Pros & Cons
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- Reliable, true push e-mail.
- Supports IMAP, POP, Exchange, and webmail accounts.
- No monthly fees.
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- Only works on Treo 600, 650, 680, and 700p.
ChatterEmail 3.0+ Specs
| Type: | Business |
| Type: | Personal |
There are tons of ways to get e-mail on your cell phone. But true push solutions, which actually deliver messages to you in real time instead of you having to check manually, aren't always easy to come by. Sure, you can fake it with most desktop applications by setting them to "poll" periodically, but this can eat up data-plan charges on a cell phone. Fortunately, ChatterEmail gives you a way to get real push e-mail—and aggregate all of your e-mail in one place—provided that you have a Palm Treo running Palm OS: either a
Setting up ChatterEmail is fairly simple; download the .zip archive from ChatterEmail's Web site, unpack it, and add the six .prc files to your Quick Install HotSync list. To do that, start up Palm Desktop, select the Quick Install icon, and drag the six files to the appropriate list. On your handheld's next sync, Palm Desktop will transfer the files over to your Treo and install them.
E-mail clients aren't exactly sexy (unless you're really, really into e-mail). Instead, they do a specific, utilitarian job, generally without much flash or fanfare. ChatterEmail won't blow you away with a gorgeous interface, but it does everything you could possibly need with a handheld e-mail client. Using ChatterEmail, I was able to send and receive push e-mail from multiple accounts without a hitch, including Gmail, POP3, IMAP, and even hosted Exchange, and I could easily switch between them all with a tap of the stylus.
ChatterEmail includes thorough drop-down menus within each mailbox. They include options for marking, moving, and selecting messages, as well as the ability to sort and display different views. There's also a comprehensive Preferences section with dozens of choices for configuring alert behavior (graphical, tone, and vibrate), among other options. I particularly liked the "disable while roaming" feature. I'd hate to see the phone bill full of surprises if I accidentally left ChatterEmail polling all my accounts every minute when I'm roaming on some strange network.
I found ChatterEmail's operation to be fast and smooth overall. ChatterEmail works in the background, so you can use other applications on your Treo simultaneously. This is no small feat, because Palm OS isn't normally capable of multitasking—a surprise in the year 2007, but nonetheless true. ChatterEmail includes dozens of settings for configuring your E-mail accounts. Fortunately the program also provides a lot of default suggestions whenever possible. This minimizes the amount of typing you'll have to do on the Treo's tiny keyboard.
For this review, and at ChatterEmail's recommendation, I also tried out a hosted Microsoft Exchange business account from Mi8. Aside from the obvious Microsoft Outlook 2003 client support, Mi8 lets you access your hosted account from BlackBerry and Windows Mobile handhelds in addition to Palm OS handhelds via ChatterEmail. Mi8 account setup was pretty complicated—I'm not sure that requiring a desktop client for account administration makes sense when other vendors let you create and modify user mailboxes via the Web—but once you're rolling, the Mi8-hosted Exchange solution works smoothly.
The latest version of ChatterEmail, 3.0+, claims to reduce battery requirements by half when in push mode. I wasn't able to confirm this in my tests, but I did notice the battery draining unusually quickly. In fact, battery life in standby mode seemed to be reduced to about two full days (a marked drop from the 700p's usual standby time of nearly two weeks). This would be true with any push system, though, and no one said you have to run ChatterEmail 24/7. Version 3.0+ also adds new encryption features for protecting your e-mail from prying eyes, including the ability to tie your e-mail directly to your Treo handheld only, as well as the usual password-protected access.
In short, ChatterEmail 3.0+ is possibly the only e-mail client you'll need for your Treo, short of a full-blown enterprise system such as
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Final Thoughts
ChatterEmail 3.0+
ChatterEmail brings push e-mail to users across the Treo spectrum, from consumer to business. If you've got one of these Palm devices, and you don't have hefty enterprise-level requirements, this should be your e-mail client.