[gspam1]

I keep searching the blogs to discover what the benefit is in having your contacts in Google. Just makes no sense to me since you have to manually sync them with Outlook.

I get 90% of my business contact data either from emails or business cards. I suspect most people are the same. Emails are easy, you just open and save the vCard file or cut and paste the text. Business cards I scan in.

What I want then, is to be able to move those contacts into my phone when I travel. Prior to the Pre, this was easy. I'd just connect a cable and the job is done.

Let's say I drink the Google kool-aid, and want to move my private contact info to their system. Everytime I get new contact information (almost daily), I have to export it from Outlook as a CSV file, and then import the CSV file into Google, clean up the conversion errors, and then sync that with my phone.

How is that more efficient?

[gabbott]

There were 2 apps just released today that sync outlook data wirelessly

[Mikest]

so you can make changes from any computer with internet access even if you dont have your phone. And in the case of facebook syncing, so you never have to make a change again, your contacts can make it for you. Maybe thats not a huge feature for everyone but I like it.

There also should be programs that allow you to sync your Outlook with Gmail (and vice versa) if you wanted to

[gspam1]

There were 2 apps just released today that sync outlook data wirelessly

Yes, and I intend to buy whichever one works. I haven't been able to get the beta of PocketMirror to work yet.

That said, why would anyone choose keeping the contacts in Google rather than buy a 3rd party sync application? Seems like a lot of people do it for some reason.

I might be naive, but I'm assuming there is some benefit to it?

[Jupiter600]

There were 2 apps just released today that sync outlook data wirelessly

help me with this

yeh but for the pre it only works now for the macintosh (missing lynk)
thats the one that sync everything

the other one only does contacts and calandar

[heberman]

Not all of need to use Outlook.

[zoopra9457]

I keep searching the blogs to discover what the benefit is in having your contacts in Google. Just makes no sense to me since you have to manually sync them with Outlook.

I get 90% of my business contact data either from emails or business cards. I suspect most people are the same. Emails are easy, you just open and save the vCard file or cut and paste the text. Business cards I scan in.

What I want then, is to be able to move those contacts into my phone when I travel. Prior to the Pre, this was easy. I'd just connect a cable and the job is done.

Let's say I drink the Google kool-aid, and want to move my private contact info to their system. Everytime I get new contact information (almost daily), I have to export it from Outlook as a CSV file, and then import the CSV file into Google, clean up the conversion errors, and then sync that with my phone.

How is that more efficient?

Just wondering here... can you use the Exchange Active Sync between Outlook and Google Contacts? I do that with the Address Book App on my Mac. Now, no matter what device I use (Address Book, iPod touch, Centro [not able to get the Pre yet], and/or Google Contacts website) to maintain my contacts, EVERYTHING will get updated. I'd much rather update one device than four.

Since I don't have access to Outlook, I don't know if you can set it up or not.

[gabbott]

That said, why would anyone choose keeping the contacts in Google rather than buy a 3rd party sync application? Seems like a lot of people do it for some reason.

I do it because then I can access my contacts from anywhere that has internet access. I have 3 different PCs that I work with on a regular basis and now I have a phone that uses that exact same contact info.

[ronlongo]

Well, one benefit is that you only need to manage one set of contacts. Any changes I make to my contacts, on facebook, gmail or my Pre and those changes get propogated to the other places where I need them.

As an example, If a friend changes their email address you can enter it into your phone and the cange will go online automatically. Alternatively, if you friend changes the info on their facebook page, the change automatically goes down to your Pre. You don't need to do a thing.

If you don't want to use your Pre this way then don't. It's not like you're forced to. You can just put everything on your Pre (in Palm profile) and ignore the fact that it gets backed up.

[poopsie#IM]

I have been using the "Cloud" for some time now. I have all my contacts, calendar and email on google. I have all my email accounts forward to gmail, then reply from only one location, but the recipient sees it from that particular account, not gmail.

I use Thunderbird on my 2 computers at home, on my portable (USB Drive), and in my office. This is constantly syncing all these things, no matter what computer I am using. I also have my phone synced up to Google, which means that these three things are synced on that also. So, no matter where I am, what device I am on, my stuff is ALWAYS there. And, the best part is that if my laptop crashes, or I do a hard reset on my phone, my stuff is only one click away from being fully synced.

I really enjoy having to do absolutely nothing at all (Connecting my phone to a computer) and it is always up to date. Nothing better in my eyes...

[gspam1]

I appreciate the information everyone. It sounds like a user needs to make a choice between Outlook or Google since they don't play together seamlessly.

With Outlook being the predominant email application in the workplace, it just seems like Palm passed up an opportunity.

If I was using Gmail or a web based email system only, I can see that what you are saying makes perfect sense.

Thanks!

[suzi]

It also allows you a little separation. I don't really want my work contacts on my phone (except for a few of the most important ones). I have about 50 people who work on a contract basis for me at a distance, but I don't need to keep in touch with them outside of work. Nor do I want entries for my shrink, my psychic, my parole officer, or my secret second job in my work Outlook account. :-)

Likewise, I don't want to keep the details of my personal life on my Outlook calendar at work, but I DO need to keep my work apointments on my personal calendar. So some contacts are in the cloud (or they could be on my computer at home, or wherever I want them) and some are in my work Outlook account. The phone is the thing that keeps this all together for me, so that I don't have to constantly check more than one source to see what I'm doing on Friday night or if that meeting was at 2:00 or at 2:30.

[twizardt]

The same people who use AOL will love syncing to the cloud.

[gabbott]

I appreciate the information everyone. It sounds like a user needs to make a choice between Outlook or Google since they don't play together seamlessly.

With Outlook being the predominant email application in the workplace, it just seems like Palm passed up an opportunity.

If I was using Gmail or a web based email system only, I can see that what you are saying makes perfect sense.

Thanks!

Once palm irons out the exchange syncing issues and more software develops, I think the pre will sync well with outlook, exchange and other "cloud" services so all of these will be able to be integrated on the phone.

[nKoan]

I appreciate the information everyone. It sounds like a user needs to make a choice between Outlook or Google since they don't play together seamlessly.

With Outlook being the predominant email application in the workplace, it just seems like Palm passed up an opportunity.

If I was using Gmail or a web based email system only, I can see that what you are saying makes perfect sense.

Thanks!

Actually, the whole point of Synergy is to get Exchange and Gmail to play nicely together to create one cohesive set of contacts for your phone.

Unfortunately for me, my corporate Exchange server is locked down and I'm not important enough to get an exception on an unapproved device. But, if I did, it would be nice to have my personal contacts in gmail, and my corporate contacts in Exchange/Outlook and have them both end up on my phone in one contacts app. And Synergy keeps them separate but linked (if you have contacts from multiple sources) so they can be synced back to their source without any issues.

I think I read one of the Palm guys describe it very well in one interview. They aren't thinking of contacts as a buckets, but as services.

[jenkies]

One thing that I have not seen anywhere on here is that Google has a program that can be downloaded for free and it syncs your Google Calendar with your Outlook Calendar and vice versa.

It does not sync contacts, tasks, or memos but it is a starting place for those who are afraid of the cloud.

[nKoan]

One thing that I have not seen anywhere on here is that Google has a program that can be downloaded for free and it syncs your Google Calendar with your Outlook Calendar and vice versa.

It does not sync contacts, tasks, or memos but it is a starting place for those who are afraid of the cloud.

And I'm using it at work to get my work meetings into my Pre calendar. That's actually more optimal for me than full Exchange syncing because I kinda don't want my work e-mail on my phone Sometimes a little separation is nice.

[Twisted-D]

If you rely that heavily on outlook maybe you should be looking into a hosted exchange solution? You'd have all of the benefits of the cloud with the same outlook experience you are used to.

[ADGrant]

One thing that I have not seen anywhere on here is that Google has a program that can be downloaded for free and it syncs your Google Calendar with your Outlook Calendar and vice versa.

It does not sync contacts, tasks, or memos but it is a starting place for those who are afraid of the cloud.

If it can only handle calendar data then itt is almost useless. Some of us are not afraid of the cloud, we just think it is not yet ready to take over fron dektop sync.

[Minsc]

I appreciate the information everyone. It sounds like a user needs to make a choice between Outlook or Google since they don't play together seamlessly.

With Outlook being the predominant email application in the workplace, it just seems like Palm passed up an opportunity.

If I was using Gmail or a web based email system only, I can see that what you are saying makes perfect sense.

Thanks!

The problem is that Outlook is a desktop application. If you use Exchange (the server-side component to Outlook) then you conceivably can sync your Pre to Exchange wirelessly. This would be akin to syncing to Google. The only downside to syncing to Exchange is that you are at the mercy of your IT department to some extent, whereas with Google there aren't those limitations.

The reason this all seems cumbersome to you is because it sounds like your contact data is residing in outlook, and then you're syncing it manually to Google for the sole purpose of getting it on the Pre. In a perfect world, your PIM data doesn't reside on a piece of desktop software on your PC, but rather on a server somewhere that is easily accessible from any PC, laptop, mobile device, etc. That server could be Google or Exchange. Once you put your data on the server side (where it belongs), you will realize what a nice convenience it is to have all your devices stay in sync.