I have a HTC Touch 3G phone, and to increase battery life, I often go to the Communications Settings and enable/disable WiFi… depending on the presence of any nearby WiFi hotspost.

Communications settings has some useful switches for bluetooth, Airplane mode, etc…

But it has a setting that has puzzled me for a while: Microsoft Direct Push.

Since my phone is based on Windows Mobile 6.1, its not surprising that it has some Microsoft aspects.

So, my curiosity eventually got the better of me, and I decided to find out what is Microsoft Direct Push (MDP), and if it would be of any use to me.

It turns out that MDP is a method for getting notified about emails in about 15 minutes of them arriving, and allowing the new email to be downloaded… all very good in theory.

However, I find the biggest flaw, is that MDP is specifically tied to Microsoft Exchange Server.

Its good if you need to keep your Microsoft outlook synchronised between the mobile and office.

But in this day and age, I see an ever-decreasing use of microsoft server products… in favour of more common (and free) technologies that offer similar performance, and are more flexible due to not being tied to propriety standards like MDP.

In my case, I use Gmail (with the IMAP option enabled), and Google calendar (also synced to my phone), and a synced google contacts… all easy and all free, and can be used by anyone with a smartphone.

I suspect my solution will also work with iphone, and android-based phones.

So I now find there is no longer the need to go down the expensive Microsoft path, for mobile office solutions.