So I’ve been looking for a tool that sync’s up my Palm Scheduler/Addressbook with Outlook.
It should be obvious to anyone at this point that involvement of Outlook in the above sentence has nothing to do with any decision that I made, because I would never make any decision that involved Outlook, except possibly “I’ve decided that everyone in the world should stop using Outlook. Right now.” But I digress.
Anyway, I found something that will do that. It claims to be the best thing on the market for doing things like that (which is an easy claim to make since it’s apparently the only thing that does it), but it costs fifty bucks, which I am certainly not going to pay (and which no one else is going to buy for me).
So I kept looking. I actually found something a little later that looked like it might work, plus it actually upgrades the scheduler/addressbook in my Palm so that it does something I REALLY would like it to do*.
Problem: I installed the demo (from a major and reputable Palm software site), went to the source site to buy the full version after dinking around with it for awhile, because I decided it was cool even if it couldn’t sync with Outlook, and found out that the version I had (“available now for $24.45!”) wasn’t available anymore. The new version (with a new name) was, after buying all the optional add-ons that actually made it do what I wanted…
fifty bucks.
Right. So I deleted the demo version and moved on.
Skip to the next day, when I try to sync up my Palm and it starts giving me fatal error messages.
Why? Because the cool scheduling software modified a couple of the appointments in my schedule book to the point where my real datebook couldn’t read them anymore. Ver’ Ver’ bad. Took an hour of resets, memory purges, and HotSyncs to get the whole mess straightened out, and I have a meg worth of extra space on my Palm now, so I know I lost something.
And that’s why I’m very nervous about not having my laptop along with me on the trip to England — because it was the multiple HotSyncs that brought my baby back to me. Dave can worry that the U.S. and England will be at war with Iraq while we’re in Britain visiting many famous, high-profile landmarks ripe for terrorism; I’m worried I might lose access to my tech toys while we’re there. The End.
9 Replies to “Syncing feeling”
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Hmmm. My Palm came with the Chapura sync software to Outlook right along with it. How annoying.
Unfortunately, the various web-based sync tools that you might use for this have all gone pay or else gone away.
As incredibly cool as syncing between the PDA and desktop (et al.) is, it’s sort of like building a ship in a bottle — lots of work to get it just right, occasional disasters that make you start over, and, once it’s done and actually in place, you never, ever want to screw with it again, lest it break.
Miraculously enough, I managed to migrate to my new notebook without any of the sync stuff breaking.
As far as scheduling tools go, yeah, it would be nice to have something that links everything together (there are various options, but they all have their limitations, and some don’t or can’t use the Palm’s standard calendar database, which raises other sync issues).
I think I’m going to stick with my Palm (and associated keyboard) whilst there. I may be stuck with not being able to offload any of my journal entries until we get back, but tough. I’ll settle for the occasional visit to an Internet Cafe to update my blog, and leave all the downloads and uploads for our return.
Famous last words.
War? I’d not worry too much about it. After all the IRA had been blowing the UK up for 30 years. I was in Israel when Israel was at war with Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Jordan. You just can’t think about things like that or fun won’t happen. Even if BAD stuff starts to happen, just stay out of London and you’ll be safe. Tangos only think of high impact targets.
Oh and you might want to tell US Embassy you are there in case anything reallly bad happens.
Well, that makes me feel better … ;-)
I’ve been in England during Troubled times, and been patted down (without nearly the polite smiles of the TSA) by armed guards at the airports, whilst MG-toting gents in fatigues and berets watched. I’m not too worried …
I was in the U.K. and Europe during G.W. 1. Not many problems…felt very safe the entire time (Though I did have the 4 hour DoD DoE do’s and Don’ts class just before going, and that helped).
Actually, being in countries with a history of terror, Israel, Holland, France, UK one feels safer because you know the police and airport security is experianced.
I flew out of Schippol in ’94 and there were kevlar and MP-5 equipped guards everywhere. Safest I’d felt since I left Israel.
The software “Agendus” that I use on my PDA (that syncs with Outlook) does that *neat thing you mentioned. It’s wonderful software. We love it. I have no clue what the cost is. Ryan does all of that for me, I’m a bit spoiled. I’m emailing him now to see if he knows the cost.
What Palm do you have? I’ve got a nice piece of software called BackupBuddyVFS that allows you to take a ‘snapshot’ backup of the Palm (even automatically at a certain time) so that you don’t have to Hotsync your day away trying to get everything back to normal. Of course this requires an external memory card like the Memory Stick on my (and Chel’s) Clie.
Also, you should do as I do with new software. I use POSE the Palm emulator for the PC so I can load software and try it before I load it onto my PDA and screw things up.
Oh, and that extra meg of space that showed up…you may not be missing anything. If you try alot of software out and delete it, some programs leave data files behind that don’t get deleted (and don’t show in the Palm’s delete list. I actually go through mine every now and then and delete junk files with a program called McFile as it shows EVERY file on the PDA, not just applications.
Agendus is actually the ‘new’ version of the stuff I tried. It looks pretty darn cool.
I do recommend BackupBuddy, just as a general backup tool. Sure, Hotsyncing and keeping the installation files will take care of that, too, in case your Palm goes bust, but BB does the whole job a lot more easily.