[missing-sync-pocketpc-talk] Random thoughts from a potential purchaser

[Jim Robertson]

I've been a Mac user since 1984. As such, I've seen two decades of PC-only
stuff that I often wished I could have access to. Only a few times have I
jumped, and that's been to purchase Virtual PC, and later to give up on Palm
(because they never acknowledged that most of us have more than one address
- we live and work in different places). Accordingly, I bought an HP iPaq.

I made the mistake of buying an early iteration of PocketMac, which required
me to use the terminal to enable communications with the device and even
then caused all manner of problems. I read public traffic from/to the
company, but I don't see much from happy customers.

Now it seems there's hope. I'm quite impressed by the participation of
Mark/Space staff on this list. They're announcing when they've verified
bugs. They're making suggestions in public.

It strikes me that anyone purchasing a Windows Mobile device EXPECTING
seamless integration with a Mac faces high probability of some
disappointment. After all, the products involved, from both the Windows and
Mac sides, are engineered with no plans to make such communications
possible, let alone easy.

That said, I'm encouraged by what I read here, and may leap soon to a
purchase. Before doing so, I would like to make a few specific suggestions:

1. The digest email list is hard to read as threads because the subjects
that extend to more than one line add special characters at the linebreak. I
can't think of ANY other digest I subscribe to that suffers this glitch.

2. The suggestion that Mark/Space offer a demo (perhaps time limited, or
number of syncs limited) is right-on. Posts stating "it didn't work for me"
might replace some of those entitled "untested crap" were such a demo
available.

Because I use Entourage on the Mac, I'll follow the email list a bit longer
before taking the plunge (unless a demo is offered). I'm particularly
interested in synchronization of notes fields in Entourage contact records
and success/failure stories in synchronization of multi-day and recurring
appointments.


Jim Robertson
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