i have three computers running outlook 2013, and two android devices with activesync clients on them. all connecting to a Hotmail/outlook.com activesync account.

if I create a task on any of those devices, and I give that task a reminder but no due date, the task successfully syncs everywhere, to the outlook clients and the activesync android devices. but the reminder does not sync anywhere. and of course the reminder also does not appear in my tasks view on calendar.live.com.

if I add a due date to the task on the device where I created it, the due date and the reminder sync out to all the devices and calendar.live.com. 

(if I instead add a due date [and a reminder] to the task on a device other than the one where I created the task, I have inconsistent results with the due date and reminder syncing. but this is not a huge concern.)

I also just noticed that if I manually add a task on calendar.live.com, the "send reminder" field is greyed out until I put a due date on the task.

coming from an Exchange world where I have for years given myself tasks with reminders but no due dates just to get a ding Monday morning for an idea I thought of late Friday afternoon, and the reminders always sync to various devices, clients, and webmail, this seems odd to me.

is this a bug in activesync, or at least in outlook.com's implementation of it? or some incompatibility with outlook.com's special notification setup? or is this by design?