[P1] iPaq h54540 and a Mac

[david]

On 5/24/03 11:16 AM, "Robert Crawford" <robertc at clancrawford.us> wrote:

> One thing I am totally sold on with the palm is Palm Desktop, it is
> better than any other I have tried.  It is leagues ahead of the
> scattering of apple substitutes (address book, iCal) and  I am much
> more comfortable (probably from over 5 years of usage) with it than I
> am with the desktop that comes with officeX (also there still isn't a
> palm-entrague conduit so it just isn't worth the trouble).
>
There is indeed a Palm-Entourage conduit and it works quite well. I've been
using it for about 9 months. (Don't honestly remember when MS delivered it
since I was using an iPAQ until September.)
> 
> I was really considering PocketMac, what was the trouble that you had
> with it? the biggest trouble I see is in installing software (that will
> always be a bit of a bear with windows based installers).

Where to begin...It is flaky as hell. One day it will sync and the next it
won't. Logging out and back would sometimes fix the problem and other times
I'd have to restart the computer. Given how stable OS X is rebooting my
computer is NOT something I want to do on a semi-daily basis. At least once
a month I'd have to trash the prefs for the program. The company was helpful
for a while but in time faded away as my problems weren't resolved.
Basically I think the programmer *wants* to help but is clueless as to why
the software isn't working properly.

The conduits are just as buggy. Keeping them set to sync between desktop and
handheld was a sure guaranteed method of getting duplicate entries. That is
a royal pain in the @ss. Syncing in one direction generally worked but
sometimes I'd get the warning that syncing failed to complete. Again,
logging out would generally, but not always solve the problem.

So after fighting with version 1 for a couple months and then acting as a
very unhappy version 2 beta tester for a couple more months (not to mention
being down for about 6 weeks while the programmer got a Jaguar compatible
version out the door) I eventually bought a cheap Palm just so I could do my
day to day business. Syncing out of VPC did indeed work but I don't LIVE in
VPC. I work out of Entourage.

I understand that a version of The Missing Sync will soon be released for
PPC devices. When I bought my Palm TT I took a look at their software and
may bite. I like having my Palm's SD card show up as a mounted drive. If
they do as good a job with the PPC software as they have with Palm then it
will be worth considering. But, when all is said and done, now that Palm has
delivered Palm OS 5 there is nothing that the PPC offers that I need.

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All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost;
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davidwb at spymac.com