Posted on 9 Comments on Real easy question — so where’s the answer?

Real easy question — so where’s the answer?

Here’s the situation: I have a Palm running Palm OS 4.1.4. I sync it with my desktop at home. However, I also have the Palm desktop running at work, just for the calendar (I hate the Lotus Notes calendar, which is what I’m supposed to be using at work).

I would like to have a three-way sync, so anything I add to the work version of the calendar makes it onto the Palm device and my home desktop, and vice-versa-versa. I don’t think I can simply sync it at work and at home (and besides, I don’t want all my OTHER Palm stuff — like my address book and notes — to be on my work computer).

The Palm desktop allows you to "export" your calendar to a file, and to "import" calendar files. Now we’re getting somewhere. It’s not as clean as syncing, but that’s OK. But what I need to know is this:

If I import a Palm calendar file into my existing desktop, does it replace (overwrite) the existing calendar, or does it merge with it?

From a usability point of view, it would be brilliant if it merged. However, after nearly 14 years in the software business, I am under no illusion that any software works the way you want or expect it to. Software designers — brilliant as they may be — often have a really bad habit of designing for what they expect, not what the customer expects.

I should think that a company like Palm is so user-oriented that they would not fall into that trap, but I’ve been fooled like that before. The fact that neither their on-line help nor their Web-based support address this very basic question does not reassure me. Sure, it’s easy to find out how to export and import a calendar file (any idiot can figure that out), but there is nothing, that I can see, that addresses the real user issues of "why" and "what are the ramifications?"

So I appeal to my thousands of readers. Has anyone done this before? If so, what happened?

(Yes, I know that in the time it took me to write this I could have run a test, but hey, then I wouldn’t get to rant.)

9 thoughts on “Real easy question — so where’s the answer?”

  1. You can synch it in both places, and further you can specify on your office computer which information from the Palm should be synched. So in theory it should be fine.

    But even in that case there seems to be a precedence issue, as I did that once and I lost several work appointments without any warning when I returned to synch at the office after having done it at home.

  2. Hey, cool. Thanks, Michael! Unfortunately, that also means I need to get another sych cable. It’s an old Palm, too, using Serial not USB, so I don’t think I can just plug and sych — I think the cable has to be in when the machine is booted. How retarded is that?

  3. As Michael said, uou can specify a lot of things in the sync (overwrite (Desktop over palm or vice versa/merge) and also only some kinds of records (calendar/addresses/notes/draw, etc.)

    If you have only one craddle, I do not see how it is possible. (i would forget the import/export thing, it never worked for me, but I tried with contacts/addresses: total mess).
    I gave you yesterday http://www.lespac.com you might be able to find a used craddle there. Might be almost as cheap to get a used USB palm…

  4. Ed, with many machines you can use Infrared to sync. It’s common on laptops anyhow, and I used that to sync for a long time here at the office.

  6. It’s a Palm M105. Infra-red won’t work for me because my desktop machine doesn’t have an IR output. If you had a spare part that would be awesome!

  9. I have a few extra m130 cradles on hand, but I don’t think they’re compatible with your m105. Sorry. Check around and see if I’m wrong though, which is very possible since I only looked for a very short time.

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