Well we’ve narrowed down choices to two choices, two hosters against one of three desktop and two mobile clients. Here are the parameters:
Support for either of, in order:
* Mac OS X application. That is Mail, iCal and Address Book that are native to OS X and which is fast.
* Entourage 2004 or 2008 from Microsoft and typically free with any hoster. 2004 is slow as it is a non-native application while 2008 is new and definitely has sync issues.
* Outlook 2007 from Windows or via Parallels on the Mac. But Parallels on the Mac is very slow.
And to support both of:
* iPhone. We really mean the version 2 that will have ActiveSync
* Blackberry. Because folks have these but like the iPhone
So our choices technically are:
* Kerio. This is a Mac messaging, contact and calendaring backend
* Exchange
Here is how the matrix looks right now:
| | Kerio | Exchange | Comment |
| Mac Mail | Runs in Imap | Runs as imap | Both of these work fine |
| Address Book | Needs Kerio Sync to change contacts | Requires Entourage | |
| iCal | Use “Caldev”:http://www.kerio.com/manual/kmsug/en/ch11s05.html#sect-icalcaldavset on Leopard to allow delegation | Requires Entourage | |
| Entourage 2004 | Via OWA Emulation | Works | Not a native Intel app |
| Entourage 2008 | Need to Test | Need to test | Allows OOF setting |
| Outlook | Need to Test | Unacceptably Slow | |
| Windows | Need to Test | Works great | Assumes Outlook 2008 |
| Blackberry | Need to test | Works great | |
| iPhone | “v2”:http://forums.kerio.com/index.php?t=msg&th=13051&start=0&S=271491edc283c6f0ec2b666277b0b83e should work | wait for v2 | Kerio looks like Exchange so should work with iPhone v2! |
