I was pretty happy with my Blackberry and did not have any plans to switch to iPhone but after reading more about it’s new features (such as 3G Speed; Enterprise Integration using Microsoft Exchange; and access to Application Store), my gadget-lover spirit got in charge and ordered me to buy one.

 

I started with calling my near by Apple Store and after the 20^thtry someone finally answered. When I asked if they had iPhones on hand, she told me that they do but added that there was a 3 hour long line wait to purchase one and they couldn’t guarantee availability. She also recommended that I should check availability using Apple’s web site and then make a decision accordingly. Every Apple Store now publishes their iPhone availability on their site. They usually do this after 9pm PST.

 

 http://www.apple.com/retail/baystreet/

 

Based on my conversation with the Apple Store lady, I got the feeling that they had enough iPhones for anyone that is ready to wait couple of hours but they didn’t have enough selections.

 

 

Next morning I was in line (7^thperson) in front of Emeryville, CA Apple Store 8am in the morning. Apple Stores open at 10am so I was thinking that 2 hours of chilly, foggy wait was ahead of me but suddenly they opened up the doors to the store. Apparently, to control the demand, Apple Stores were unofficially opening up early. That was good news.

 

But as I mentioned before, they had limited availability. They only had White, 16GB iPhones available. That was OK for me as I liked the white version more than the black anyway. My only disappointment was about the price. I found out that the only way to get the $299 price ($199 is for 8GB) was, I either had to be a new AT&T customer or hadn’t done any recent changes to my AT&T account. As I added a new phone number to my account a month ago, this voided my discount and I ended up paying the full price of $499 + tax = $540.

 

I spent close to 30 minutes in the store. First 10 minutes was related to rejecting the $60 extended warranty and choosing a belt buckled case for my new iPhone. Rest of the time was spent on registering the phone with AT&T.

 

AT&T asks you to sign up for a $30/month unlimited data plan. This goes on top of your voice plan. Most likely you will also be interested in a SMS plan which starts at $5/month for 200 SMS messages. Otherwise you end up paying $0.20/msg.

 

Once arrived in my office, I started the registration and configuration process using iTunes. iPhone requires iTunes to operate so make sure that you have it installed, updated and ready to go before plugging in your iPhone.

 

Once you connect your iPhone to iTunes, configuration process automatically pulls your email account settings from your email application (Outlook, Outlook Express and more). This is very convenient for non-techies.

 

Currently I do have 3 email accounts: One is a mail2web Exchange Account, the other is a regular myhosting.com email account and a gmail account. For Exchange accounts, iPhone can wirelessly sync your Emails, Contacts and Calendar information using the Push technology. If you are not familiar with it  then I recommend that you read the following blog posting.

 

http://lifehacker.com/398526/set-up-push-email-contacts-and-calendar-on-your-iphone-for-free

 

Not everyone has an Exchange Account; if that is the case, you can easily get started by signing-up for a Mail2Web’s Free Microsoft Exchange Email Account. I guarantee that you will love the wireless syncing with your iPhone. Imagine entering a new contact on the go and it automatically gets synced to your Outlook.

 

Setting up myhosting.com email account using iPhone 3G

 

If you already have your myhosting.com email account setup in your email program then iTunes will pull your account information automatically. In my case it didn’t bring the password, so I ended up entering it once for each account.

 

If you want to set up your email account manually then touch “Settings” button on the “Home Screen”.

 

On the Settings window, touch “Mail, Contacts, Calendars” option.

 

 

If you have other accounts setup then you will see them all in this window. To continue, touch “Add Account” option…

 

 

 

“Add Account” window will present you all the options you have. In our case we will continue with touching “OTHER”. New account window will ask you the following:

• Name
• Email Address
• Password
•  Description

 

Then it will ask for POP3 and SMTP information which are labeled as Incoming and Outgoing Mail Server.

 

 

If you are not sure about these settings then do this: Go to https://support.myhosting.com/ and login to your account.

 

 

  

 

This page will give you all the necessary info that you will need in order to setup your account.

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

Setting up Mail2Web Microsoft Exchange Account using your iPhone 3G

 

Our next step is to setup our Exchange Account with iPhone. To do this simply touch “Microsoft Exchange” button on “Add new account” window. 

 

 

 

You will need your mail server name, username and password. In order to access this information, simply login to your control panel at:  https://support.mail2web.com

 

 

Once logged in, click on “Business Exchange” link… 

 

 

 On the next screen, click on “GO” button (End-User Management) for the user you want to setup the account.

  

 

 

 

Next, click on “View ActiveSync Settings” link for the selected user.

 

 

This window will give you all the information you need to setup your account. The only part I would pay attention is that, in iPhone enter the username as: domain\username

 

 

I hope that you will find this guide useful. I am sure I forgot to mention small details here and there so keep the comments coming. If you already own an iPhone or planning to buy one then visit our Community Portal located at http://portal.myhosting.com and share your experiences or ideas…

Thank you,
myhosting.com Community Manager

 

 

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