Sunday, January 4, 2009

Sync

To sync or not to sync.  That's always been the question.

In the beginning, back when I had my first Palm personal digital assistant (PDA), a gift from a thoughtful and generous friend, there was Palm software, which worked OK.  Then soon Microsoft Outlook became the standard.  I don't know why.   Outlook worked OK, better than Palm's software.

Then I discovered a free utility from Yahoo that let me bypass Outlook and sync between my Palm and my Yahoo contacts and calendar.  I attached my Palm to my PC and started the Palm sync.  The Yahoo sync utility was cranky and Yahoo did not support it but I kept it working for years until it finally died.  I then had to return to syncing between Palm and Outlook.  I had to update Yahoo manually.  Not good.

As bad as Yahoo was, at least it tried to sync.  Google's gmail made no effort.  This always amazed me, especially considering that I could never figure out why the in crowd loved gmail.  Threads?  They confuse me.  Yahoo's integration of mail, contacts and calendar is much better.

However, I am tired of being buried in SPAM by Yahoo's indifference.  Plus, in recent months Yahoo has become SLOW.  Gmail hums along, especially in google's browser, Chrome.  I hope google is not stacking the deck.  That would make them evil.

I just want to sync between Palm and my data on a server because I do e-mail using a browser, not by running a user agent program on a PC: Outlook, Eudora, etc.  I keep my messages, folders, contacts, calendar events all on a server so that I can get at them from any computer.  I also want a copy of my contacts and calendar events on my Palm, currently the Treo 700P smartphone running on Verizon Wireless but without the $30 (plus tax) per month data charge.

I am also transferring my domain from Yahoo ($35 per year) to 1and1 ($9 per year).  This is in progress.  Then I can choose an e-mail service, probably between Yahoo and gmail.

I did some searching and found goosync.  Maybe that will do the job between gmail and Palm.  To be determined.

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