The Pre's Kinda, Sorta ActiveSync Support Causes Some Device Returns

Oh, oh. It appears Palm released the Palm Pre not quite "fully baked." It appears that many users trying to provision the device to use their Exchange server at work are having difficulties, because the Palm Pre doesn't support all the security policies of Exchange.

The problem reportedly lies in the lack of support on the Pre for Device PIN and Remote Wipe. Exchange servers that require that will not allow Pres to provision. If you try to provision, you'll get the message:

"The mail server requires security policies that are not supported."

If your Exchange server admin changes a setting such that devices that do not support those policies will be still be allowed to provision, you'll be OK. Otherwise, you're stuck waiting for Palm to come out with an update that adds policy support for those options to the device.

Palm's already released a 1.02 firmware upgrade (OTA) last weekend (but no go for adding support for these policies). Apparently, Palm has licensed the ability to use these security policies, but eschewed implementing them due to the consumer focus of the Pre. It's also possible that it was a time-to-market decision.

The question is: if you're going to advertise ActiveSync support, shouldn't you support it completely? Reports are that some are returning the devices already over this issue.