| Intellisync for Symbian By Milan Tjioe September 2001 issue: Geek.com |
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Introduction Installation Installation is straightforward and you can select which synchronization support files you would like to install. There are filters for the following desktop PIMs:
After installation you need to restart your computer. Using the Program A nice dialog will remind you of the available program features, i.e. synchronize or configure. It's possible to disable these reminder dialogs. Of course, first-time users have to configure the synchronization process first. Hit the Configure button and see what happens ... a dialog will be presented with four synchronization icons: Agenda Dates, Agenda Todo, Contacts, Email). Unfortunately, as you can see there is no support for Jotter/Notes. To configure synchronization for Agenda Dates, for example, just check the checkbox on the left-hand side of the icons. A selection dialog called Choose Translator will be presented where you can choose between the different available synchronization plug-ins (as mentioned above). If the selected desktop PIM application is not installed on your system, it is not possible to confirm this selection. In this dialog you can also choose to which desktop PIM file your information should be synchronized, or if you choose to, you can only extract or import the information from your handheld to your desktop PC. The above-described process should be repeated for each of the four synchronization items. There is also a Quick Configure button (apply to all). All synchronization tasks use a default configuration, similar to the one EPOCConnect uses. The strength of Intellisync lies in the fact that it's possible to change this configuration. For example, it's possible to configure what to do with conflicting entries (always ask what to do, let EPOC device win, or let Desktop PC win) and to change the mapping of corresponding fields. Just drag the desktop field title to the corresponding EPOC field title. One other major advantage is that it's possible to filter entries for synchronization. For example, you can filter (only synchronize) Agenda entries which contain the name of certain people you work with or contact items with telephone numbers starting with a certain fixed number from work (e.g., all telephone numbers starting with 024-361), so all work entries will be synchronized and all other information will remain private. So, after having finished configuring Intellisync, you can almost synchronize your device to your desktop PC. There is still one important step to take, however, and that is to select the appropriate Agenda file on your EPOC device and to tell Intellisync what to do with e-mails and attachments. Now hit the Synchronize button and start the synchronization process. Note that the first time, synchronization can take some time! Synchronizing my 460 item-containing Contact database and my full scheduled Agenda took about an hour. (The first time I thought the process was frozen, so I killed the program with Ctrl-Alt-Del. Don't do that, as Intellisync can't finish or cancel the synchronization process properly. After this the program will not be able to synchronize anything anymore.) The second and subsequent times, synchronization takes much less time, usually less than a minute or so! I also noticed that my Ericsson MC218 is not supported (this has been confirmed by Pumatech), as Ericsson has made several minor changes to the System, which results in several problems in synchronization. For example, there are some items which have switched names and addresses, and only repeating items are synchronized--all my other appointments have been skipped. It still has to be decided if this device will be supported in the future. I had to get myself a diamond Mako to further test-drive Intellisync, and with the Mako everything worked great and extremely fast. The possibility of synchronizing filtered items is great and also extremely fast. I created a function to synchronize all private items and items before 7:30 in the morning and after 5:30 in the afternoon, and all these items were added within a minute to my new (and still empty) Agenda file. Now my wife can always carry our private appointments with her, too. I missed the possibility of filtering for certain days instead of only dates, e.g., to only synchronize weekends. Unfortunately, synchronization of Jotter files with Outlook Notes, for example, is not supported in this final version, although the beta versions did support this flawlessly. Pumatech informed me that this has been deleted from this version as there still were some instabilities in the synchronization process. Presumably this will be added in future updates/versions. Rating Defense The final decision to remove support for Jotter synchronization and Location field (which had been advertised on Pumatech's website) is very disappointing, and hopefully this will be added again in the next update. Nonetheless Pumatech's Intellisync for Symbian gets 4.5 Geekheads for Quality and the full 5 Geekheads for Geekness. | |