Pull Email The Emerging Trend

Electronic mail communication is the most admired form of communication, in today’s tremendously advanced, busy and fast life. Being the most cost effective and efficient method to transmit all kinds of electronic data, it has become indispensable not only for corporate or professionals but for all those who have an inherent need to access their mailbox outside traditional workplaces. With the rapid advancement in wireless communication emails are now accessible not only on the P.C but on the mobile phone as well, leading us into an era of MOBILE-EMAIL.

These days various wireless e-mail solutions and client models are available in the market that provide for mobile email. There are mainly 2 techniques of retrieving mobile emails: The PUSH and the PULL .

Push e-mail is used to describe email systems that provide an "always-on" capability, in which new e-mail is instantly and actively transferred (pushed) as it arrives by the mail delivery agent (MDA) (commonly called mail server) to the mail user agent (MUA), also called the e-mail client. Most of its clients are smart phones, PDA’s, etc. The pull model relies on the user to manually initiate the request for messages to be transferred from the server by manually logging in to his account. The push model works differently and is based on the server proactively relaying incoming messages to the mobile device without any prompting i.e. it pushes the emails to the user’s device as soon as it arrives.

One of the main drawbacks of Push technology is that it works on high end mobile phones. Today, there are many solutions having very high profile brand names providing the Push facility; some can integrate with a number of back-end servers through a plug-in architecture, such as Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino and IMAP/POP3 and some can integrate directly with existing servers without the need for extra back-end integration. But in the end it is likely to come down to a combination of cost, reliability, available feature and ease of set-up and maintenance that sways IT decision makers from its deployment.

But the question that tosses our mind is "Is it really a desirable feature to start with?"

"What could be its consequences?" and

"Does it really make sense from technical point of view?"

As many of you would agree with me that every technical change does not mean improvement. Push e-mail could very well be one of these cases. Push e-mail promises delivery of e-mail to the mobile device as soon as it is delivered to the mail I personally feel that push e-mail is like adding a jet engine to the wheel chair of the elderly. It initially sounds good, adding speed to something that is relatively slow but in reality it does not work out as good as it seems to be.

Where Push facilitates direct delivery of your email in your mobile device, you should remember that it comes with a hoard of other uncomfortable features like accumulation of bulk email on the hand set for which you have to unnecessarily pay download charges. Sometimes it really becomes difficult to find the "ONE IMPORTANT" email from the stock of emails downloaded on the handheld. Secondly, when the email is pushed on the handset, it seizes to exist at the mail server and if you want to access your emails on your P.C , you have to manually synchronize your emails from your mobile device to your P.C. which is another botheration for the user.

Monika Mehra is a lecturer in English at G.C.W College, Punjab. A veteran in the field of teaching and education for the past 7 years is also a patron of technological development. She likes to access emails on Mobile and has greatly benefited from it which she would like to share with her readers. Do log on to www.emailatmobile.com for more details. Contact her at: monika@emailatmobile.com