Though MS PR people are touting the service pack as a Blackberry killer, you might think from reading some of the announcements on the web, especially on the less technical websites that Exchange ActiveSync is some new feature. Of course, it is not and is already free for Exchange 2003 servers. However, as I've stated before the technology is still somewhat hard to implement and troubleshoot and lacking in features. Hopefully all this is going to change with SP2 and Windows Mobile 5.0. Naturally you will need a device that supports the new mobile OS to use some of the new features. According to Microsoft the new service pack promises the following benefits:

• New seamless Direct Push e-mail experience. No longer is there a reliance on short message service (SMS) to notify and ensure the device automatically retrieves new e-mail from your Exchange server. SP2 will use an HTTP connection, maintained by the device, to push new e-mail, calendar, contact, and task notifications to the device. This new model even works over wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) networks.
• Additional data compression translating to a faster experience when sending and receiving messages and reduced synch times.
• Additional Outlook properties, including support for Task synchronization and pictures in Contacts. In addition, you can now look up people by using the Global Address List (GAL) over the air.
• Greater control and security, including:
  
  
  
  • Policy setting. Force a password to unlock a device.
  • Local wipe. Reset the password after x number of incorrect logon attempts.
  • Remote wipe. Reset remote devices over the Web.
  • New optional support for certificate-based authentication to eliminate the need to store corporate credentials on a device.
  • Added support for Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME) to sign and encrypt messages coming to and from mobile devices.

There will also be some offline addressing improvements, which hopefully will make sense of the current muddled Offline Address Book downloading options.