You mean sync to MS Outlook? There's this really cool thing called the internet. On it, there's this great search tool called Google. Using this, you can look up this neat way to sync using something called Google Sync. Hope that helps...
Guys this is the WRONG answer. Seriously for MS Outlook/Office fans, they want SECURE NON CLOUD sync. Palm Pre really screwed over legacy users by providing NO 1st party solution.
If you are a hardware provider and desire to be a SERIOUS player in the smartphone market- you need to do what Old palm/Treo started- and Blackberry, iphone and yes the Evo have continued- and that's a secure local non cloud- 1st party sync solution. Supporting sync to the most popular contact management software today: MS Office is bonus.
By the way just so you don't think I'm some M$ Biased troll- I've NEVER synced to MS Office because I'm a mac guy- but if I ran a phone company- you better believe I'd offer a 1st party sync solution for both Mac and PC, and I'd support 1st party sync to MS Office as well.
Cloud computing is fine for those who like it- but is unacceptatble for MANY business users and Android will lose countless users if handset makers ignore their needs-because you better believe all WM7 handsets will have local secure sync out of the box.
On a side note- Actually WinMo products never supporting Mac is a shame- may sound wierd- but I'd have bought a zune over my ipod classic...but no mac support means I'll never buy a portable M$ product.
Guys this is the WRONG answer. Seriously for MS Outlook/Office fans, they want SECURE NON CLOUD sync. Palm Pre really screwed over legacy users by providing NO 1st party solution.
If you are a hardware provider and desire to be a SERIOUS player in the smartphone market- you need to do what Old palm/Treo started- and Blackberry, iphone and yes the Evo have continued- and that's a secure local non cloud- 1st party sync solution. Supporting sync to the most popular contact management software today: MS Office is bonus.
By the way just so you don't think I'm some M$ Biased troll- I've NEVER synced to MS Office because I'm a mac guy- but if I ran a phone company- you better believe I'd offer a 1st party sync solution for both Mac and PC, and I'd support 1st party sync to MS Office as well.
Cloud computing is fine for those who like it- but is unacceptatble for MANY business users and Android will lose countless users if handset makers ignore their needs-because you better believe all WM7 handsets will have local secure sync out of the box.
On a side note- Actually WinMo products never supporting Mac is a shame- may sound wierd- but I'd have bought a zune over my ipod classic...but no mac support means I'll never buy a portable M$ product.
As for MS not playing well with others you should look at apple for that too.
Just to clarify, I was NOT at all trying to say M$ should support- Apple- I was trying to say I wish they would. I ACCEPT the fact Apple's home installed userbase has been well under 10% of the market for decades- but I wanted to point out I'm not a mac user that hates M$ products.
Meanwhile, I feel Apple should not have to make all their products easily compatible with what is clearly their competition. Matter of fact- with Android coming up the ranks and Adobe being shut out of iphone, I'd LOVE to see a blood feud with Google and Adobe joining forces and shutting down Adobe and google services online for mobile Apple iphone ipad users if they think they don't need Google and Adobe products... we'd see smug Jobs turn into a whimpering puppy then- just like he was when he made a deal with Microsoft to get M$ Office support on mac or face the destruction of Apple.
All that aside- I don't feel 3rd party support is RELIABLE. I think it's irresponsible for a company to release a product without any desktop support BECAUSE most of these databases (memo, tasks, calendar, contacts) do NOT use a strict format. Comma/Tab seperated, VCAL, VCARD these are not field by field mandated formats that sync the same from one desktop software to another or one hardware device to another. BECAUSE of this- business users were VERY brand loyal for fear of corrupting their data. This is why my wife and I have been Palm users for over a decade. Because I'm TIRED of all the lack of support- and because I never switched to M$ Office a long time ago (which I should have done- but that would have meant buying a PC just for contacts!) I've become less attached to my history of contacts/calendar and corruption happens within some fields of data, and I just suck it up- but for my wife and YES THOUSANDS if not MILLIONS of other users- this is not acceptable.
You release a car- you better be sure it can run on the road properly. These handsets that we're downloading OUR LIFE on to... they should have the means by the manufacturer to properly run the phone without being tied to a 3rd party means which is not always reliable and they often blame the manufacturer of the device when a new firmware pushes out that breaks their fragile 3rd party app. (Missing Sync, I'm looking at you)
By the way- if Google ever overhauled their contacts/calendar online- and you had a 4year old google phone that didn't have updates released for 3 years... would that mean your product is worthless?
I'm using a Palm 755 as a backup after my 4th Pre died and Sprint won't replace it. I'm using Palm Desktop which is well over a decade old app- and it's NEVER failed me to sync with every Palm device ever released. This USED to be how you supported and created a userbase... sadly those days seem to be slipping away.
Well I feel Mobile Me should be free and part of ilife- but that's another topic. And I don't think they ever tried to say Mobile Me is a replacement for M$ Exchange either.
The PHONE itself however does work quite well with MS Exchange- so much so- that some very large companies are allowing official iphone use as a business phone alongside Blackberry support. This is something Android has yet to do largely due to a lack of full Exchange support options that aren't part of the OS- some argue Froyo 2.2 finally addresses this- others say it's still not enough. I'm not enough of an IT geek to know.
While I'm not into the iphone or it's lack of keyboard after all these years- if you dig into the email / exchange/ server list of options- there's a LOT more options you can dig into on the handset itself to configure than on some 1year old blackberries! Now THAT does say something- and if you want to compete with that- you need to follow that path or be relegated to being kept outside the ONLY way RIM ever got their userbase- through addressing business users needs FIRST.