[missing-sync-palmos-talk] Entourage and Tungsten T3

[Paul Berkowitz]

On 2/8/05 11:39 AM, "Chris Ridd" <chrisridd at mac.com> wrote:

> On 8/2/05 6:55 pm, Michael Griffith <m.griffith at mary.acu.edu.au> wrote:
> 
>> Microsoft has specifically said that while there is some limited
>> synchronization possible between Entourage and the "newer" palms, Palm OS,
>> after 5.2 changed its category names thus making a clean sync impossible.
> 
> Is that the "data loss" problem mentioned on
> <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/palm/note/00a.html> ?

Yes. Basically, Entourage just goes on synching the data which Palm OS 4
permitted - so no second postal address, no category for calendar events,
etc. The "data loss" would come about if you make any modification on the
Entourage side and then sync back - the second postal address would be lost
from the Palm (and it would never have synced to Entourage in the first
place). If you use Entourage as the only place you enter data, you won't
lose anything from Entourage.

Palm (neither PalmOne nor PalmSource) ever notified Microsoft  Mac Business
Unit in advance that they were changing their  syncing formats in OS 5.
MacBU never found out until after the new Palms with OS 5 were released,
which was far too late in their cycle for Office 2004 to do anything about
it except prepare that alert. It's a real shame, since Palm obviously did
communicate with Microsoft Outlook, and Entourage uses the same fields as
Outlook does, or enough of them. Pam evidently didn't even think of
notifying MacBU. (I think that on the Windows/Outlook side, syncing with
Palm may be outsourced to another company : there's big business in it.)

I would really hope that now that Mark/Space Missing Sync has officially
taken over Mac synching to Mac, and must have some sort of arrangement with
Palm, that Palm will at least notify Mark/Space in future when they're
planning a change to their OS, and that Mark/Space in turn would notify
Microsoft and other desktop PIM application makers as well as Apple so that
accommodation can be made in good time. It's in everyone's interests to do
so, and Mark/Space is certainly nothing if not on the ball. I still worry
about Palm though...

-- 
Paul Berkowitz