the fairly significant problem is the lack of emails showing up in the inbox.

no doubt you're already working on this.

Said it before and I'll say it again, your effort in developing this utility is much appreciated. I just can't believe that this hasn't been implemented before

[geoffreycross]

Yes, I've done something wrong. Just not sure what. It seems like there is something weird with the MAPI interface. Expect a fix sometime tomorrow. :(

[geoffreycross]

There is now a new release which should fix the bug disappearing email bug with the previous version.

[ghastings]

Hi Geoffrey,

I have just tried to use your program on my WM2003SE pocket pc and I get the following error:

Loaded local mailbox
Client State = NON_AUTHENTICATED
Log in command timed out
Delaying next connect....


and it appears not to connect. I can use IMAP ok from MS Outlook and also from Pocket Outlook. The client is connecting to a Exchange 2003 IMAP server.

I am using

client dated 24/11/2005
transport dated 28/11/2005.


Any ideas?

Thanks

Gareth

[geoffreycross]

ghastings:

Can you start up the client, and (before it starts to connect) select 'options->start logging'. Then in the root directory on your phone you will have a log file called vgs_log.txt. Please email that to ppcbugs@vgsmail.com.

NOTE: THE LOG FILE MIGHT CONTAIN THE USERID AND PASSWORD TO YOUR EMAIL ACCOUNT. I will not use this information in any way and will destroy it as soon as I have diagnosed the problem. But if this worries you, please change the password temporarily on your email account before sending me the debugging information.

[sekatern]

Have a mobile operator which provides SMS-notification, when new mail received on my email box. It comes to Pocket PC (Wallaby) and I would like it to connect to the POP3 account to download mail from it.

Microsoft suggested the following solution: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnppcgen/html/callevents.asp

I don't know C++, neither have the SDK installed... Maybe somebody can suggest the solution? This is a kind of push-mail, done in alternative way...

[Koksie]

I use Pop3 mail only, is there any chance that you can add pop3 support to this app ( I have no idea of the differences between pop3 and IMAP, so please be kind if I ask a really stupid thing...)

[heretic]

heretic:

Thanks for that. I am currently ignoring the mime headers which would explain the problem. But I will add a specific bug report for the codepage issue. Can you possibly send a 'russian' email (anything you like) to ppcbugs@vgsmail.com and then have an example of the problem?

Are you planning to work on MIME headers any time soon? This is at the top of my wishlist for now...

Not being able to read messages is kinda inconvenient... :roll: :lol:

[ghastings]

Hello Geoff,

Any luck yet with MS IMAP support? Do you need access to a MS IMAP server? I could setup a mailbox for you if needed.

[geoffreycross]

Hello Geoff,

Any luck yet with MS IMAP support? Do you need access to a MS IMAP server? I could setup a mailbox for you if needed.

Hi,

I sent you an executable to try yesterday: did you not receive it?

Geoff.

[ghastings]

Geoff,

Thanks, it got blocked by the spam filter! I've have it and it works with no problems so far.

Excellent thanks.

[geoffreycross]

There is a new release on the website. This includes lots of fixes, but notably:

- support for the MS Exchange IMAP server (thanks ghastings for testing);
- code-page support in the email body (thanks heretic for the cyrillic test message).

[herman3101]

i used to be able to use this app until the release which hid the emails. from that version onwards it has not been able to connect to my leeds university imap server at all whether over gprs or activesync internet passthrough.

[geoffreycross]

herman3101: Can you send me a log?

[herman3101]

il try, my laptops running linux an hasnt got activesync installed so il do it later this eve, but on the little text window within the client it just says reading local mailbox and doesn't move on from there. the little icon jus flashes between yellow, red and disappears an bak to yellow again

[geoffreycross]

Hmmm. I suggest deleting the account profile in pocket outlook and starting again. Unfortunately the 'broken' release was very broken and might have messed up the mail database. :(

[herman3101]

already done that after the broken release. il try the very latest release but i did a full reinstall wiv this mornings latest releases

[geoffreycross]

Would a hard reset be possible? I ended up hard resetting my phone after that broken release.

[herman3101]

seriously? i guess I could but not this evening. il let you know when I do.

[geoffreycross]

There is a relatively big update available on the website. The significant noticeable changes are:

1) Much more stable. I have completely re-written some of the main code and change the way the transport talks to the 'back-end'.

2) Outgoing email might just work. There are still a few things I need to do to make it more robust to offline network cases, but otherwise it should be working.

[oltp]

Does any of you know a cheap (read free) mail-provider that supports imap? I'd love to use this software, unfortunately I only have pop accounts.

Thanks, M

[cychiam]

Does any of you know a cheap (read free) mail-provider that supports imap? I'd love to use this software, unfortunately I only have pop accounts.

Thanks, M

Try fastmail.fm

[geoffreycross]

Does any of you know a cheap (read free) mail-provider that supports imap? I'd love to use this software, unfortunately I only have pop accounts.

Thanks, M

Try fastmail.fm

I second that.

[ghastings]

Hi Geoff,

Quick question for you, how do I go about updating the transport? I can't seem to stop the file \windows\vgsmail_transport.dll from being used. I've stopped the VGS Mail control from loading at startup but everytime I try I get this error

http://se.netgs.co.uk/~gareth/vgs.jpg


Any idea how to stop this?

[geoffreycross]

ghastings:

Step 1 on http://www.vgsmail.com/ppc/ should do the job.

[ghastings]

ghastings:

Step 1 on http://www.vgsmail.com/ppc/ should do the job.

I've already tried that, it doesn't appear in the list of things running :(.

[GDawes]

Many ISP's support IMAP but dont broadcast the fact.

I use NILDRAM with IMAP.
They have instructions on their web site.

Here you can use the exisiting pop server with port 143 for IMAP support.

[geoffreycross]

ghastings:

Step 1 on http://www.vgsmail.com/ppc/ should do the job.

I've already tried that, it doesn't appear in the list of things running :(.

That is very strange. Unfortunately there was a bug in an early version of the transport which made it difficult to 'shutdown'; this bug is now fixed, but you'll need to upgrade... But if the inbox isn't running, there is now way that dll can be locked.

A couple of things to try:

1) Try installing "Spb Pocket Plus" (the trial is fine) and boot into 'safe-mode';

2) Try deleting or renaming /windows/vgsmail_transport.dll directly via ActiveSync.

[oltp]

Hi Geoff,

I'm back in the imap business (fastmail indeed). Downloaded you're latest transport & client and can say the transport cab installs fine. The client cab somehow refuses to install, the cab doesn't delete itself & no client program appeard. Will try it tonight with the exe version. I'm now at work & not allowed to install via AS.

Regards, M

[herman3101]

I've just hard reseted my compact and these two programs are the first I've installed. I installed the transport first and set up my email account as instructed, this went fine.
When I try to install the client I'm experiecing the same problem as above although with both methods of install. Activesync goes through its usual motions but the client doesn't appear in the program list or appear after a soft reset, tried it with the cab install method and got the same result. It doesn't even appear under remove programs. One thing I have noticed is that the CAB is only 362bytes big and having a look inside it looks a bit sparse IMHO. Problem with the upload?

Quick update: Just compared the client and transport with the sizes advertised on your site. I am pretty sure that the problem is the cab in the client zip, no idea whether the exe uses the cab or not but the cab is almost certainly corrupt.

[geoffreycross]

Sorry, my fault. Something went wrong with my zipping-and-uploading script.

I have uploaded a fixed installer. And while I was at it, I have uploaded a new version of both installers which fixes a few minor bugs; worth updating your transport as well as the old one tended to hang Outlook sometimes.

[oltp]

To everyone awaiting this version: it works!!

Geoff thanks again this makes the mobile solution complete, even without the expensive BB service.

:-):-) M

[oltp]

To everyone awaiting this version: it works!!

Geoff thanks again this makes the mobile solution complete, even without the expensive BB service.

:-):-) M

[Sparky-UK]

This software looks very promising, exactly what i need, and it should fit nicely in with outlook, so i dont have to mess around with any 3rd party stuff. But i have a little problem

I have installed the transport part and i have tried to create an account. The process of adding the account works find however, when I look back on the account after, i cant find it. Am i suppose to be adding the account with vgsmail as an addition to adding IMAP?

When i have created the account its not viewable anywhere, nor can the client program see it, however if i try to create the account again with the same name it says that it already exsists, Any ideas, cuz I really want to give this software a spin?

[testdebug]

hi. Can the author of this software release a beta for wm2005 please. I really need and intesrested in this software. i can test for you. thanks

[Sparky-UK]

I think this is what my error might be related to :?

I am on WM5, i misread the http://www.vgsmail.com/ppc/#_ChangeLog bit, i only read I have now moved to the Windows Mobile 5 SDK and i missed out the bit sayin I will very shortly include support for WM5.

But I too would really like a WM5 release please.

[sanderjohan]

Hi geoffreycross,

This could be what I'm waiting for. But i cannot get it to work properly. First installed it to storage following your steps and got an error that it couldn't get a socket. After soft-reset I got the error that it couldn't open MAPI interface. Reinstalled it to main, recreated the mailaccount in different orders nothing changed. Errorlog is greyed out, so please send some debug code.

I'm on flatfee TMO, so the data costs or no problem.

Looking forward to your answer,

M

I have the same problem. Does anyone have a sollution?

[oltp]

Hi sanderjohan,

Strangely enough I haven't been able to recreate that situation. I'm now on the most recent version & everything works fine. must say I did a hard-reset since the first tries, so not sure what solved the problem. Also I tried a de-install & hunted the registry for vgs to clear everything. This last step made it possible to get other errors, probably caused by the use of a pop account.

I would recommend de-install & clean up the registry manual. If that doesn't work I'm out of here.

Cheers, M

[geoffreycross]

sanderjohan:

What problem is the same exactly?

If the options menu is grayed out, you have a very very old release.

If you have a recent version and are getting the "Could not open MAPI interface" error message, my guess would be that you have corrupted your registry with some previous install: to fix this, simply re-install the transport (download it from the website).

If neither of those, please can you send me a log file.

[geoffreycross]

New version uploaded.

I am going to concentrate a little bit on the stability for the next few days as it is very annoying to turn on your phone and find that the client has died quietly in the background. This version appears to be stable to me.

In particular, the previous version crashed with some QUOTED-PRINTABLE formatted messages.

[oltp]

Geoff,

When I start my device open a mail containing a link, like this forum does, pie can't open the link & crashes. It even becomes unusable & soft-reset is necessary to resolve this. I didn't had this behavior before vgs mail.

Anyone else with simular probs?

for the rest it's ok & fast & sending mail too.

thanks, M

[sanderjohan]

Everything is working great at the moment. I have set up an account with fastmail.fm and al my regular mail is forwarded to this new account. Now I can get my mail directly on my MDA.

[sdnv]

Hi There,

I'am using the very last release and I can receive emails notifications (service from laposte.net in France).

Anyone have succeeded in sending mail ? I have setup with and without notification and I see on the status window :
-message queued for sending
-sending message
- connection lost
reconnect ... then when I tried again, again the same error !

This afternoon, I had an email back from the provider :
your sent mail to XXXXX failed, message 5.7.1, use autentification SMTP

Also what is in the menu, System, Prod... What is this for ? When I click, nothing's happens

Thanks for any help.

Stéphane

[lambretta]

Hi There. Have been trying to get this to work for some time now and have today downloaded and re-installed the new version of the application. It finally works, well kind off.

It seems to work after I soft reset but then seems to sit on idle there on in regardless of if I receive new emails or not (I am sending them from my work email to my IMAP email account) but it doesn't show new message received.

When I turned the BA back on after it auto turned on it seemed to reconnect and then received the new emails - however, now VGS seems to have hung as I can no longer open it up by tapping on the little envelope with yellow dot on it.

Any help is appreciated.

[Duan]

Argh...

I can't get it to work on Himalaya with WM 2005 1.6c....

Please help.

[geoffreycross]

PLEASE NOTE: this DOES NOT run on WM5 at the moment. I don't have a phone to test it on and for various technical reasons it will not run under the emulator.

[geoffreycross]

To all those reporting bugs: please email me a log file.

[geoffreycross]

lambretta:

Thanks for the log files. It looks like your IMAP server does not support the IDLE extension and so this form of push email won't work. It also looks like the server is broken in a number of other non-standard ways (it doesn't seem to respond to the CAPABILITY command, otherwise we would have been informed that IDLE was not supported).

However you did locate a bug for me in that I will ensure that the user is informed of this problem in future releases.

So, basically you either need to get your ISP to patch their server, or use a different email provider (www.fastmail.fm has been recommended a number of times).

Geoff.

[micaman]

Hi Geoffrey...just wanted to let you that vgsmail is hanging for me also. No response from the Icon or Program list. It seems to hang after an hour or two of no activity. It will only come back after a soft reset. Great program by the way. I desperately needed something like this.

[lambretta]

lambretta:

Thanks for the log files. It looks like your IMAP server does not support the IDLE extension and so this form of push email won't work. It also looks like the server is broken in a number of other non-standard ways (it doesn't seem to respond to the CAPABILITY command, otherwise we would have been informed that IDLE was not supported).

However you did locate a bug for me in that I will ensure that the user is informed of this problem in future releases.

So, basically you either need to get your ISP to patch their server, or use a different email provider (www.fastmail.fm has been recommended a number of times).

Geoff.

Thanks Geoff, glad I could be of help. I will try another IMAP server I have access to and see if that works then failing that my Fastmail account I also have.

Cheers for now.

[geoffreycross]

Ok, I think (hope) the hang was the result of simply setting a two high priority on the background thread. Try the 9/12 version.

Geoff.

[oltp]

Geoff,

This is better than rss, almost every mail I receive about this thread regards an updated version.

For now I got two questions:
- Can you incorporate version numbers?
- Is the slot being disabled now and then?

I use TrendMicro Mobile Security & notice a lot of card-scans running the vgs client. Never have that behavior without the vgs client. Going for today's release, maybe that helps.

Cheers, M

[geoffreycross]

This is better than rss, almost every mail I receive about this thread regards an updated version.

Yes, I think I might be abusing the forum a little, but I never got round to setting up anything better. Would people prefer that I just announce 'big' changes (maybe once a week or once a fortnight) and leave you to fo and find the smaller ones on the website?

- Can you incorporate version numbers?

Yes. It's on my to-do list, but I think it is becoming more important.

- Is the slot being disabled now and then?

Slot?

I use TrendMicro Mobile Security & notice a lot of card-scans running the vgs client. Never have that behavior without the vgs client. Going for today's release, maybe that helps.

I've never used TrendMicro so I'm not sure what a 'card scan' is.

[oltp]

When I insert a card, my virusscanner automatically scans it for viruses.

so somehow these card-insert events are generated through the client & it only happens in standby mode.

As the forum sends a notification on replies this is easier for me to keep up with the new versions. Otherwise you'd have to mail me & other interested peops.

Cheers, M

[evlado]

Hi Geoff, thanks very much for this super tool. I have a work exchange account with IMAP access and the notifications work great.

One issue I have noticed is that the program often sits and waits rather than initiating a GPRS connection. Once I initiate a connection using another program it works great. Am I doing something wrong?

I get my notifications within 5-10 seconds via this program, compared to 30 seconds using outlook web access.

My other issue is that sending emails does not work. If you can fix these 2 issues, this program will be perfect for me

Thanks again

Vlado

[testdebug]

hi. The author of this software is surely very exciting now as he is creating something that is first of its kind. I am sure the whole world is waiting for this software to be compatible with wm2005. Just want to let you know 50percent increase in the exe is ok to me, cannot send email is ok to me. I just want push email. please release the wm2005. is ok if it got bugs. just release it. thank you very much-genius!

[oltp]

Hi evlado,

Sending works fine for me, at least since the december 5th release. I recognize the not initiating gprs session prob. For the moment it doesn't annoy me much, but in the future ... it probably will.

Geoff I don't know about your employment situation as you're releasing so many new releases, I would add WM2005 first the now known bugs aren't too annoying.

Cheers, M

[jfran]

hi. The author of this software is surely very exciting now as he is creating something that is first of its kind. I am sure the whole world is waiting for this software to be compatible with wm2005. Just want to let you know 50percent increase in the exe is ok to me, cannot send email is ok to me. I just want push email. please release the wm2005. is ok if it got bugs. just release it. thank you very much-genius!

He would soon have RIM and Seven (and possibly individual network operators) after him, as it would represent a direct threat to their market share ;(

rgds

Jim

[Mudstuffin]

Brilliant app Geoff - keep up the good work :D

Would it be possible to add a view button to the notify message to take you straight to the default messaging app (perhaps customizable in the vsgmail control?)

Cheers

Si

[geoffreycross]

Minor update, only for those with working outgoing email; now the To: and From: fields in the outgoing email should be set correctly.

In response to other queries:

1) WM5: Yes, it is very high on my list of priorities, but there are two main obstacles:

a) I have no WM5 phone. This means that I can only do testing in the emulator which might or might not limit how much I can do. I had a phone on order but then cancelled it and am now waiting for the o2 xda atom.

b) WM5 introduced the concept of 'signed' and 'unsigned' executables. Unsigned executables are rather limited in what they are allowed to do with the phone, and a few bits of the vgsmail client code will not run in 'unprivileged' mode; so therefore I have to work out how to get the code signed. I haven't looked into that, but I'm concerned that it might be a rather complicated (and expensive) procedure. Thanks Microsoft.

2) My employment status: I run http://www.visualgeometrysolutions.com and so schedule my own time :). However, I do plan on making vgsmail commercial at some point, with the hopes of paying for the time I have spent. But don't worry, we're not talking enormous amounts of money...

3) Sending email: the current state of the outgoing email is slightly flakey and will be improved significantly very soon. The main restriction is that your SMTP server must support 'LOGIN PLAIN' authentication and the userid/password combinations must be the same for your IMAP and SMTP servers. So if you are unable to send email with vgsmail, this is probably the reason.

4) GPRS reconnect. I've had a number of requests to have vgsmail automatically force the phone to connect via GPRS if the connection isn't already present. I like this suggestion and I will do it ASAP. However in the meantime, I suggest installing "Stay Connected" from http://www.slipstreamsolutions.co.uk on trial; it works just great and I have another 7 days left on my trial by which time I hope to have implemented this myself.

5) "View button". I'll look into that; I'm not exactly sure what messages to send to tmail.exe to get it to display a particular message but it might be possible...

[oltp]

I guess this is how PocketZenPhone commercialized as well. So I volunteer as beta-tester :-) and wait what the future will bring us.

Cheers, M

[lambretta]

Sent it to you a day or so ago?

[geoffreycross]

lambretta:

Can you confirm that you are still experiencing hangs with the 10/12/2005 version.

[geoffreycross]

Yet another release.

After recommending "Stay Connected" yesterday it started crashing on me on a regular basis. So I have now got rid of it entirely and the vgsmail client will automatically create a GPRS connection if the phone isn't already connected to the network (via ActiveSync, bluetooth or wireless).

I have also fixed a bug which was draining the battery when the phone was in 'flight mode'. The client should now completely sleep in this mode and not cause any battery drain at all.

I'm particularly interested in hearing about the stability of the current batch of releases as this is something I promised I would look at. As far as I know, the current release is pretty stable; I have been running the same instance of the client for the last day or so without any trouble at all. I would also like to hear of anyone running vgsmail on anything other than a Magician so that I can start to provide support for other phones (although still no WM5).

[lambretta]

Hi Geoff.

New build seems to run great - doesn't hang and will alert me of a new message when using GPRS with the BA turned off! WOW!

An interesting thing I have found now is when you try and create a new VGS mail account. My intial trials were with a my fastmail account but for various reasons I wanted to change over to my everyday IMAp email account.

I first delted the old VGSmaill account in messaging, I then deleted the client and then the transport. I re-installed everything and created a new mail account with different incoming and outgoing server addresses but for some reason, regardless of what I have in these fields it still populates the inbox with the old fastmail account emails, its as if these fastmail server details are hard stored somewhere.

I guess a hard reset could fix it but would rather not - is there another fix?

Chers
M

[geoffreycross]

lambretta:

Installing the transport should clear all registry keys. So do the following:

1) shutdown the vgsmail control panel;
2) delete all vgsmail profiles in outlook;
3) uninstall the transport
4) install the transport using the most recent release from the website
5) create the account you want (only one) in outlook.

If that doesn't work, there is something strange with your device. You could try getting a registry editor and removing the entire tree under

HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/VGS

And if that doesn't work, I'm very confused and suggest a warm reset, buying a new phone or ...

[oltp]

Geoff,

This new auto-connect feature is a bit too persistent, it keeps crashing my AS connection. Must say that my home pc hasn't got an internet connection & at work I'm not allowed to connect through my pc to the internet.

Uncheckin 'online' does solve the problem, but other constantly online apps. are missing this feature so maybe you can take a look at it.

Cheers, M

[geoffreycross]

oltp:

Try today's new version. It should fix your problem.

[oltp]

YES does works great, no disconnect of AS anymore & connect immediately after unplugging usb.

Thanks again, M

[rustoss]

oltp:

Try today's new version. It should fix your problem.
hi! I`ve monitored this topic & now can say, after trying. my account is on russian free mail.ru supports imap. does anybody know work this stuff with mail.ru or not? after authenticated connection lost always. what it could be?

[geoffreycross]

rustoss:

Please send me a log file. Either PM or pccbugs@vgsmail.com.

[rustoss]

rustoss:

Please send me a log file. Either PM or pccbugs@vgsmail.com.
sent

[gthoele]

Hello,

Can SSL support be added? I am willing to send chocolate and a post card to the programmer for doing it...

(My installation does work nicely on an other non-SSL server, so i suspect there's nothing wrong on my side)
(How do you go about setting it up: I just clicked "options" instead of "Finish" on the screen where you enter the mail servers. Then you get the option of activating SSL)
(I imported the necessary certificate for SSL to work. It works for the "IMAP" account type)

I snooped into the network connection (using "Ethereal" on a desktop computer with activesync passthrough) and what happens is it does a nameserver query for the IP adress of my mailserver which succeeds, and tries to set up a connection to the mailserver on port 143 which fails, which is the port for non-ssl imap. So i decided it is missing some code to really do SSL, to port 993.
Even using an "Stunnel" on my desktop doesn't work (Stunnel is a special proxy software to allow non-SSL software to connect to SSL services):
Microsoft is so unbelievably dumb that, when you enter an IP Adress "192.168.131.102" as your mailserver (that's the adress of my desktop computer which the stunnel is running on), it asks the nameserver for what IP adress that IP adress translates for. (! Stupidity alarm!)
Every other software i've ever met knows how to deal with IP adresses directly, even a stupid Symbian mobile phone.

Well, can SSL be added?

Thanks
Gunnar

[rustoss]

geoffreycross
, the same bug. what else? may be can`t work with this service(mail.ru), by the way, when i open prog from lower tray, see something then tap ok to today screen, the keyboard button stay on screen....

[rustoss]

stop..... just rerun prosses & everythig good. I`ve got new mail.

good job.

[rustoss]

Geoffrey,
i wonder in this beta i can check only one account , how can i get sound notification? & there is no body of a message or it should be so, when i see vgs message, then i need check mailbox?

[micaman]

Hi Geoffrey,
I'm probably missing something obvious here but when I try to send an email the VGS account I created is not listed in the Account dropdown menu.

Anyone?

[oltp]

Sounds can be set as usual for messeages via settings -> sounds&notifications.

The message will be downloaded completely when you set this in the account options on creating the account.

Regards, M

[oltp]

Sounds can be set as usual for messeages via settings -> sounds&notifications.

The message will be downloaded completely when you set this in the account options on creating the account.

Regards, M

[rustoss]

& to remade account what i need to? uninstall client & make account?
and may be bug-when charging, stuff says "you use activesyns"

[oltp]

Nope just delete the account & create it again, no need to deinstall (you can combine it ofcourse Geoff will probably have a new release tomorrow anyway). It works I did it too.

cheers, M

[rustoss]

oltp
, thanx. I did it like you explain, but not working, i did uninstall it & install again & also not working. He gave me exe may be problem in it?!

[oltp]

Strange it works for me, having this setup for more than a week now. I'm running today's client, send an errorlog to Geoff maybe he can find something in it.

I did notice that first the headers arrive 2K and after that it's getting the rest of the body. This is a feature of the windows mail app when selecting get full message.

Regards, M

[rustoss]

geoffreycross , i remake account again & it work. There is the same problem with windows-1251 like it was with russian gay before.
In a subject istead russian letters i have
=?windows-1251?Q?=D2=E5=EC=EE=F7=EA=E0?=

[micaman]

Does anyone know why my vgsmail account is not listed when I try to send an email? I would love to see this work.

Thanks

[rustoss]

geoffreycross, one more may be bug, after soft reset vgs stay on the screen without minimize & also often don`t call connection. In this my case i rerun program sometimes several times. & a question is... What do you think about priority of start up,by MEMMAID i can change a position in start up or down. When i check defaults, vgs had first position, i tryed to put it in lowest after poutlook & nothing positive! Or also how about the time delay of starting up(in regedit where it could be?) i think it may bring some positive stuff??

[geoffreycross]

Hi, apologies for the delay in responding to all the requests; I've been off-the-air doing other things for the last 24 hours.

1) SSL: This is on my to-do list, but it will probably be a few weeks before it hits the top.

2) 2k initial download of messages: Currently the client will download the first 1000 bytes of a message, completely ignoring whatever setting you put in the profile settings. This will obviously be fixed at some point in the future. Outlook then reports this as 2k for some reason (I think it includes things like the subject line and recipients, and then rounds up). To download the rest of the message, click on 'Mark for Download' in outlook.

3) =?windows-1251?Q?=D2=E5=EC=EE=F7=EA=E0?=: My support for multi-charsets is a bit limited at the moment. I'll flag this to be fixed.

4) Sound: I am currently using the default 'New Email' notification. You can change this under Settings -> Sounds and Notifications.

5) Start-up maximised: I have noticed this and will fix it. It's not high priority though.

[geoffreycross]

Minor release on website.

[rustoss]

Minor release on website.
Is it latest release by date 12.12.05 ???

[rustoss]

there is no quantity of messsages on pop up....

[geoffreycross]

there is no quantity of messsages on pop up....

The notifications now imitate the default notifications given by pocket outlook normally:

- If you have 1 new email message you get a popup which says

<title>New e-mail message.</title>
<body>From: Someone</body>

- If you have 2+ new email messages you get a popup which says

<title>New e-mail messages.</title>
<body>You have 4 new e-mail messages.</body>

[geoffreycross]

Windows Mobile 5 users:

Please can a volunteer install the attached .dll into /windows on their phone and then run the .exe. This should get the vgsmail transport registered with Pocket Outlook, although I have no idea what will happen after that as I have no way of testing the transport (the emulator seems to be slightly broken).

WARNING: Do this at your own risk...

[edit: attachment removed as I have found a bug and am fixing it]
[edit:

Ok, I have now fixed the 'crashing' bug. HOWEVER the problem is not solved as there appears to be some kind of wierd difference between the MAPI implementation on pre-WM5 and WM5. Now I don't have an immediately fix, but if you really want to try out vgsmail using WM5 here is what you must do:

1) install the attached transport into /windows
2) run the attached .exe to register the transport
3) get yourself a registry editor and add the following keys:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\VGS\Profiles\YOURPROFIL ENAME\IncomingServer = imap.yourdomain.com
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\VGS\Profiles\YOURPROFIL ENAME\OutgoingServer = smtp.yourdomain.com

making the obvious substitutions for YOURPROFILENAME, imap.yourdomain.com and smtp.yourdomain.com.

Then you can try installing the latest release of the client from http://www.vgsmail.com/ppc/ .]

[Duan]

I will give it a shot...

[geoffreycross]

I will give it a shot...

Don't. It will crash. I have a fix but need another 30 minutes to test it.

[misterb101]

Hi, I tried setting up the tool on my qtek 9100 running windows mobile 5

when I tried setting up the account the tool stopped working. At the end I had to hard reset my device to get it to work again. Does anybody else experience problems like this? I would love to use the program but I don't think it works in windows mobile 5.

Does anyone run it in windows mobile 5?

Cheers,
Rob

[misterb101]

Sorry, I didn's see geoffrey was already working on this!

Good work Geoffrey!

[Duan]

I will give it a shot...

Don't. It will crash. I have a fix but need another 30 minutes to test it.

Ok I will hang tight... I will give it a shot when you have the fix...

[Dandie]

Any news on the SSA (modem) issue?

[geoffreycross]

Any news on the SSA (modem) issue?

Sorry... no idea what you're refering to.

[Dandie]

edit: sorry, wrong thread :oops:

[rustoss]

Minor release on website.

I catch 1 email at once & during about 2 hour nothnig catched although mailbox has 6 new letters already!?

[rustoss]

& mailbox has many folders like inbox, outbox etc. & also it has folder "doubtful" , so those six letters are in doubtful folder & just catched 7th letter dropped to inbox....

[geoffreycross]

rustoss:

Send me a log

[rustoss]

rustoss:

Send me a log

I can`t find it.....ooohh it was switched off, i switch it on, think it need a time to fill the log. May be tommorow morning?. now is 1.05am

[micaman]

ok. i did a hard reset as per geoffrey's suggestion and I am now able to send mail... Thank you for this prgram Geoffrey...I can finally toss out my p.o.s. blackberry for good!

[rocketrobot]

Hi

I am not having much luck with my O2 MINI-S on WM2005 (HTC Wizard). Can't seen to set up pocket outlook with the new vgsmail when I get to stage:

h) Finally you will be returned to main screen. Here you should click on the ‘connect’ button in order to synchronize these settings with the client.

It asks me if I trust the following dll.......

Then it just hangs. By the way I have to register the dll everytime I soft-reset. Do you want a log or something?

Can't wait to get this working, thanks for your efforts!

[testdebug]

hi. i hope to get this to work on wm2005 as well. i want to try it but since wm2005 user report that it crash. i am now waiting for another release. hope that the author will release it shortly as i am waiting it now with my pda in hand. i am using the pre-wm2005 with certtificate chech removed. dunno if this make it easier to run?

[testdebug]

still waiting...........

[tdaubign]

@geoffreycross : first of all, great job with your products, it s exactly what i m looking for !

However i ve got a problem with the amout of data send and received towards the network.I test it during all the night and i saw with spb GPRS monitor that i m using 35Ko/hour !!!! vgsmail log said that i spent only 5Kbts during all the night !

After observing the log file, i saw that the client can't stop connecting and disconnecting the imap server every hour (or a bit less).

For your information, i m using fastmail as imap server.

Can you explain me the difference pleaze ?

Thanx a lot !!!!
Tom

[cseilern]

@tdaubign
i have come across the same thing - spb reporting much higher consumption than vgsmail. it seems though that whenever i connect the activesync usb cable, around 50-150k of data would be consumed (how and where, I just dont know!0.

@geofferycross
GREAT app! very useful. Some issues did come up:

1/ I cannot send (using smtp server on hosted exchange imap) - mail just gets stuck in outbox and log just stops at "sending messages", followed by a dropped connection).
2/ i cannot get my head around settings for how much vgs actually downloads (just headers, 2k, etc...) and I dont understand how to make it always get the last two week's entire emails without attchement.
3/ Folders: I cannot create/manage/set defaults on folders. I dont know if this is a vgs thing or an ISP thing, but it is a real hassle because it means that spam is not ending up in Junk Mail, but in my Inbox.

[rustoss]

rustoss:

Send me a log
done...

[geoffreycross]

tdaubign:

There are a number of reasons for the difference between vgsmail and SPB.

1) vgsmail only counts the bytes at the IMAP protocol level and so the IP and TCP headers are not counted;

2) other network messages such as TCP synchronisation packets are not counted;

3) things like DNS are not counted by vgsmail;

4) any other programs you have running will obviously not be counted by the vgsmail counters.

Basically, the counters in vgsmail are just a basic indication of how much traffic was sent at the 'mail' protocol level.

In general, if you paying so much per kB that it really worries you I would not recommend using vgsmail or any other 'push' email service.

Now why it is disconnected and reconnecting is another question and I'd like to see a log.

[geoffreycross]

cseilern:

1) Read this forum. There are some limitations on sending at the moment.

2) Read this forum. Many of the settings are not respected by vgsmail at the moment.

3) I have no idea what you're after, but I'm pretty sure it is not something which could be set by vgsmail.

[geoffreycross]

ALL:

Please don't report bugs without sending a log file to ppcbugs@vgsmail.com as there is very little I can do. And please paste a copy of your bug report into the email too so that I can match up bugs with logs.

[cseilern]

@geoffreycross
I have read the forum and i am aware that there are _some_ limitations on both setting and smtp sending, i just dont know what those limitations are.

I guess my question is: "what are the sending limitations?" and "what settings do you presently ignore?"

Thanks again for the great app!

[geoffreycross]

I guess my question is: "what are the sending limitations?" and "what settings do you presently ignore?"


Sending is only working if your SMTP server requires authentication and if your login details are the same for your SMTP and IMAP servers and if your SMTP server supports the 'LOGIN PLAIN' extension.

All 'settings' are presently ignored.

[rocketrobot]

My problem as stated above didn't prouce a log file as I am unable to set up mail account yet. I think my post was a bit out of date as I didn't see your update, saying not to bother trying the 2005 version.

Cheers.

[testdebug]

ya. i also waiting to test the wm2005 version, waiting fromn yesterday :) hope to see a new release for wm2005 for us to test

[testdebug]

hi. Any update on the wm2005? i cannot wait and tested it on wm2005c and the inbox is unusable. hard seset again!!!. hope a new relese will fix it. thanks

[geoffreycross]

testdebug:

Please don't post repeatedly. I will post here when there is an update. This is also a Magician group and so WM5 is not relevant here; if you want to start a thread elsewhere feel free to do so and point me to it.

I published a transport on this forum a few days ago and one person reported problems; if that really doesn't work then my WM5 development will have to wait until I get an actual device (which will not be until Jan) as I am not seeing the problem in the emulator.

[misterb101]

I will give it a shot...

Don't. It will crash. I have a fix but need another 30 minutes to test it.

Hey Geoffrey,

Since I've got a new wm5 phone I don't mind testing it. I just thought the last news from you was that it does crash and you were working on a fix. Did I miss that fix? and did that fix solve the problem in your emulator at least?

Cheers (and again good work)

Rob Boerman

[cseilern]

@geoffreycross
apologies, for i have no wm5 problem, but i did discover a problem between vgs client and bluetooth (am i the only one?). it seems that if you swicth on bt when vgs is up and running, you get an "please switch off flight mode first" error. a soft reset, followed by a shutdown of the client, followed by swicthing on bt and all is well again. maybe the gprs keepalive mechanism is messing with the bt/gprs/gsm radio status (just a thought... i'm a complete development newbie...)?

also: pls let us know when you can specifiy independent imap and smtp server authentication credentials. my imap provider (1&1) seems to have a dodgy smtp track record.

[geoffreycross]

cseilern:

I am pretty sure that the problem is not with vgsmail directly. I am able to use BT fine on my phone and it seems very unlikely that anything vgsmail would do could actually cause a full reset.

[tdaubign]

I ve got the same pb that cseilern and i m pretty sure that it is a problem of ROM.

Which version of ROMs do you have geoffroy ?

[geoffreycross]

My ROM versions:

ROM: 1.12.00 WWE
Radio: 1.12.10
Ext: 1.12.128 WWE

I think I saw some kind of BT patch on the i-mate website a while ago, but I didn't bother with it.

[testdebug]

cseilern. u r using wm2005? can I know which device u r using? how u install? I put the wm2005 tranport at windows and register it then install the latest vgs client. After that I create a new account at inbox. when I press finish, it hang. after I soft reset I cannot open the inbox anymore . I even hard reset my device to try it but still the same. when I run the client, it said no profile found. do I have to connect gprs first before creating new account ? I didn't create the registry as asked by the author as I am confused how to create the last key. is this the reason of my unsuccessful installation? if yes. please upload your registry. I will edit it to my service provider. Thanks . waiting for your answer desperately. I use xda11 wm2005

[micaman]

testedebug…why don’t you start a new thread in the appropriate forum and ask your questions there? or you can PM your question to a specific person. Magicians don't use WM2005. geoffrey has stated repeatedly that his program won’t work on WM2005 at this time. Please stop diluting this thread.

[cseilern]

@tdaubign
@geoffreycross
my wm2003se version is 1.11.00 (rom and radio) and this is th rom that had the bt patch builtin (the standalone patch was for prior versions). i have no idea where thi error come from or what is driving it. but i do know that i have run a couple of days without vgs, and the issue (hardly a problem) disapeared.

also: the bt patch being referred to fixed a bt hardware recognition issue at the os level (wm2003se kept on bleating that there was no bt hardware!). in this case, though, it looks like bt thinks flight mode is on, even though it clearly is not.

@geoffreycross
to allay your fears, vgs did *not* cause a reset! i did, however, have to soft reset after swicthing off vgs, to get my bt back. hth.

[geoffreycross]

I have just posted an update which appears to be more stable. You will need to update both transport and client.

[tdaubign]

Cool thanx !
I just download and test it !
I will give u my opinion as soon as possible for this new version !

[rustoss]

geoffreycross
, the same with me, just run!

[oltp]

Hi Geoff,

Looks good with a new added option to dial gprs or not. Somehow it doesn't dial after a soft-reset, am I the only one with this & do you want an errorlog for this?
I still noticed some disconnects from the server, no serious problem to me as I use it for 'fun-mail' no 'business-mail'. For the rest it has been stable since 18.15 tonight ;-)

Thanks again for this precious app, M

[geoffreycross]

oltp:

Can you tell me a bit more about the disconnects? When I'm stationary with good network coverage I never see any reconnections (I have left it connected over night). However if you move around a lot and go in and out of network coverage you might see it reconnect.

If you like, send me a log.

[oltp]

just started the logger & will leave it running at least through the night. Usually I switch it of to spare the battery.

If there's something interesting in the log you'll receive it somewhere tomorrow.

Cheers, M

[tdaubign]

Two big bugs with the new version :
- [critical] each time i delete a new mail in my vgsmail box, client crashes
- [minor] at the Windows Mobile log on step, the vgsmail check boxes and scroll bar appears on the logon screen (just in front of my log on image)

Is it cuz i don't uninstall and then re install ? I override the previous version...

Thanx
Tom

[oltp]

@Tom

Like you I never de-install vgs, just re-install it. This client doesn't crash on me though when I delete a message. Don't know exactly what you mean by deleting a new message, so I deleted a received & a draft message, client kept running. Maybe I'm just a lucky bastard in this.

I do notice the checkboxes & scrollbar too after a soft-reset. I don't use PIN at the moment so can't say if they appear before a PIN verify is performed. They are a bit stubborn & sometimes the bottombar doesn't show correctly till I tick it, minor issue probably related to each other.

Cheers, M

[oltp]

Hi Geoffrey,

I've send you an error log this morning, cause there were some disconnects again during the night. I'll see what you make of it.

Regards, M

[ghuron]

First of all, I would like to thanks Geoff for his hard work on this piece of software. The product looks really promising. I've installed it yesterday (ver 0.6 alpha 20051218) and here is the (un-prioritized) list of issues I noticed:
1. I've tried to install it on Storage card, but after soft reset it says "Cannot find vgsmail control.exe"
2. Was not able to send anything. There is Exchange2k on the server side with enabled SMTP. IMAP username/password is supposed to be used for SMTP authentication. Log will be send you by separate email
3. vgsmail account once created cannot be edited. When I'm in Account list and clicking on the corresponding account - nothing happens. I was trying to look in my SMTP settings (because of the reasons above) and was not able to do it
4. HTML messages are displayed incorrectly in Pocket Outlook (it tries to display them as plain text instead of trying to render html). When I’m retrieving the same email with standard IMAP transport – everything works as intended
5. Issue with KOI-8R encoding reported by couple of Russian users is still here. Again IMAP transport was able to sort things out

My hw: Magician ROM 1.11.00 WWE, Radio 1.11, ExtROM: 1.11.129WWE

A couple of questions:
1. In your instruction of how to setup transport, you said that finally one “should click on the ‘connect’ button in order to synchronize these settings with the client”. It takes less than 0.5 sec to connect, and I was confused whenever installation was successful or not. Is it supposed to take such a short amount of time?
2. According to your description, when a new message arrives on the server within short amount of time my phone is supposed to turn itself on and show me notification that new email message arrives. Am I correct? The reason why I’m asking this question is that right now it doesn’t work this way on my side, but I’d rather test this a bit more before reporting it to you.

And 2 ideas (whenever they are good or bad – decide it by yourself :)
1. You’ve mentioned several times your ToDo list. Are you considering sharing this ToDo list with us? This can help us to stop bothering you with duplicate bug reports/enhancements requests and also give some clues what we can expect in upcoming version.
2. It looks like your log file is encrypted or something like that and you’ve mentioned that it contains mail credentials. Instead of encrypting this file I would suggest to make it plain text and just replace there credentials with something like <<<username>>> and <<<password>>> This way people will feel more comfortable sending you logs – they will clearly see that no sensitive information is send to you. This is especially important if you are consider making this software commercial.

[Izzard-UK]

Yesterday I played around with the two files from www.vgsmail.com/ppc and the 'WM5 transport' dll attached earlier in this thread. With a lots of fiddling around with a registry editor and lots of resets and ending of tasks, I was able to get it to run on my MDA Vario.

This was the first time I'd even got the VGS icon to appear at the bottom of the screen. Until now I never got anywhere because the e-mail profile would disappear when I created it and VGS Control would exit instantly with 'no valid profile'.

It started up, logged into my fastmail.cc IMAP account, notifed me and fetched all my mail. Brilliant!

(Okay, so it suffered lots of bugs, like the fact that VGS Control exits (or silently crashes) when you OK/Close the notification rather than hiding it, or if you exit Messaging, and it keeps getting the same mails over and over... .. but it WAS runnning!)

So I'm happy - it looks promising. I'll go back to regular IMAP polling for now. Well done Geoffrey!

[testdebug]

izzard, you really get it working? U got a new pm from me.

[Izzard-UK]

Well, I really got it *running* and partially working. It sounds like it's working a bit better on non WM5 machines though. I should have taken some photos/video because I've done a hard-reset now :)

I can't (currently) give step-by-step instructions for the following reasons:

- I didn't make a note of the exact steps. I was just fighting with it.
- It would take a fair amount of effort to start again and document it.
- I don't really want to mess my phone up again, just yet. I've only had it a week and I've experimented so much that I'm resetting several times a day and hard-resetting frequently too :)
- I'm a work and I shouldn't be playing with my new toy.

All I can say is that the key seems to be to follow the 'normal' setup first, THEN try the 'WM5' transport, from the attachment. The .dll will be stopped by WM5 signing security the first time it tries to run, and will crash if you allow it to. I'm a bit fuzzy about what I did after that, but it was basically using a remote Registry Editor to set up the profile the way the transport expects to find it.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the WM5 version is looking for /Phone/VGS/Profiles whereas the original is looking for /Phone/vgsmail/Profiles

Having said all that, if geoffreycross wants me to repeat the experiment then I will :)

[testdebug]

thanks for the info and fast reply. can i know did u install the wm2003 transport first, then, copy the wm2005 dll to windows or u never install the wm2003 transport? after that, create a new account first before install the client or install the client first then create a new account? when we create a new account, we already specify the service provider address, then, why we still need to create the registry? after u create the registry then only u create a new account? How u create the registry. esspecially the last key where the service provider=. the last key u use string value instead of key right?. then name=service provider and string is the account address right?

[Izzard-UK]

...3) get yourself a registry editor and add the following keys:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\VGS\Profiles\YOURPROFIL ENAME\IncomingServer = imap.yourdomain.com
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\VGS\Profiles\YOURPROFIL ENAME\OutgoingServer = smtp.yourdomain.com

making the obvious substitutions for YOURPROFILENAME, imap.yourdomain.com and smtp.yourdomain.com.

Then you can try installing the latest release of the client from http://www.vgsmail.com/ppc/ .]


Try this:

(I can't be sure it'll work - but you're clearly desperate to have a go :) )...

1) Install the WM2003 transport. Set up an account as per the instructions on www.vgsmail.com/ppc. The account will "vanish".

2) Put the WM5 transport DLL in your phone's Windows folder and use the supplied EXE to register it.

3) Soft-reset

4) Create the registry keys. This means:
a) Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ and make a key called "VGS". Then, under that, one called "Profiles" and, under that, one with the name of the 'vgsmail' type account you made in step 1.
b) In that key, make two StringValues. One called "IncomingServer" with the value being your IMAP server address and one called "OutgoingServer" with your SMTP server address.

5) Install the client from www.vgsmail.com/ppc

6) Soft-reset. If you don't get a warning about the DLL running when you start up then you will when you run VGS control. When I did this, my phone stopped responding, so I soft-reset it again and it was fine after that.

These instructions are vague and they are guessed from hazy memory. If it works, you'll get the same as me - a VGS client that you can start and which will collect your mail... but which dies as soon as you try to do anything clever/useful with it.

My strong advice to you is DON'T BOTHER. Wait for geoffreycross to shape it a bit more. I only include this information to encourage (and hopefully assist) him in his efforts. Good luck! (And did I mention to not bother trying? Oh well, I bet you do anyway :P)

[testdebug]

if the account vanish. the received mail is stored where? after that you still can open the inbox? and the inbox no vgs account? thanks

[Izzard-UK]

I'm sorry I can't answer you - your questions are even more vague that my instructions!

[testdebug]

i followed all u said and unsuccesful. cannot open the inbox anymore if use wm2005 transport. one thing funny if i use wm2003 transport. i can see the new account and the inbox is ok which previous version cannot but the client say no profile found. hard reset many times. dissappointed!

[Izzard-UK]

Well I *did* say don't bother trying yet, and so did geoffreycross. Just be patient :P

[lambretta]

Whay don't you just GIVE UP trying to use it with WM5.0 - wait until it has been developed!

[geoffreycross]

Hi all,

Just to let you know that I am currently away on holiday (sunny Cape Town) which explains why I haven't been responding to many emails and posts here.

However development hasn't stopped on this and I've done quite a bit of work over the last few days. I'll probably aim to make a release once a week or so when I get a stable version for the next 3 weeks.


Geoff.

[m.zielinski]

Codesigning in WM5 is expensive - too expensive for normal Users. The same Problem applied to the ozVGA and generating resource-dll's for full VGA Resolution.
The Solution was the following :
http://www.ppc-welt.info/community/showpost.php?p=597793&postcount=11

There you find a way to sign the files without any costs....

Edit: Found also this
http://www.codeproject.com/useritems/signcode.asp
http://www.codeproject.com/useritems/deploycertwithcode.asp


And i would like to test your Software on my WM5 MDA Pro (HTC Universal) because Push Mail is a really Killer Application for me!

[joduba]

Dear Geoffreycross,

I'm new in this forum, and also new in Windows Mobile 5 world.
I need a IMAP-Idle client and I found your solution a good fit of what I'm looking for.

After following your instructions, I succed to install both CAB, setup, the account... but after installing the vgsmail and starting it... it displays a messages telling:

"vgsmail error manager: No valid profiles found".

Do you know what I can be done wrong ?

Thanks for your comments.

[Izzard-UK]

Joduba: I suggest you begin by reading this thread. All your questions should be answered!

[geoffreycross]

I have just uploaded an update to both the client and the transport. The changes are mostly behind-the-scenes but this version is even more stable than all the very stable versions I have previously released. I have now been running the same instance for about 3 days without a restart or reboot.

[misterb101]

Hi Geoffrey,

Does your latest update also contain fixes for WM5 users?
Cheers,

Rob Boerman

[oltp]

Geoffrey,

Small, but rather important, question from a fastmail.fm user. This weekend I got a mail from fastmail.fm stating that my mailprogram is logging on with wrong credentials:
"Currently, when you use our server for sending or receiving mail, your
email software is logging in using the name "xxxxxxxxx@".
However, our server requires that you use the name "xxxxxxxxx@fastmail.fm"."

So I changed the username in the registry & it seems everything is ok.

Question is wether you want to keep the logging on mechanisme this way. Apperently it's not completely standard. I know that you do it to support different incoming-/outgoing mailservers. Give it a thought pls.

Regards, M

[Izzard-UK]

That's a good point actually. Until now, Fastmail has allowed us to log on with just the username but, because they are splitting their domains, you have to use the full e-mail address to log in.

vgsmail currently requires that the username and password are the same for both incoming and outgoing mail. This is not a problem for those with paid Fastmail accounts, as they can use Fastmail's SMTP server for outgoing mail, and still use the same login.

However, I use a free Fastmail account (IMAP only, no SMTP) so I use Google's SMTP server for outgoing. Conveniently, my Fastmail account name and password are the same as my Gmail ones, so this works out fine (for now).

[cseilern]

i second all these requests for the ability to use different credentials and servers. i'm currently using 1&1.com for imap, but their smtp sucks and I would lve to be able to use another one.

[wireless_one]

I have a Wallaby which I've stuck with for far too long. It has WM2003SE and for the most part works ok. After installing VGSMail (which BTW is a great program) I have some SERIOUS issues. I know that this is a Magician forum, so I apologize for jumping in (after reading all of the WM2005 threads though I don't feel quite as bad as I normally would :wink: )

1) the majority of the time I try to turn my Wallaby on, it hangs halfway between the splash screen (OzUp) and showing the VGS control panel for about 5 minutes, then comes on for about 10 seconds, and then shuts down altogether.

2) when I am able to keep it up running through various means of tricking it into trying to sync or otherwise distracting VGS (1 in about 6 times), it works great (although despite changing my settings, it still won't download the whole email), but often drops the connection and then won't connect again.

3) as time progresses, VGS eats away at my memory (what little I have left), eventually giving me the Critical Memory error. I can have abosutely nothing running besides VGS and I will eventually lose all of it.

Ok, so the obvious answer is get a newer PPC. I actually had the XDA 2i for a day, but it kept crashing on me and I sold it to a colleague. I have been waiting for the 'next best thing" or at least have a US GSM provider offer one at a discount with a contract committment, and have been intrigued by the Atom and Wizard. Unfortunately, neither has the 128 mb/128 mb ram rom config I want.

So here are my questions: (1) is there anything I can do to the Wallaby to actually make it work with VGS?; and (2) when I do purchase a new machine, any recommendations?

Any help is appreciated and offers to sell phones are as well! :)

WirelessOne

[rustoss]

geoffreycross, last one not bad!!! but still no russian

[Izzard-UK]

geoffreycross: latest version is working great for me on MDA Vario (HTC Wizard / Windows Mobile 5). So far, at least. ...only been running a few hours, but a big improvement. :D

[testdebug]

hi. Nice to hear that. you are running the wm2003 transport or the wm2005?
How yo make it run? It say no valid profile found? Please help

[Izzard-UK]

I am getting a lot of private messages from users asking me how I got vgsmail to work on my Windows Mobile 5 device.

Unfortunately I don't know (yet) what the magic combination of moves is, as I haven't done a hard-reset and tried to set it up from scratch.

However, here is my best guess for getting it working. I'd be interested to see if the following works for anyone else.

1) Get the Windows Mobile 5 version of the vgs transport (http://forum.xda-developers.com/viewtopic.php?p=194685#194685), attached to a reply by the author earlier in this thread.

2) Follow my instructions here (http://forum.xda-developers.com/viewtopic.php?p=197867#197867).

You might well still find it doesn't work, and that you get "no valid profiles found". If so, try adding the following keys (StringValues):

HKCU/Software/VGS/Profiles/Email/Username= <your mail username>
HKCU/Software/VGS/Profiles/Email/Password = <your mail password>

My current theory is that everything works fine except that these values are not getting stored in the registry when you set up the account and that's why you can't edit the profile in Messaging, you can't see the mail account and you can't run vgsmail control.

I THINK if you have all four keys in place in the registry (IncomingServer/OutgoingServer/Username/Password) then it will work.

The only other information I know is that, when it IS working, you will also get a "vgsmail" key in the registry, under /Software/VGS/ (i.e. at the same level as "Profiles".

This is all I know for now. Really we need the author to reappear ;)

[geoffreycross]

Hi,

Sorry again for the silence. I'm still in South Africa (sunny, warm and off to the beach shortly in case you cared).

The WM5 transport is no different from the most current transport you can get from the website. So use that one.

As far as I can tell (and I still don't have a WM5 device, but I am expecting to find one waiting on my return) the only problem is that under WM5 the transport is not correctly creating the registry entries. And so Izzard is completely correct and all you should need to do is edit the registry to put in the entries

HKCU/Software/VGS/Profiles/XXX/Username
HKCU/Software/VGS/Profiles/XXX/Password
HKCU/Software/VGS/Profiles/XXX/IncomingServer
HKCU/Software/VGS/Profiles/XXX/OutgoingServer

where XXX is the name of the profile you have created in pocket outlook.

Please don't hound Izzard... I promise to support WM5 as soon as I get my new phone.

Geoff.

[rustoss]

geoffreycross
, which one u wanna take? I think Qtek 9000 or likesimilar the best!

[Izzard-UK]

That's great to hear! (Apart from the bit about going to the beach - that's just depressing when I look out of the window here.)

geoffreycross
, which one u wanna take? I think Qtek 9000 or likesimilar the best!

I believe he's getting an O2 XDA Atom.

By the way - 2 days running the current version and it's working great!

Actually, I'm not sure if the GPRS Dial setting is honoured but it's definitely staying stable if I have a current GPRS/WiFi connection established.

Also, the notifications say the e-mail is from an unknown sender but this might be a known 'feature' (I guess it's not reading the full header). Just letting you know.

Cheers.

[oltp]

Geoffrey,

Got the same issue about the 'unknown sender', in the previous release this was working fine. I think it can wait till you're back in the UK, no need to hurry. Rest is working good, maybe the prio is still a bit high as my magician sometimes becomes a bit slow especially the camera.

So enjoy the beach :-(

Cheers, M

[davpel]

Anyone else here using a Samsung i730 who has tried VGS mail? I'm currently using autd, but would prefer something like Geoff is creating (was an avid Chattermail user back in the day on the Treo). However, whenever I run VGS on the i730, the damn device refuses to wake up from sleep, requiring a soft reset. I've been in communications with Geoff about this, but while waiting for him to return from holiday, I was kind of hoping that someone here might have an idea as to why this might be occurring (BTW, I'm not the only i730 user having this problem with VGS mail).

David

[GardnerMS]

First of all, a bit about myself... I have been a Treo 650 user for almost a year... however, after having to warranty exchange it 3 times, I've kicked it to the curb. My other options were either a Blackberry 8700c (too much uncertainty for me) or a HP hw6515 (ability to run WiFi and multitasking is what interested me)

Yes, I know this device runs WM2003SE (and NOT WM5); I know that there doesn't exist a true "push-email" like I had with ChatterMail (hogwarts, I say now.... I love VGSMail -- it's exactly what I wanted, since i miss chattermail.

However, one minor glitch.... I look @ the bottom of the screen and notice that the icons are 'scrambled', meaning that they are no longer discernable as to what they are (such as reply, reply all, forward, delete)... granted, I can use the menu, but just wanted to see if this was experienced by anyone else.

Please keep up the good work... you've may just found a convert....

mG

[geoffreycross]

GardnerMS:

This is a problem I have seen a few times but it is very sporadic and I have also encountered it without vgsmail installed. There seems to be some bug in the WM2003 kernel.

A soft reset will fix the corrupted icon database.

[GardnerMS]

Can you elaborate how often the sw should run when the pda is not being used? It seems like it ran twice within 10 minutes, but then didn't run again while I was watching it... (I know.. a watched phone never gathers email)..

I love the possibilities...

mG

[Izzard-UK]

GardnerMS, what do you mean by "run"? Are you watching the vgsmail control's status and judging by the 'idle' time?

Basically, an IMAP client that uses the IDLE featue (like this one) establishes a connection and then *keeps it open*. Ideally it will do *nothing* until the server tells it. I.e. it is supposed to sit there being idle (and not using any data) until the mail server notifies it there is mail.

However, assuming no mail arrives, I would only expect you to see absolutely nothing happening in a perfect world. In reality the software may need to reconnect occasionally. I'm guessing this is the activity you're referring to?

[GardnerMS]

OK.. i understand that VGS shouldn't do anything unless new mail is available.. I've sent myself a test email and it still has not appeared on my phone... I have the vgs control running (icon in lower right-hand corner has a green dot)... when i tap on it, it says IDLE, and that's all it does...

What am I doing wrong? What is a reasonable time to wait for email to arrive?

BTW, Eddie Izzard is one of the funniest comedians I've seen.

mG

[GardnerMS]

OK... emails are showing up... i'm just not seeing a message popup indicating new email... looking @ today screen shows increase in message count.

[Izzard-UK]

For me it is instant. When a new mail arrives my phone goes 'ping' (and the new message count increases' and Thunderbird (on my PC) get the new mail at the exact same instant. If I read the mail on my PC, the new message count decreases on the phone instantly. It's perfect!

Are you sure you've got "notifications" ticked in vgsmail control. If you have ..are you sure you've got it configured to display a message in 'Sounds and Notifications" in Settings?

[GardnerMS]

I'm running this on a HP hw6515 that uses Windows Mobile 2003SE..

The screen is 240x240 ..

I bet that I am not seeing some buttons because of the screen resolution and that it's designed for a 240x320 screen..

Am I "up-the-river"? anything I can do?

mG

[k_kirk]

Following Izzard's guidance I loaded vgsmail on my Dopod 900 (WM5). I do get the new mail alerts. I can't start the Inbox (Messaging) anymore though. when I attempt this my pda slows to a crawl. Did I miss an instruction step? Regards & thanks.

[Izzard-UK]

Make sure you've got the four Registry keys mentioned, then soft-reset.

[mhoepfin]

I can confirm that I've gotten this working nicely on on a Sprint PPC6700. Man, anxiously waiting support for more than just the Inbox.

This is really nice.

[k_kirk]

Izzard, thanks! I did have them in place. It was the transport dll version. Here's an update. Loading the 30/12/05 version of the transport from the vgsmail website as opposed to the 15/12 version I can now get into the Inbox application and see the new message received. It still is slow to come up though compared to before loading vgsmail related stuff.

Additionally, after starting & exiting the Inbox application the VGSMail Control applet icon on the tray disappears. I then have to go to the remevant Start menu entry to restart the vgsmail control.

In the vgsmail control the time stamps for the actions seem to be in GMT timezone. Not sure if this is an issue or not. Just an observation.

When I reply to a message received on VGSMail transport it does not seem to be getting sent. Neither are my deleted messages getting deleted on the IMAP mailbox. I delete them on the handheld and then keep getting notified about them as if they are new mail.

Someof the messages received are indicated as Unknown Sender.

I fully realize this is alpha software not even meant to run on WM5 so please do not take the above as whining! I am very impressed with the work so far and only providing this as input given that Geoffrey has asked for brave souls with WM5 devices to try out his software.

Best Regards

[Izzard-UK]

Hmm, you should not be having these issues with the current version (they are the symptoms of using older versions on WM5). Using the two files currently available at http://www.vgsmail.com/ppc I can set up a perfectly working system. Perhaps you have the old transport still registered. I suggest starting again.

To get it working, you only need http://www.vgsmail.com/ppc with a small change, as follows:

Before installing the vgsmail client (the second file), use a registry editor to ensure you have all four StringValues:

IncomingServer
OutgoingServer
Username
Password

That's all you need to do. I know because I just flashed my phone's ROM so I installed vgsmail from scratch as above and it's working perfectly. (W00! :))

[k_kirk]

Thanks. This is probably true. I used the WM5 specific transport posted on the 15th December first. This involved copying a dll to my Windows folder and then using the supplied .exe to register it. I then used the version on http://www.vgsmail.com/ppc released on the 30th December but seems like something still is a miss. I was just playing around anyways and will wait for Geoff's return from sunny SA and his next release. This is looking good!

[m.zielinski]

For me this thing works.
I installed the packages from 30.12.2005 and added the registry keys as described earlier.

It works fine with GPRS COnnection - i only have the problem that the Control sometimes ends itself without further notice. It seems one reason is when i try to delete more than one message ore receive more than one message at a time.

[geoffreycross]

Hi all,

I'm now back from my holiday and one the jetlag has worn off I'll be restarting active development of vgsmail. While I was away my XDA Atom arrived, but it seems to be unable to connect to GPRS and so I'm afraid it's going to go back... :(

I have just pushed a minor release onto the website which includes a number of improvements including a delay of 60 seconds before starting up after a reboot.

Next major change will be attachment support and full SMTP (authenticated and non-authenticated) support.

Geoff.

[Izzard-UK]

...a number of improvements including a delay of 60 seconds before starting up after a reboot.

Ah! Great idea, because it does always interrupt me between punching in the phone password and the SIM PIN.

[oltp]

Hi Geoff,

Welcome back. I was thinking of the possibility to have the incoming & outgoing addresses to be stored in seperate reg.keys. The more sophisticated (read fa tmail users) can use a correct & fully specified different smtp address in the future too.

Going for your newest release, looks good.

Cheers, M

[oltp]

Hi Geoff,

Welcome back. I was thinking of the possibility to have the incoming & outgoing addresses to be stored in seperate reg.keys. The more sophisticated (read fa tmail users) can use a correct & fully specified different smtp address in the future too.

Going for your newest release, looks good.

Cheers, M

[oltp]

Btw when I shutdown vgscontrol I loose a tray position. Seems like a handle isn't released on shutdown.

Cheers, M

[m.zielinski]

Well - i startet the new control today in the morning and it worked whole 7 hours without any problems.

But how do i delete the messages ? when i delete them in POutlook they only get marked as deleted at the server and when reconnecting the control tells that there are new mails... - i would like to delete the Messages at the Server (There shall be an imap command called Purge ?)

But hey - this software is amazing!!!!!

Another glitch has to do with the HTC Universal - i often rotate the screnn from portrait to landscape and vice versa - the control behaves strange at this turning around...

[geoffreycross]

m.zielinski:

Yes, you are right. Currently messages are simply marked for deletion and will not be deleted until an 'expunge' is sent to the server (most clients will have this option). I did this because I didn't want to risk loosing messages whilst testing. Ideally vgsmail would move deleted messages to a 'Deleted Items' folder. I'll add this to my to-do list.

[oltp]

Geoff,

I can see the sender in the mail notification again, very nice.

Thnx, M

[zsizsi]

Hi all,

since gmail is not yet supporting imap could someone recommend a free email service supporting imap?

thanks
a

[Izzard-UK]

Geoff,

I can see the sender in the mail notification again, very nice.

Thnx, M

Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. I don't know what is different between such e-mails.

[oltp]

Hi all,

since gmail is not yet supporting imap could someone recommend a free email service supporting imap?

thanks
a
I use fastmail.fm, but you need to change the vgs user account in the registry to mention [your username]@fastmail.fm otherwise you're kicked out by end of january.

cheers, M

[geoffreycross]

Izzard-UK:

The notifications should contain the sender if there is only one new email and if there is more than one new email they will look say 'You have 3 new e-mails'. This imitates the operation of the internal IMAP client which ships with Pocket Outlook.

oltp:

Yes, with fastmail you'll always need an @ in the userid. I am currently working on a setup application which will fix this and a number of other problems (including the WM5 registry problems). Expect this by the end of the weekend.

[Izzard-UK]

Oh, I mean sometimes (when a single e-mail arrives) it will say "unknown sender".

[dmsny]

Geoff,

Can your application:

1) Monitor multiple IMAP accounts at the same time

2) Allow for multiple "From" fields. So that I can select which "Reply to" I want to use for that message.

[marcuss]

I've read the entire thread and I really appreciate all the work.

I've just installed the vgsmail at my QTEK 9100 with Swedish WM5. It seems to be working (manually adding the IncomingServer and OutgoingServer entries to the registry), I think, however it seems like its trying to sync -all- the mail in my mail inbox (that's 16 665 mails).

I marked the "only check new mails form the last 3 days" in Pocket Outlook but it does (appearantly) not seem to work. Not sure if the restriction should be dealt with from your application or is in fact a problem that I need to solve within Outlook in some way?

EDIT:
Just a small note for your bugfix list. When I change from viewing a landscape perspective to portrait the vgsmail-log window were still stuck in the "middle" of the GUI.

Anyway, great work!

[geoffreycross]

Izzard-UK:

Strange. I assume you are using the most recent version. I'd appreciate a log file if you can catch this happening consistently enough.

marcuss:

The "only check new mails form the last 3 days" feature is not supported by vgsmail at the moment. It will probably be supported at some point in the future.

dmsny:

1) I have a plan to support multiple IMAP accounts, but I want to release a WM5 version first.

2) This is something which would have to be supported by Pocket Outlook rather than vgsmail. Unfortunately the current version of PO doesn't support multiple originators for a single 'profile'.

[dmsny]

looking forward to the official WM5 version. When do you think that build and full attachment support would be ready? Multiple account support would be really cool too!

[geoffreycross]

Hi all,

I'm trying to get an idea of which networks and which phones ARE working with vgsmail. Can anyone with a working (i.e. able to connect and receive push email for >1 hour) vgsmail install please email their network (contract / pre-pay?) and phone model to ppcbugs@vgsmail.com. I will collate the results and post them here from time to time.

Thanks!

Geoff.

[tdaubign]

Hi all,

I'm trying to get an idea of which networks and which phones ARE working with vgsmail. Can anyone with a working (i.e. able to connect and receive push email for >1 hour) vgsmail install please email their network (contract / pre-pay?) and phone model to ppcbugs@vgsmail.com. I will collate the results and post them here from time to time.

Thanks!

Geoff.

Done !

[marcuss]

I should probably clarify that I've not been able to decide how the vgsmail client work for me on my QTEK 9100 with the intended features such as push notification and such since I'm still trying to sync my 16000 mail. I'm up at 1000 this faar so I guess it's going to take a while...

Btw, what does the check box "GPRS dial" mean in reality?

[Houser]

I have tried another email push service for pocket pcs. it is called Pocket X-Press. you can access your pop3 and imap4 mail server even with ssl and get a realtime push without checking from device in an interval.
you can download a trial version for wm 2003 and 2005 under: www.pocketxpress.com

has anybody experience made with this?

[geoffreycross]

For the record, there are a number of alternatives if you want IMAP or POP3 push email. Here is a list of the ones I know of:

http://alwaysonmail.com/
Blackberry Connect
Intellisync
http://www.pocketxpress.com

However, they all require and provide a 3rd party server which effectively acts as an intermediary between your email server and your phone. I don't like this for a number of reasons (and that is why I wrote vgsmail):

1) As far as I know, they all have ongoing costs as they can charge you to have access to their server. This is often in the form of a monthly or yearly cost.

2) As the email takes a further step, it is potentially slower to be pushed and there is one more thing to go wrong.

3) It requires you to give your email credentials to a third party. This has obvious security implications.

In contrast, vgsmail connects directly to your mail server and I (as owner, developer...) have no control over your email. Therefore even if I wanted to, I cannot charge you by the month and I have no access to your email account. And there is no intermediary to go wrong.

[pfluger]

I have been able to succesfully install vgsmail on my WM2005 (which is a VPA compact II) and manually added the profile to the registry.

Vgsmail starts fine, but now I get an error: "The trial of vgsmail expires. Please register". I just installed it yesterday? Is vgsmail time limited?

[oltp]

Noticed this morning the same & send a mail to geoffrey, there's a new download available on his site, but can't find a register section.

Cheers, M

[geoffreycross]

The registration will come at some later date. Sorry for not updating the expiry earlier; I forgot. The new version will expire at the end of January, but there will inevitable be further releases before then.

[oltp]

hi geoffrey,

thanks for the quick reply. On sorting out my prob. I noticed that I had two lnk's in the startup folder. The new & the old, this probably caused extra slowlyness on my magician now I deinstalled the previous version & installed the latest one. Usually I just install it over the old version & didn't understand the concept off the delayed start. It was the old lnk istantly starting the client.

Well let's see what the future will bring us, the expiration code definitely works.

Regards, M

[geoffreycross]

Thanks for the double link report. I suggest everyone checks in /windows/startup and ensures that there is a link to "vgsmail startup" and no link directly to "vgsmail control".

[pfluger]

I just downloaded the latest version. Still getting the "trial expired" message.

I think the zip file contains the wrong file versions? The files inside the zip archive are still dated 01/11.

[geoffreycross]

pfluger:

The files look fine to me.b

[pfluger]

sorry geoff, seems like my firefox cached the file :oops:

[marcuss]

How does everybody else solve the fact that vgsmail does not support limitation of the emails that should be synced?

A bit hard for me to believe I'm the only one that has several thousands of emails saved (and doesnt sort the emails into folders) :)

Do you still try to sync your whole inbox (keeping just a few emails there) or do you have any other solution? Since it is very slow to sync emails it would take indefinte time to retrieve all emails for me...

[geoffreycross]

Just a quick note to apologize to everyone expecting the WM5 release as I promised 'before the end of the weekend'. Unfortunately the end of the weekend is here and I'm not quite finished. Please be a little patient... you'll have it shortly.

For those willing to do the registry changes, I can now confirm that the everything does seem to working fine with the exception of this registry problems. I've been running the client for the last 24 hours on my brand new o2 xda atom and everything is working.

[ak98102]

Just a quick note to apologize to everyone expecting the WM5 release as I promised 'before the end of the weekend'. Unfortunately the end of the weekend is here and I'm not quite finished. Please be a little patient... you'll have it shortly.Keep up your good work, we will be waiting :)

[dmsny]

Geoff,

Will the WM5 official version include the attchnment support as well?

[cseilern]

@geoffreycross:
Like Marcuss, I have a ton of mails in my inbox which I dont need to sync. I also have a ton of mails in other folders I would like to sync as well. Finally, my Hosted Exchange service provider has an unreliable SMTP implementation.

I know you are working on a WM5 version, but do you also plan to implement multiple folders syncing sync limits and separate SMTP server credentials? if you are, how high on your to do lits are these?

Thanks.

[pfluger]

I got vgsmail working with 1&1 (German Webhosting Provider) on my WM5 device. Updates in my INBOX are correctly pushed to the device and I get notified about new mails.

Some of the mails are empty though. They only show 'NIL' as message content. Sender and subject are correct.

Any ideas?