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princealfie

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Mar 7, 2006
2,517
1
Salt Lake City UT
People make such as big deal out of push email. Why is this important? I check my email once in a while but my life doesn't revolve emailing all of the time.

So why is this important? :mad:
 
For your personal life? Not so much.

For corporate America it's essential. That's why you see the suits constantly going for their crackberries. ;)
 
Its probably important to those serious traveling business men who dont always have a chance to open up their laptop and check their email. I know for my boss, he uses his Motorola Q more than his laptop
 
I think it is important even for the common bloke. When I was in Japan my phone had push email, it was pretty much essential to get messages on time. Mind you they communicate through mail mostly anyway, but still.

Plus it saves on battery. On my Treo i have it set to poll my mail every 1min. That kills my battery. If you have the mail coming to you it definetly saves on battery life.

Also, don't assume that because you don't need it others don't.
 
Also, don't assume that because you don't need it others don't.
That's what I was thinking too. I don't understand why the OP used the "mad" emoticon. :confused:

Where I work, I support the servers that do credit card authorization for our 3500 retail stores. If there's ever an issue with one of these servers, I much prefer the email pushed to my BlackBerry (where I have a rule setup that makes my BB buzz and beep in such a way I can't miss it) vs. "just happening to check my email a few hours later" and seeing that we lost $500,000 in sales because of an issue I could have fixed in 10 minutes had I been aware of it.

Obviously my needs are different than the OPs.

To each their own.
 
It's important to me because I've gotten used to it with my BB and I like it.. Simple as that.. Do I need it? No.. But I don't need an iPhone either, but I'd like one.. After having a Treo, with no push mail- and then having a BB with the push email- I defintely prefer to have it.. If the iPhone doesn't have it for my .mac email account I'll probably just keep the BB until it does..
 
But why would anyone get 1000 emails/ day? Isn't that nuts?

I wish that communication were simpler. Less emails = more quality relationships.
 
But why would anyone get 1000 emails/ day? Isn't that nuts?

I wish that communication were simpler. Less emails = more quality relationships.

Judging by that, I assume you don't work? Atleast not in the corporate world. We would all like to have less emails, but life/work is not that simple. ;)

Just to give you an example... I "work" in the corporate and I'm a graphic designer. I make up a presentation and I have to send it to everyone for approval, I mean everyone (CEO, CFO, COO, Geologists, strategic development, IR and etc...I can go on) each one of them replys with just one email, I have 6 emails, and one of them replys to that email and so on. You know where I'm getting at? And dont get me started on press releases and lawyers. :mad: :D
 
lets apply math to your claim

My boss gets over 1000 emails a week. If he doesn't check his emails often, it gets backed up.

Let say these 1000 emails are legitmate (no penny stocks or Nigerian dissendents) and assume your boss works 6 days a week. That means he gets 166 emails per day. Assume it takes him 2 minutes to read and reply to an average email which equals to 5.53 hours per day doing emails. That is a lot of time spent on emails, but I suppose it is entirely possible in those rare occupation.

Cinch
 
I get roughly 175+ emails a day at my company. I RESPOND to maybe 75 of those daily. The other 100 are usually FYI/CYA emails that I just quickly scan and file away. I'm on the road quite a bit for work and need to be able to receive email at any time. Pulling out my laptop and finding a wifi connection is not always practical. Push email is essential for business road warriors - a novelty (for now) for the average user.
 
Let say these 1000 emails are legitmate (no penny stocks or Nigerian dissendents) and assume your boss works 6 days a week. That means he gets 166 emails per day. Assume it takes him 2 minutes to read and reply to an average email which equals to 5.53 hours per day doing emails. That is a lot of time spent on emails, but I suppose it is entirely possible in those rare occupation.

Cinch

and thats a lot of assumption. there are a lot of emails as others have said that are either glanced at and filed away, glanced at and forwarded, etc. and even some read and replied to can happen a lot faster than 2 minutes. 200 actual emails a day is just not that unusual anymore.
 
Here's how it breaks down where I work (amongst the people with push-email, anyways).

And if you tried to take their push-email way, none of them would have a problem with trying to punch you. :D
 

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It's essential for business - record keeping, mass comunication, sending docs etc. As far as personal, yes I'd have to agee it's beingin to become a little tiresome.. I especially hate evite.
 
That's what I was thinking too. I don't understand why the OP used the "mad" emoticon. :confused:

Where I work, I support the servers that do credit card authorization for our 3500 retail stores. If there's ever an issue with one of these servers, I much prefer the email pushed to my BlackBerry (where I have a rule setup that makes my BB buzz and beep in such a way I can't miss it) vs. "just happening to check my email a few hours later" and seeing that we lost $500,000 in sales because of an issue I could have fixed in 10 minutes had I been aware of it.

Obviously my needs are different than the OPs.

To each their own.

Exactly I don't know why he is so upset by this. I mean if the OP doesnt want to use it, don't use it. But heck even if you only get 1-2 emails a day I think it would be nicer if it came to my phone instead of me polling for it myself.

It is not a feature that effects you in anyway if you decide not to use it. There are many valid reasons for people to have it.

And like somebody said, if you have a job where email communication is big having the email come to you nearly instantly is prettty important.

Like today for example. I got an email from my uni telling me there was no school. Guess what, I didn't know til I was on the bus since it wasnt pushed to me.
 
Read the thread, and I'm surprised that the real answer for "why is Push good" hasn't come out.

Think about what happens back in the old days of dial-up. If you want to check your email, you invoke your internet connection, run your mail program, and then tell it to go see if there's anything new.

You then sit there and wait, while the system puuuuuuulls the data across your connection.

The slower your connection, the longer you have to wait.

Fast-forward to Push.

The system does its routine check-email sweep every X minutes and if it finds something, it checks to see if your Blackberry (or whatever) is on the network, and if it is, it sends it right away.

You now get around to thinking about if you got any email, so you go and look - - and lo and behold, it is already downloaded. No waiting time for you.


Now think about it from the service provider's perspective: they have a half million phone calls happening each minute, and there might be too much traffic right at the moment, particularly if you and 3 other guys in your business meeting all take a coffee break at the same time and swamp the network with your pull requests. If the provider runs a push system, they can do some load balancing, because normal email traffic isn't an immediate priority like voice or a "pull" command, so they can just put it in a que for 30 seconds for a break in traffic - - afterall, its not a big deal because you're not sitting there waiting for it, drumming your fingers on the table as you would be if it were on a pull system.

So to make a long story short, push makes load balancing easier and gives you a more instant response when you check, because its already there.


-hh
 
People make such as big deal out of push email. Why is this important?
Actually, it's really important for the service provider. Polling the email server every x minutes is a huge waste of computing resources because most of the time there isn't any new mail there. Open connection, login request, authenticate, get list of emails, send list to client, wait for action, logout request, close connection, etc.

By using push, the email server only has to work when you have email. With the polling method, the server has to do a bunch of work for zero benefit to the user. It's vastly more efficient, which means cheaper in terms of server computing power and network traffic.
 
as a college student, email on the go would be CRUCIAL for me. i get tons of email all day.
Yup. At my college the policy is that an email is the same thing as your teacher calling you personally on the phone. \

I actually did recieve an email monday morning form my teacher saying we didn't have to come to our 9 o'clock class. i'm glad I checked my mail.
 
It's important to me because I've gotten used to it with my BB and I like it.. Simple as that.. Do I need it? No.. But I don't need an iPhone either, but I'd like one.. After having a Treo, with no push mail- and then having a BB with the push email- I defintely prefer to have it.. If the iPhone doesn't have it for my .mac email account I'll probably just keep the BB until it does..


I totally agree, I am 17, and I use it all the time....
 
Let say these 1000 emails are legitmate (no penny stocks or Nigerian dissendents) and assume your boss works 6 days a week. That means he gets 166 emails per day. Assume it takes him 2 minutes to read and reply to an average email which equals to 5.53 hours per day doing emails. That is a lot of time spent on emails, but I suppose it is entirely possible in those rare occupation.

Cinch

2 min is way too long to spend on each email...i get 50-100 a day, and i delete about 1/3 after 2-3 seconds, another 1/3 after 10 seconds, and the final third i might read, file, and possibly respond to.

i'm lucky that at my age (24) and position, i don't get that many emails. my bosses get so much that i think it would drive me insane to be in their position.
 
Actually, it's really important for the service provider. Polling the email server every x minutes is a huge waste of computing resources because most of the time there isn't any new mail there. Open connection, login request, authenticate, get list of emails, send list to client, wait for action, logout request, close connection, etc.

By using push, the email server only has to work when you have email. With the polling method, the server has to do a bunch of work for zero benefit to the user. It's vastly more efficient, which means cheaper in terms of server computing power and network traffic.

Either way, the process has to occur. With push email, you do the same process EACH time an email arrives. If you poll, you do the process once per X number of emails.

Think about it; if you receive say 10 emails in a 5 minute span, you auth a single time. If you go the push route, you auth 10 times for small bits of information instead of a known block of info

Polling method assumes you will receive at least one email during a given time period. If you take both processes, however, you have the best of both worlds.

What I mean by this is:

You can select to have push email on the Email server for emails from:

Your boss
Your wife
Your boss's boss
Someone critical to a project on your team
etc.

For all other emails, poll every 20 min.

This way, you get the noise on a 3x's per hour basis, allowing you to respond within 30 min if necessary.

With all people on the polling method, you are available to them and have the appearance of being highly available :)

Both methods have their benefit, but clearly push is indeed critical to most mobile professionals. Think sales, marketing, etc.
 
I have a BlackBerry Pearl and Push is no longer necessary. With T-Mobile at least, I can use my pop3 e-mail accounts and they get picked up by my BlackBerry sooner than they hit my Mac.

Push is a thing of the past. But then again, corporate America is just realizing there's a new BlackBerry with a trackball in the middle instead of a scroll wheel on the side. The CEO's are going to have to re-learn BrickBreaker :eek:
 
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