Living Without Exchange

If you follow me on Twitter, you know I got laid off from my ASP.NET developer job last week.  Thanks you everyone who has reached out to me.  I never knew I had as strong of a network as I did. I guess the big lesson I’ve learned (and not the hard way) is always be maintaining your professional network.  You’ll never know when you might need it. I’ll probably post on my post Northwoods life soon enough, but I’m waiting for a few things to shake out. 

My big obstacle right now is I’m losing my main Exchange account that I used for my Mail/Calendar/Contacts sync for my Windows Mobile Device (first generation Samsung Blackjack).   Mail I’ve got covered via IMAP access to my Google Apps for Domains.  What I’m really looking for is an over-the-air solution for Calendar and Contacts. Since it integrates nicely with my email, I’d like to use Google Calendar, but haven’t seen too many options on the Contacts front.

For calendar, there seem to be a few options, including an official one from Google, but it syncs with Outlook, then I’d be syncing my device with my desktop. After living the sweet life that is OTA sync, I don’t know if that an option.  There are a few others I’ll try out.  If you’ve got some solutions that you’ve had success with, leave it in the comments below.

[Update 10/6/2008] I’ve had a couple people mention hosted exchange solutions, which might indeed be right up my ally.  It costs a little more (especially since Google Apps is free) but it isn’t horrible.