| Great Program that Is Difficult to Make Work |
I have been using Intellisync off and on since the very early days when Puma (it's manufacturer) was the highest gaining stock on the NASDAQ, or even before. I just had a heck of a time setting it up, and I am reasonably technically adept (and stubborn). I use it to sync Lotus Organizer 6.1 with a Treo 650. As far as I know, Intellisync is the ONLY program that will allow these two programs to talk with each other. I believe it also works with more popular business database programs like ACT.
If you are like me and must use this program, it is because you refuse to kowtow to Bill Gates and the virtual monopoly of Outlook as a time manager and work organizer. Thus, all your life data ends up in this other program. Low and behold, I get a Treo 650 (and the 180 and 600 before that), and my data would be locked in the unit, or rather I would probably have just given myself over to the DARK SIDE of Outlook and Microsoft Mediocrity.
Intellisync installs easily, but then you have to get it to dance between your handheld and your organizer of choice. The program acts by setting up "conduits," which like their name would indicate, are channels through which the information in your handheld is directed to send its synching information, rather than sending it to the Palm Desktop.
It has been awhile since I last conquered this achievement (5/05?). What I can remember is that there was some trouble in getting the program to recognize and work with an already established profile in the Palm. It took a couple of months of trial and error. The technical support people had me at one point going into my desktop registry and editing out the old data. This may have been the ultimate answer, but it drove my tech guy who works on my office equipment crazy as it messed with something else (or I did, inadvertently). Once it is set up, you point the program to the exact database in whatever Organizer you are using (for example, in Lotus Organizer, I enter in the conduit section the address [mydatabase name].or6. And boom! Synching occurs. When it does finally happen, you will cry tears of joy!
Once it works, it works, though I believe that over time either Intellisync or my Palm have slowed significanly, and a 5 minute sync has turned into a half hour plus affair. I don't know whether to blame this on Intellisync. It could be the memory of my Palm, or another aspect of Palm synching, or the size of my database. Intellisync would definitely prefer that you not be working on the computer database while you are synching, though if it takes a while, you may not be able to avoid this.
The program will give you an optional screen where you can resolve conflicts in information between the handheld and the desktop program, which is nice. Usually this works out well. Because there is not really a compatible "Phone Call" function in the handheld, I do get stray "To Do" data synched into my handheld from phone calls I have already made and checked off in Lotus. I consider this a minor annoyance, though I do go through and check them off as "done" in the handheld.
I use version 5.5.1 of this program. If you buy the versions listed here, you may need to download updates, which may be an additional cost. You will just have to try your luck. But if all your data is locked in your handheld or your desktop, it's worth a lot of trial and error and/or some money rather than enter all that data in both. This is why the program first took hold, and I think it still holds true. Until Palm starts supporting other organizers, which it shows no indication of doing. |
4 Rating
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