Six months ago I turned off automatic email downloading on my phone; it was one of the best decisions I’ve made. Having access to email on the go is helpful (as is web access), but downloading email automatically does more harm than good.

Instead, consider checking email only when you have the time to act on it, or when you’re looking for a very specific, timely message. I list instructions below on how to disable auto-check…but first, here are ten reasons:

1. Battery life. Constantly checking email kills your talk time. Since turning off “automatic synchronizing,” the battery life on my Motorola Q (Windows Mobile) has more than doubled from “I hate this worthless phone that doesn’t last a day” to “oh, I forgot the charger, no big deal”
2. Setting expectations. Anything you can do to train your contacts that you are not their slave is to your advantage. Writing back in a few hours (preferably at your desk) is perfectly reasonable (my thoughts on being responsive vs being available)–don’t let people think you’re always available for them

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Steve Jobs recently announced a handful of new features (to be released in June) for the Apple iPhone, one of which was support for Microsoft Exchange Server via ActiveSync. At present, Exchange is not really supported on the iPhone. ActiveSync support will help both business users and IT administrators, but other factors may still prevent widespread adoption from businesses.

It remains to be seen exactly how ActiveSync will be implemented on the iPhone (though the Microsoft Exchange blog says that Apple’s implementation will include both HTML email and Auto Discovery for any Exchange 2007 users), but a business user will regardless benefit greatly from automatic (”push”) wireless synchronization of the following:

• Email
• Calendar
• Contacts
• Global Address List

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