PDA Forum / Palm / July 2008

Previously on comp.sys.palmtops.pilot, kronstadt@gmail.com said:

Last I checked, you can get each of the individual programs from Office
separately.  But if you want more than one or two, it's probably less
expensive to buy the package.

I too am looking for something regarding Thunderbird and Palm or Pocket PC
but it doesn't look to promising or easy. I heard of a Thunderbird
extension called PalmSync or something but as soon as I read that
it replaces one of the conduits (Contacts I think) plus some not too
positive comments I'll pass on that one for awhile.

Okay, here's a quick rundown on what I've looked at.
Via my versiontracker Palm email notices I found out about dpSync.
This program apparently allows for syncing data between Palm Desktop
and Outlook Express. The program looks and sounds good and seems to have
a lot of features. It's available from
http://www.tateyama.hu/products/palm/dpsyncwab/index.en.php
but one of the user comments at versiontracker had me worried about email
gathering from the website. Also, the Pro version is supposed to be for
sale via palmgear.com or share*it but it's nowhere to be found at the
latter and the former takes you to pocketgear.com where dpsync doesn't seem
to exist.
From the author's website the PalmGear.com actually points to a
store.yahoo.com url which is "under construction".

dpSync for WAB replaces the address book conduit which makes me wonder
then how does data get back to the Palm pda.
That said, if you read all the documentation at the site it seems that
the program is really powerful and the dpSync conduit has a lot of
options for configuring the data just right. Maybe I'll try it.

Okay, now for what I've tried. I came across the livePIM website
( http://www.livepim.com/ )
and these guys are all about getting Outlook and OE data to/from the Palm
and they have a lot of choices.
They offer ExpressMirror which syncs data between the Palm Desktop and OE,
no HotSync/conduit jive here. It doesn't seem as powerful as dpSync but
for my testing it was just fine.
I went into Windows Address Book and wiped out all the addresses (they were
originally imported from Palm or Thunderbird anyway and out of date).
I ran ExpressMirror. The program is ugly in my opinion. Bright, colorful,
and non-standard in its widgets, titlebar, etc.
Anyhind, it presents a list of Palm Contacts on the left and WAB on
the right (in my case, nothing). With everything set to defaults I just
started the sync and everything was now in WAB. You can left click on
any entry and see the details of where the data ended up.
It doesn't import everything but for my purposes it was okay.

I noticed two things:  One is that if I have multiple email addresses in
a Palm contact only one ends up in WAB. Sadly it was the last one instead
of the first. Two is that when checking the fields on the WAB side
I realized I messed up a few of my entries on the Palm side (you know how
Palm contacts have three address tabs - Work, Home, Other - and you're
allowed to change the tabs via a dropdown menu. So now in a couple of
records I had three tabs of Home, Home, Other. On the WAB side, however,
that first tab is still seen as Work and thus any data will wind up in
WAB's Business tab instead of home)

The alternative to syncing data, and what I was going to try first, is
their other program Desktop2Express. This is a one-way program that
converts Palm contacts to WAB. If one doesn't have a need to keep
the two sides in sync then it works just fine.
They also have Express2Desktop for the other way.

After getting my contacts into OE then I was able to try out that
SyncExpress program from http://www.syncdata.it/syncexpress.html
It works, and works well. I installed the
program and it set up extra info into ActiveSync's options as well
as onto the pocket pc. SyncExpress allows for syncing addresses and
the inbox but I only went for the addresses.
I did a sync to the PPC and all the contacts were there on my Axim.

The LivePIM site has all kinds of solutions for the Palm user when
it comes to data exchange. Not just syncing data but conduit management,
CSV/exported data handling, duplicate file and file deletions utils,
and one little program I found useful called JustInstall.
When all you want to do is install a program or files onto the PDA
you sometimes dread having to go through the whole syncing process,
especially if you have stuff like DocumentsToGo and Avantgo. And it's
a hassle clicking and changing every conduit to not sync on the next
go around.
JustInstall handles that. It will turn off all conduits except those
needed for installing files. After a quick hotsync session everything
is reset to where it was. The program also allows for turning on
other conduits during that session so I can install files and also
sync just one or more other items as needed.
Not bad but I'm not sure I'd pay the $17 for that one.
The livePIM programs only have a 10 day trial.

So to summarize, it's possible to somewhat easily get data from the
Palm to OE to PPC. The easy stuff costs money and the free stuff
costs time and experimentation.
Haven't yet tried the free stuff (finchsync, syncML, PalmSync, et al).
Soon, maybe.