The Sikh Geek

I finally got a Orange SPV C600 device after having initially considered the SPV M5000. The C600 is a Windows Mobile 5.0 which has a standard phone keypad, so it’s basically more phone like rather than PDA like. It doesn’t feature 3G or EDGE (which is an enhanced version of GSM) or WiFi but is a GSM/GPRS device, so it’s not going to have the fastest datarates in the world. Seeing as I already had a Dell Axim x50v PDA (upgraded to Windows Mobile 5.0), then I thought I would go for the C600 for it’s more phone like portability. I think I made a wise choice as apparently the battery life on the M5000 is quite poor. Also, I can use the C600 as a GPRS modem for my PDA/Laptop using the bluetooth connection. The Business 120 plan, to which I subscribed, gives me 120 minutes and 4 MB of data per month for a monthly fee of £30 (inc vat) and you get the phone free!

Setting this up for syncing with my SBS 2003 server was really quite easy. You need a SSL certificate from a trusted third party and I used GoDaddy. The Turbo SSL Certicate is $19.99 per year. I set up a subdomain of iqubed.biz which I pointed to the static IP address of my SBS 2003 server. I followed the Microsoft Technet guide to deploying Windows Mobile 5.0 on SBS 2003. The SSL certificate is requested and processed entirely online and an authentication email is sent to the registered owner of the domain. You simply click on the authentication link on the email received (assuming you are the owner of the domain). The certificate is emailed to you and is installed on the SBS server and then you configure the “server source” on Activesync on the Mobile Device and that’s it. It worked first time and now I have mobile access to email, contacts and calendar. The whole process took about an hour to do.

I’ve found that you can’t use the self signed certificate because Windows Mobile 5.0 is stricter security wise and doesn’t import the client side certificate (maybe there is a way around this?). With a trusted third party certificate you don’t import anything on the client side.

The C600 has Microsoft Direct Push Technology and with Exchange SP2 installed on SBS 2003, email can be automatically synced to the mobile device. This basically gives you the same functionality as a Blackberry.

I also set this up today for a client who had an Orange SPV M3100. I had implemented 1and1’s Hosted Exchange Service for them and again it was really easy to set up and worked straight away and it also supports the direct push technology.

Access to your information anytime and anywhere really is a reality with SBS 2003. One of the reasons for doing this is so that I can show potential/existing clients the mobility features of SBS 2003.