Notices

I'm confused, really. And yes I've searched it, I'm here after reading tons of "reviews" out there plus quite a few threads in here, all to no end. Because nothing seems adequately answered my simple question, can Maemo-powered mobile computer good enough as a push mail device? I get it that Modest is broken and currently no alternative solution/work-around is sufficiently compensate for it, but how broken is really it? Like many people, I'm using several mail accounts with gmail serves as Mail for Exchange push central. Connectivity varies between wifi, 3G or EDGE but data always on. Someone clicked send, seconds after I'll get some forms of notification (sound, vibration or both). Two or three touches away and I'll be looking at my new mails residing in their appropriate boxes. Replies are handled seamlessly with also appropriate accounts. That's it. My past mail experience with Symbian, Android or dare I say it , Windows Moblie and Iphone, more or less managed to be just like that. I wonder which part of said above description will stay the same with Maemo 5, I mean N900. I hear some said it takes forever to open the mail app, lost connect with mail box...etc but can I fix it by leaving Modesty always running with acceptable memory/performance loss? And what's about Ovi mail service? Can I replicate my smooth experience by replacing gmail with ovi mail (of course I prefer not)?
And please no more sick joke about login and reading in X-term. As much as I love those nice, clean command line screens over GUIs , for a mobile mail client it's simply not feasible, ever. This is the only question before I take the plunge and ditch Iphone for good and buying N900 to be my only device. Thank you all.

P/S : I want to say this community is really incredible, to the point I'm not hesitate a bit about future support knowing Maemo is officially dead.

if you live somewhere that you are able to use Nokia Messaging (it's not officially available for all countries/operators, although you can get around that by temporarily swapping out the SIM for one from a supported country/operator) then you can set up gmail within your NM account and it works very well (in my experience) for push email. I have the native email client always open on my device (no memory/performance issues) and I get push mail instantly (often before it hits gmail on my desktop PC). This config covers 99% of my needs - for the other 1% I just log into gmail on the phone browser.
I believe that there can be problems if your gmail inbox becomes excessively large, but that is down to you to manage.

Modest has been fixed, search for a topic called 'Modest fixes'.

yeah theres a faster modest available, not perfect but damn good, and coupled with nokia messaging's push email my n900's email capabilities kick ***!

e: oh and inbox in a couple of clicks? if you get email in press the alert that pops up for a few seconds and its one click to open the mail. couple more if you have multiple emails though.

it would really help if you could post short and concise. it took me some time to find your actual question inside that long babbling of green fields ...

how? i searched for hints how to use something other than modest or claws, preferably pine or such, but did never see any real mentioning including sources for packages.

Quck question..
so setting up the email client provided in the phone is not actually push email? do i need to go thru nokia messanging? I did for my 5800 but not for my n900 using what is provided.
Thanks
Bob

hi bob, correct (at least for gmail anyway) - if you just setup gmail by selecting it directly form the list on the inbuilt email client it will poll - i.e."pull" email at intervals which you define (say, every 5 minutes or whatever); NM supports "push" via IMAP such that mail sent to your google account is delivered to your phone as soon as it hits the google servers. I only use gmail, so I can't speak for other mail providers.

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=44287&page=8

@arne.anka: Second post from top. Initially I thought that poster joked but he seemed to hold on to that idea quite seriously :-|
Alpine is a good client if you're sitting before a desktop all day long and that's about it. Of course I don't know your working pattern but this day and age I can't imagine anyone buy a 3.5" touch screen mobile device and using it for text based mail.

@Pigro: Happy to hear about a feasible solution! Yes I can use Nokia Messaging in my country and I manage to keep mail boxes not excessively large. But does it work correctly? For example right now all incoming mails to my@account.one and my@account.two are automatically forwarded to my@gmail.com then pushed to phone, when I reply a mail which initially headed to my@account.one then its "From" field only contain "my@account.one" and certainly not "my@gmail.com". If I go your way then what will be the position of my@ovi.com in that chain? Do I need to break this gmail-centered setup? Of course I'd prefer not because it've been working very well for me.Thanks.

nokia messaging doesn't require an @ovi mail address. Just register to use NM and then choose NM as your provider when setting up email on the N900 client. Once NM is set up you just add the @gmail account (NM can be set up to collect and display mail form multiple email accounts, but in your case just your gmail acct is all you'll need).

I'm not clear whether you want replies from N900 to emails originally sent to your my@account.one to be sent from that account or from gmail - I think probably they'll come from gmail, suck it & see.

Sorry if I wasn't clearer, I definitely want replies send from those "real" accounts, gmail is just an intermediary tool and it'd be invisible as much as possible. I think I'll try it before decide on buying, I find it hard to shell out half a thou just to suck it and see. Will report soon. Thanks for your help.