About email accounts, email folders and backups via activesync on WM6.1

Hello all,

I am totally new to pocketpc's and activesync and I did some reading
on the internet and in help files but I am very confused whether this
info also applies to my personal settings. First I'll tell you exactly
what I have and then I'll ask the questions:

I have a Samsung Omnia i900 smartphone running on WM6.1 that I bought
in Belgium, Europe and I have Proximus as cell phone network provider.
For internet at home my ISP is Telenet which gives me a mailbox ending
with domain telenet.be for which I can create up to 5 email accounts
(I use 2 addresses). On my laptop I am using Windows XP Pro with MS
Outlook 2003. I managed to sync outlook from the laptop to the
smartphone via a USB cable and ActiveSync. The data that I synced is:
contacts, calendar, email, tasks, notes and files, so basically
everything. This was successful and I now have an oulook email folder
on my smartphone that contains everything that my laptop's outlook
has.

In outlook email on my smartphone when I select menu, send/receive is
greyed out. So I assume I have to set up an email account to be able
to receive email on my smartphone. I added this account with the exact
same settings as in outlook on the laptop and named the account "my
email". Now, besides the folders "messaging" and "outlook email" I
also have the folder "my email". From this folder I can click send/
receive and in comes my new mail.

Now the questions:
Q1: When I now click send/receive on my laptop I will get the same
mails, as if the mails were all kept on the server. Does this mean
that my smartphone is by default set to keep everything on the server?
I couldn't find any setting for this in my phone. On my laptop however
I see that it is configured to NOT keep mails on the server. Does this
mean that if I receive mails on my laptop, I will not anymore be able
to receive them on my phone?

Q2: Why does my phone have 2 different folders for email? One "my
email" folder with an inbox, outbox, trash etc and with the account
settings I created, and one outlook email folder with also an inbox,
outbox, trash, and all other folders that can only be synced with my
laptop. Why can't they be merged? Like in outlook on the laptop where
I have one "personal folders" that contains everything and from where
I can send + receive + organise/save emails in separate folders and
even choose to send from one of both email addresses that I have (Send
from xxx or send from yyy). If I now want to add my 2nd email address
into my phone, I will have 3 different folders instead of one! What is
the logic?

Q3: When I want to send an email with my phone, I've tried this via
the "outlook email" folder as well as the "my email folder" but the
message stays unsent in the outbox of my phone and after a minute or
so I get the error message "The message(s) could not be sent. Check
that you have network coverage and that your account information is
correct. Then try sending again.". Did I do something wrong?

Q4: What if my laptop would crash and I want to put all mail folders,
tasks, notes, files back to my laptop OR when my phone has failed and
I want to restore the other way? I have tried this to test ActiveSync
by first backing up my outlook.pst file on the laptop and then I
deleted my contacts from the phone memory. Then I synced and to my
amazement - even before I could check settings in activesync - as soon
as I connected the usb cable it started synchronising immediately and
all contacts on my laptop were deleted!! Thank god I always make
backups! Can someone please explain the general philosophy that
microsoft uses behind this activesync stuff? I've read lots of people
complain that they lost all their data in this process so it does not
seem very safe to me.

I'm going to stop writing now or nobody is ever going to read all this
but I still have a lot of question marks.

Thanks in advance for your help.
.

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