is it another white elephant from our friends at Redmond?
I so hope not but i fear it to be true .....
Lemme take you back a few steps my dear readers so you will understand the context of this rant. When ActiveSync 3.x launched I was a happy puppy because I could sync my content my my mobile device. Nothing special here you may say, but there was a very nice little feature is this range of versions that allowed me to choose which contacts from Outlook I wanted to sync to my mobile device. In outlook I categorise my 1,000 odd contacts and have a category called 'Mobile Contacts' for those that I would like on my mobile device. ActiveSync3.x allowed me to choose which categories of contacts I wanted to sync.
Then version 4.x of ActiveSync launched. A new version I say to myself .... wild it must have some new features and be an improvement else why would they release a new version .... well you'd think! But alas it turned out that version 4.x actually was a step backward in a big way because it REMOVED features that were present in version 3.5. The hundreds and hundreds of blog posts that followed seemed to show me that I was not alone in my pain. Now suddenly I had over 1,000 contacts sync'ing with my phone .... ouch!
When Vista appeared on the horizon there were rumors that they had a native sync'ing tool built in that would be a huge improvement on ActiveSync 4.x. Through all the betas and ctp's I was incredibly patient with the product and the interns understanding that everything was still beta so I couldn't expect the world. So when Vista went RTM I rubbed my hands in glee at the promise of it solving all my problems and rushed off, like many others, and installed an offical and licensed version. With it came "Windows Mobile Device Center", the promise of new improved things were finally here.
How sad was I when I found out that WMDC was nothing more than a pretty UI on top of ActiveSync 4. I can STILL not choose categories of contacts I want to sync. I cannot even sync Windows Calendar or Contacts (native to Vista) with my mobile device, only Outlook calendar and contacts. So what was the fuss about?
Am I missing something here?
Is there a way to select which contacts I want to sync and which not to?
Is there ANY OTHER sync tool out there that I can use and put this horrible piece of rubbish to death once and for all?
In fact the UI is not even so pretty .... see the screenshots below.
I mean where is the standard between radio buttons and checkboxes?
Notice how in Calendar there are two radio buttons selected, Whereas Tasks they use Checkboxes. Notice on Calendar I can sync with two computers because of the dodgy use of radio buttons, yet on Contacts when you try this the radio buttons behave as expected, i.e. you can only have option 1 OR option 2. Assuming this is the correct behavior because this is how radiobuttons should behave why the hell can I not sync contacts with more than one machine, but I can do so with calendar and tasks.
Where is the standardisation we have come to love and expect .... has it flown out of the windows (excuse the pun) now that the interns appear to be running the show?