I use MS Outlook as my desktop client for email, calendar and contact info. Through third party apps (Fonebook) I can even download my friends Facebook images, and birthdays into my Outlook, as well as updated contact info. Fortunately the Pre does away with local storage of data, and puts it all in the "cloud" meaning you can sync all your accounts (Facebook, Google, Palm for now) with Synergy without every truely storing a contact on your Pre (you have access even offline, but they continuously sync when you have a signal).
The fact that Synergy is cross platform, meaning it doesn't require an specific desktop operating system is ground breaking. Palm allowing PRE to be virtually OS independent using Synergy via the "cloud" is something that should both separate it from the competition and also force the competition to do similar things (competition is good!).
Unfortunately, not everyone has there data already in the cloud (Google or Facebook), and in my opinion Google's weakest application is Google Contacts. Plus, Google by default adds every email address you ever responded to you your contacts. Finally, the Pre is still being tweaked, and currently you can only select to sync all or none with Google and Facebook.The means if you are someone that friends every person you meet in life or online through Facebook you could have 500, 1000, or even 5000 contacts that you actually don't really know or need contact info on floating around your Pre. Google is just as bad when email replies are factored in.
So until Palm updates the Synergy portion of the Pre to break down contacts and/or selectively add groups of contacts, I will not use Google or Facebook with Synergy. .
What I did to solve the problem was sync my Outlook one last time with Facebook, then I did a 1 time, 1 way sync using Palms data migration utility for the Pre with Outlook to my Palm profile on the Pre. This is now synced with my Palm profile in the cloud. For the time being my Palm profile is my only contact database, but it's pretty accurate and essentially includes Facebook since I was able to update Outlook with Facebook using the Fonebook utility.
Palm truely has a cutting edge product and some head turning features, but the WebOS still is in it's early stages and not everything is perfectly sorted out, so for the time being little adjustments must be made to make the most of the WebOS and Synergy!
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I've seen reveiws of this Palm Pre before; yours fits in quite well with them. My question is apps (?) -- that's a long-term question that I'll have to wait to see what develops; in that regard, I have a bit of sckepticism with it going up against the Google G1 and Apple iPhone; but time will tell.
ReplyDeleteBTW, it does run a desktop OS: Linux.
Regards