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Email and Attachment Support
While both operating systems support corporate e-mail (including Lotus Notes and Outlook) and personal e-mail (such as from POP3/IMAP and Web mail accounts), Windows Mobile 6 does a better job integrating popular mail applications right out of the box. AOL, Hotmail/Windows Live, and Yahoo are built into WM6's main e-mail setup, so users simply need to sign into their accounts to gain access. On a BlackBerry, you need to set up these accounts individually.
Both platforms also push e-mail to your device. BlackBerry has the edge in this category because it automatically performs the task for you; WM6 makes you manually configure e-mail to sync at intervals you specify (unless you have Exchange 2007). The ability to search e-mail has long been a feature on BlackBerrys, but Windows Mobile is finally adding it for the first time. We prefer Microsoft's implementation; results start to show up as you type.
WM6's e-mail functions reach their full potential only if you use Microsoft's Exchange Server 2007. It lets you set out-of-office messages or flag messages directly from your WM6 device. You can also access SharePoint and search the Exchange server for messages dating three months back.
Viewing and editing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files is easier on WM6 than on BlackBerry, which shows stripped-down versions of Office documents that can't be edited (at least not without a third-party application). That's not surprising given that Microsoft develops Windows Mobile and Office. On the other hand, we prefer BlackBerry for the actual experience of downloading attachments because it gives you a little progress bar. Both operating systems support PDFs and common graphics files such as JPEG, BMP, and GIF.
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| BlackBerry has the edge when it comes to instant-gratification push delivery, but WM6 has closed the gap in terms of attachment support and searching |
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