Switching from Palm Desktop to Outlook

[randystokes]

In the near future, my firm is going to be making the switch from Groupwise to Outlook. To this point, through many Palm OS devices, I have never used Groupwise's calendaring functions, relying on it only for business related e-mails. Now, however, we are going to be moving everything to Outlook, and will have integration between Outlook and our document management system, so I'm planning to make the move to Outlook. (I've already been using Outlook on my laptop and at home for personal e-mails.)

So, I thought I'd ask folks here for their recommendations. Should I simply synchronize between Outlook and the built-in Palm applications on my handheld? Or, should I make a switch on the handheld to a third-party calendar/contacts/tasks/memos application? If you recommend I switch to a third party app, which one do you recommend, and why?

I've seen that Chapura has several applications that, in some cases, will simply sync your Outlook desktop data with the built-in Palm applications on the handheld, or in other cases, replace the built-in Palm applications on the handheld with their "KeySuite" line of apps, which then Sync with Outlook. Any recommendations or thoughts on these apps or approaches?

Any suggestions, recommendations or comments will be greatly appreciated.

Randy

 

[kglade]

FWIW, stay with the plain vanilla palm apps. All the time you spend downloading, configuring and trying new palm apps can be better spent on GOTD (Getting Other Things Done).

Ken

 

[Anonymous]

Built-in versus 3rd party palm apps w. Outlook

I believe that Keysuite, from Chapura, is far superior when using Outlook to sync'ing with the vanilla palm applications. It is also much better than it's competitor, Beyond Contacts. Some examples:

* no practical limit on number of categories, plus multiple categories (like Outlook).

* much larger maximum note size

* multiple folder support

* nice color options

* Calendar supports Outlook labels and categories

* Tasks support start and end date, and repeating todo's

* Contact linking, plus very nice incremental search

* Notes supports colors

KeySuite is not complicated and does not require tweaking, but it is a better basic suite of applications than the vanilla applications.

YMMV,
Mike

 

[randystokes]

Thanks very much for that description of KeySuite's advantages. That's exactly the kind of info I was looking for.

Anybody else with ideas, suggestions, comments, recommendations?

Randy

 

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure this qualifies as advice (probably more of a rant) but I thought I would share my experiences using GoodLink software. Good is more of an enterprise solution, so unless your company buys the service you probably won't be looking to use it. Nevertheless there may be someone on this list who makes this decision for their company for whom this might be useful.

Goodlink offers push email, calendar, task, notes and contact functionality of Outlook to your Treo 600 (and some other phones/models but I use the Treo so will speak to that). Because its push I get all my email the same time my desktop Outlook client would get it. The contacts list is integrated with the phone so I can call a contact on the list just as I would from the vanilla Palm address book by clicking on the phone number. I can send email the same way by clicking on the email address. Since it is push and pretty much always on, Outlook and my Treo are sync'd automatically. If I decided just to use Outlook and none of the vanilla Palm apps I would never have to sync my Treo manually. Nice!

Now the bad news. Since the phone stays connected with the Outlook server via Good's service, battery life plummets to about 24 hours. Yeah, I know, that's bad. Some other annoyances: you can't search the Calendar (you CAN search email, however). Also, tasks don't show the category, a big minus for GTD users, I think. So I'm forced to use the vanilla to-do app or something else which means I'm forced to sync manually.

The none searchability of the Calendar along with not being able to use categories with tasks makes me give Good a C-, barely passing.

Anyone else using this software?

 

[randystokes]

Actually, this information is very useful. Right now, my firm uses NotifyLink, which works with Groupwise and does pretty much what you're describing. NotifyLink has its own drawbacks, but as I don't use the Groupwise calendar functions, I don't know how it handles calendaring.

After we switch to Outlook, I am expecting we will switch to Goodlink. Illl share your comments with my IT staff.

Randy