The initial release of the Palm Pre caused lots of confusion for Business users as it claimed to have lots of Exchange Activesync support however it didn’t implement (m)any of the IT security policies and was even blocked from accessing Exchange because of this.
Palm has just released an update to the WebOS to resolve some of this. The latest relase brings several additions to the support for Exchange ActiveSync (EAS), including remote wipe, PIN/password requirements, inactivity timeout, improved certificate handling, and more.
Talking to a few friends based in the US it seems many people are having issues trying to get their new Palm Pre to talk to Microsoft Exchange.
It seems that despite marketing the Pre as having Exchange support it doesn’t support the Security Policies. Specifically it doesn’t support 2 of the most basic – Device PIN and Device Wipe.
If a user tries to setup their device to access Exchange they will most likely get this error:
“The mail server requires security policies that are not supported”
This means that if an organisation has an Exchange policy with the Device PIN policy set (the most basic) then it will not be allowed access to Exchange at all.
This is similar to the early implementations on the Treo (Palm OS based) and Centro devices. These were resolved with ROM upgrades released after the initial device release.
Palm/Sprint are taking a lot of heat online about this right now….
I originally thought this was an April Fools joke but it still seems legitimate. Palm announced that the Pre will have a Palm OS emulation application which is great news for Palm users that want to make the leap to the Pre device when it is launched.
Dieter over at PreCentral has provided a video overview of the Pre and if you jump to 9:20 you can see it!
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The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent anyone else's view in any way, including those of my employer.
