.FLYINGHEAD PRODUCT REVIEW
.TITLE Moving from Palm Desktop to Outlook and the Google Apps
.AUTHOR David Gewirtz
.SUMMARY In this article, Editor-in-Chief David Gewirtz explores your options if you want to migrate off of the now-obsolete Palm Desktop to Outlook, the iPhone, the Pre, or some cloud service like Google.
.OTHER
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 About this article
We ran this article last week in OutlookPower and realized it was as appropriate, if not more, for our Computing Unplugged readers, many of whom have been with us since the days it was PalmPower Magazine. So, here you go. Enjoy.
.END_SIDEBAR
Reader Doug Falk has been poking around in the dusty PalmPower/Computing Unplugged article archives, but has a question that’s relevant for today:
.QUOTE I just read your article on using Palm Desktop 4.0 on a Handspring Visor. If I do this, would I then be able to use my Visor on Vista? If not, do you know how to get a Visor to sync with Vista?
Oh, Doug, Doug, Doug. I’m thinking you might be doomed. Palm has given every indication that they’re running as far and as fast away from Palm Desktop as they can. This is a shame, because many of us lived in Palm Desktop for years, even more than a decade. But the days of the old-school Palm handheld that would sync with your desktop are long gone.
The good news is that Palm has an updated version of the Palm Desktop, version 6.2, that will work with Vista. You can find it [[http://kb.palm.com/wps/portal/kb/common/article/33529_en.html|here]]. The bad news is that they don’t like your Visor enough to support it, so you’re stuck at version 4.01, which doesn’t support Vista.
Palm is now offering a [[http://www.palm.com/us/support/downloads/pre/migration/dta_windows.html|Data Transfer Assistant]] that they claim will move your data from the Palm Desktop into the cloud, or to Microsoft Exchange, or into an online service they call the Palm Profile.
.H1 Migrating to Outlook and the iPhone
When my Treo 700p finally died, I decided to migrate to the iPhone. I’m not entirely thrilled with the iPhone, but I was writing some iPhone apps (I’ve published 40 pinpoint productivity apps and made enough to pay for the iMac I use so rarely, I’ve turned it into a fashionable file server).
But I rely far more on my desktop system than I do on the phone, so I wanted to move all my Palm Desktop information into Outlook and, by extension, Exchange. I used a neat little product called [[http://www.chapura.com/pocketcopy.php|PocketCopy]], from long-time Palm developer Chapura. PocketCopy, at $24.95, reads data out of your Palm Desktop and into your Outlook .PST file.
Warning! This is not a good idea unless you make a copy of your PST file!
I am always nervous of programs diddling with my precious PST file, so I created a virtual machine using VMWare, installed Outlook, and configured an empty PST file. I then installed Palm Desktop and PocketCopy on that virtual machine as well. I ran PocketCopy and (almost) all my data moved into the PST file.
The actual processing of the transfer was incredibly easy, but I did run into a few minor snags. I had two rather large Palm memos (turns out these were book chapters, not something I wanted to lose), and PocketCopy missed them. My way of making sure everything else worked was to just compare the Outlook version to the Palm Desktop version, side-by-side for each entry. With more than a decade’s worth of data, it took an evening of monotonous due diligence, but it was definitely worth the time.
At that point, all my data was in Outlook. Now, unfortunately, the iPhone’s applications are particularly stupid when it comes to syncing with Exchange. The iPhone email program doesn’t allow you to collapse folders, so scrolling between Inbox and Sent Items could involve scrolling through hundreds of submenus you’d normally skip over, but hey, we’re talking Apple here, people.
But the contacts from your Palm Desktop do hook into the contacts from the iPhone, as do the calendar entries. Unfortunately, for some reason known only to the iPhone secret police at Apple, tasks and memos don’t transfer between Exchange and the iPhone, so even though they move nicely out of the Palm Desktop to Outlook, you still won’t see them on the iPhone.
We give PocketCopy a solid 3-out-of-5. It’d get a 4, but it missed some of my data, and didn’t tell me. Data loss loses a point every time.
.RATING 3
.H1 Stubborn user tricks
But what if you’re still determined to use the Palm Desktop or your Visor? Well, if you intend to move to the Pre, but want to stay with the Palm Desktop, Chapura may have an application for you. They’re working on a product called Echo, which will sync Palm Desktop 6.2.2 and above to the Pre (unless Palm makes them stop, which has happened before). Chapura also has PocketMirror, which will sync the Pre to Outlook.
OK, fine, but Doug insists on sticking with his Visor and he insists on sticking with his Palm Desktop — and wants to run under Vista. Now what? Simple, download either VMWare or Virtual PC 2007 and run an instance of Windows XP in a Vista virtual machine. If you have an XP license, both virtual machines are free, so it’s a great way to hide your head in the sand and pretend the world is not constantly changing around us.
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
Learn more about [[http://kb.palm.com/wps/portal/kb/common/article/33529_en.html|Palm Desktop versions]].
Download the Palm [[http://www.palm.com/us/support/downloads/pre/migration/dta_windows.html|Data Transfer Assistant]].
Get a copy of [[http://www.chapura.com/pocketcopy.php|PocketCopy]].
Download [[http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/default.aspx|Virtual PC 2007]].
Download [[http://www.vmware.com/download/|VMWare]].
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.BIO
