[plug] Zimbra

[Brad Campbell]

G'day all,

I've been through just about every phone that purported to sync with 
Linux over the years searching for the holy grail (Reliable Calendar and 
Contacts sync).

When doing my last round of searching I stumbled across Zimbra, which I 
had heard of before but never really looked at. I'm running a small 
company server and I wanted the other guys (windows dudes) to be able to 
use Outlook while I was free to use something sane. On the plus side it 
has ActiveSync compatibility and a connector to BlackBerry Enterprise 
Server Express.

Long story short I installed it up in a fresh Ubuntu VM and had a play 
with it and was impressed enough to request a trial license. I ran up an 
XP VM and installed BESX on it. Then I went and bought a blackberry.

Awesome.. just awesome. Finally I get instant* (where instant is 
anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds) real time sync between my calendar, 
contacts and e-mail.

Now Zimbra is $399USD for a Starter edition (which buys you all the 
features but only 15 licenses) for a year subscription, but only in the 
US. Of course because we live in Australia we have to pay a 40% premium 
to buy it from a local distributor. Long story short I found a bug in 
one of the european on-line e-tailers that would allow me to buy it on 
line and in USD, so I saved a bit on the exchange rate also.

Last night I poked a port-forward from my public IP for SSL and hooked 
my other half's iPhone up using Activesync. Sweet.. It just works.

It's taken since 1996, but I finally have a mostly Linux based solution 
that does precisely what I need it to do.

Yay!

On a weird note, I walked out the door yesterday to find 2 boxes sitting 
on my door mat. An ADSL router and a Wireless router, both brand new 
(one box still had the shrinkwrap on it). No card, no message, nobody 
owning up to putting them there. Looks like I've acquired a hardware fairy!

Brad