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Rollout: Windows Mobile 6.0: Page 2 of 5

Getting The Message

Microsoft sent us two devices to test: a T-Mobile Dash running Windows Mobile 6 Standard (formerly Smartphone Edition) and the new T-Mobile Wing running Windows Mobile 6 Professional (formerly Pocket PC Phone Edition).

Many of the new features in Windows Mobile 6.0 revolve around messaging and collaboration, and for good reason. If Microsoft is going to unseat RIM's BlackBerry, it's mobile OS must handle e-mail superbly. Windows Mobile 6 builds on the functionality first introduced with the release of SP2 for Exchange 2003. The first major improvement comes with

provisioning. Getting our client handhelds provisioned to our Exchange 2007 e-mail server was painless. We were pleased to find that Microsoft also has made importing certificates to the device more akin to the desktop experience, doing away with the multistep headache presented in Windows Mobile 5.0, which is important if you're using self-signed certificates.

Once e-mail is set up several new features greet users. Possibly the most useful is the ability to search for e-mail messages on the Exchange server. Given that our test unit held only a limited amount of messages, being able to reach back in and search the server for other messages was powerful. Microsoft also added HTML e-mail support. Complex HTML messages, like those from news digests, rendered well.