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Syncing Addresses, Calendar, & Tasks with Windows?
DJDaveET asks: "I'm a Windows XP user who has embraced OS X as an additional tool in my arsenal. It's a wonderful OS and the machine is a joy to use. My one major problem is thus -- currently, I'm a heavy Outlook user on my two Windows boxes. I use Outlook to manage my email, my contacts, my tasks, my calendar, etc. I currently use the fusionOne
service to keep those two computers and my Samsung I300 phone all in sync with one another. I need to have that same information on my PowerBook. I don't really care what applications they go into, as long as they're all available. Integrated would be wonderful. I'm not in a position to be able to completely abandon my Windows boxes, so I'd like the Mac to play well with the others. How can I keep the data all in sync? What apps should I use on the Mac for the appropriate parts -- email, tasks, calendar, contacts, etc?"
I would put that the other way 'round, myself. After all it's Microsoft that isn't giving you a platform-independent solution in this instance, not Apple.
Like I always say there are millions of people who use Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Internet Explorer and Microsoft Outlook to do their Microsoft Exchange email and who type things in Microsoft Word and calculate things with Microsoft Excel, etc, etc, etc...and who see no problem with this. I myself do.
OK, sorry about the rant. Email shouldn't be a problem, anything that does POP3 or IMAP4 (damned near anything) should be fine. I recommend Mail or Entourage or even Eudora or Netscape Messenger. Calendaring is a bit harder. It's not too tough to do a one-way, read-only deal for your Mac (just sync your palm on the PC and then sync it palm-overwrites-Mac on the Mac), but having true interactive exchange calendaring on the Macintosh is another thing.
There used to be a Mac Outlook client but it's a dead product now I think. It certainly wouldn't run in OS X, anyway. The Microsoft Macintosh Business Unit is making hints that they are about to remedy this situation but there has been no official word thusfar. I'm betting that in six months they give us a full-featured or nearly full-featured outlook client
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
Actually the Jobs demo is really close to being real quite soon. iSync to the PDA via Bluetooth,(names, numbers, calendar stuff...vCard and ical format...requires bluetooth on PDA) then cradle sync said PDA to Windows box...and pray... New phones and software are going to make your PDA obsolete shortly, so I wouldn't go spending too much time on this... The Sony-Ericsson T68 and others (Nokia 6310) have Bluetooth and PIM functionality built in... Good luck nevertheless.