GSM & IrDA

[Riba]

Ok, i bought a new mobile phone that could replace the basic 
functionality of my Palm so that I don't have to drag both of them 
around when traveling.

Hell, i knew that I should get one of the phones supported by iSync, 
but i somehow dislike Ericsson products and don't need the bluetooth 
and the rest of the techno buzzwords built in.

Anyway, I bumped into Alcatel 715, and liked it immediately. there is 
no official Mac support, but it imports & exports vCal and vCard 
formats so it should be fairly easy to keep it synched, especially with 
current data from the Palm.

I got the PC software and the serial cradle which is useless of course. 
Last few days I've spent some time researching my options to connect 
this thing to a Mac. In the process I learned that the perfectly good 
IR port on my Lombard is not supported/recognized in OS X, which is 
damn frustrating. I hate Apple for things like these. How hard was it 
to make it work (and it works on Pismo!). As far as I see it, there was 
absolutely nothing wrong with IrDA to replace it with a 
bluetooth....anyway...I figured that maybe I should get an USB to IrDA 
adapter since the Cube doesn't have IrDA anyway so I could us it with 
both machines. I managed to find one such adapter that works on Mac 
under OS X on www.digitalnoma.de, but the ironic thing is that it costs 
the same as bluetooth dongle! :))) Oh well...

I will probably get that adapter at some point and try to use OS 9 on 
Lombard in the meantime, but that would be pretty useless since I want 
to sync my Address Book on OS X. I've taken a brief look at available 
GSM third party software on Versiontracker, there are some interesting 
bits here (OnSync, released today, GSM remote, SIM express). The point 
of this message is to ask for advice from experienced people who can 
recommend a working combination of hardware/third party software so 
that I don't have to wander around trying to figure out things that 
someone else might have already figured :)