After just starting to use Thunderbird as my primary mail client, so I can view and check emails in windows and linux, I'm convinced that I don't like it! So now I'm looking for a replacement, and I currently have this in mind:

A backend or server, that is constantly running that holds all the emails, but isn't accessed directly. Instead, there are frontends, and can be many! Eg:

• A graphical based mail client much like the design of Slypheed, Thunderbird, Evolution etc. for linux. This would probably use something like GTK+ or Qt.
• A console-based mail client much like Mutt, or Pine for linux. This would be great because one could read their mail through SSH and therefore anywhere with an SSH client.
• Another graphical based mail client but this time for windows. This is not entirely necessary, but would be nice.
• A web-based mail client like IlohaMail, or QD-POP.

All of these would access the same server, and output all your emails in the same folders, in the same way. The only difference would be the interface.

Just talking about that now though makes me think what I'm suggesting is a Microsoft Exchange replacement! Exchange has a great web interface, uses Outlook for windows (a great client), and can be used by Evolution in linux. Of course, Exchange is a lot more complex, and has groupware kind-of stuff that is just not required. However, as I think about it more, the following features would be great to have in this server and clients:

• Mail client (obviously)
• Calendar
• Tasks

Which moves more and more into the realms of Exchange. As I own a Windows Mobile phone, I'd also love to have push-email, although that would cost in terms of GPRS and isn't entirely necessary.

Anyway, that's my thought of the day, and would love to make it, as a quick look on t'internet earlier for something like this revealed nothing. Let me know what you think...

I am currently subscribed to the SynCE-WindowsMobile5 mailing list and have been for quite a while. The reason for this is I want my Windows Mobile 5.0 running Smartphone to work under SynCE in linux, so I followed the development of this new driver. Everything was pretty radical with this version as Activesync used the RNDIS protocol with WM5 instead of a serial connection in earlier versions of WM. Background information over...

A week ago or so, the following was sent to the mailing list:

Hi all,
Thought this might be of interest to those of you having one of those PXA-based PDAs (which rndis_host currently doesn't cope with because of their buggy USB client implementation):
usb switch is an app for the wm5 device that changes the USB sync protocol from RNDIS to Serial
let me find the link
http://www.pcdebolso.com/notVer.asp?ID=1351
it's in portuguese though
the direct link for download
http://t005.tgv.net/USBSwitch_PPC.cab
Which means you should be able to use the ipaq driver and access your device the legacy way. If this works there's probably a few of you owing le0n a beer.
Regards,
Ole André

This was interesting, but not that interesting as my device had an OMAP processor inside. However, after only just realising that I had compiled USB1 support out of my kernel, but leaving in USB2 (was really confusing!), I was able to get linux to see my device and I thought I would take the plunge and try it out. However, there were a few things against this whole idea:

• This app was for Pocket PC. However, this didn't put me off too much, as I remembered reading somewhere that the difference between Pocket PC and smartphone apps was getting trivial.
• This app was to fix problems concerning devices with Intel processors, and I didn't have one!
• My luck!

So first, I followed the HOWTO on the SynCE website. This was fairly simple and required a few apt-get install's to install required stuff, like synce-serial. Everything seemed fine, as I steamed through the HOWTO, ticking off all the boxes! Then I reached part 6.4 and realised that I had not read the first part properly- I needed a patch on my kernel. However, this seemed pretty normal, as it was for smartphones and after all, this is a smartphone! This is where it all goes kaput- I download the kernel-2.6-driver but it can't compile- I think it's something to do with my kernel being too new (2.6.17 is a 2-3 days old). This is my luck kicking in. Now I'm not sure where to go from here. The output from make is here, and if anyone can help I'd much appreciate it!

I certainly know of one other person who would gain something from this working!