.KEYWORD outlook
.FLYINGHEAD CONDUIT SHOOTOUT
.TITLE Palm Desktop and Microsoft Outlook go head-to-head
.FEATURE
.SUMMARY It’s a question nearly all of us have pondered at one point or another. Should I HotSync my Palm device with Palm Desktop or Microsoft Outlook? Bob Draper has taken a long, detailed look at both contenders and broken down the pros and cons of each. You can’t afford to miss this exciting battle royal between two information management titans.
.AUTHOR Bob Draper
You’ve just purchased a new PalmVx. With excitement and anticipation you open the box, connect the HotSync cradle to your computer, and pop the installation CD-ROM into the drive. Then, as the installation proceeds, you see the dialog box shown in Figure A.
.FIGPAIR A If you have Microsoft Outlook, you can choose to synchronize with it instead of Palm Desktop.
Many Palm handheld organizers ship with Chapura PocketMirror, a collection of conduits that allow you to synchronize your Palm device with Microsoft Outlook. For more information, see http://pocketmirror.com. Now you have a choice to make. You can synchronize your Palm device with Palm Desktop or Microsoft Outlook. Which should you use?
While this choice may seem like a no-brainer, there are several advantages to using Palm Desktop. After all, although Outlook is a powerful personal information manager, it wasn’t designed from the ground up to work seamlessly with your Palm device. Palm Desktop was.
As for me, I jumped in with both feet when I learned I could synchronize with Outlook. Though I had only used Outlook for email, I figured that if I could retire the Palm Desktop, then I would have one less program taking up space on my already crowded task bar!
Instead, I discovered that synchronizing with Outlook was one of those "the good, the bad, and the ugly" sort of things–and the good, bad, and ugly varied from module to module. If I knew then what I know now, I’d have proceeded a bit more cautiously.
But what will work best for you? The only way you can find the answer to that question is by comparing the individual modules side-by-side. So let’s get going.
.H1 Outlook Calendar vs. Date Book
At first glance, Outlook Calendar and Palm Desktop’s Date Book look quite similar. But Outlook Calendar offers a number of features that make it more functional and easier to use.
My favorite feature is Outlook’s Work Week View, shown in Figure B.
.FIGPAIR B Outlook Calendar offers a customizable Work Week View.
As the name implies, this view only shows the workdays, and it’s customizable–you can specify when your workday begins and ends, as well as which days comprise your workweek.
For example, I work four 10-hour days, Monday through Thursday. I was able to set up Outlook to reflect that. I like being able to look at my workweek at a glance. The Week View in the Palm Desktop’s Date Book, pictured in Figure C, always seemed crowded.
.FIGPAIR C Palm Desktop’s Week View feels crowded.
In Palm Desktop, I used to toggle between the Day and Week Views. Now I keep Outlook’s Work Week View up full time.
Scheduling appointments in either program is a simple "click and type" procedure. However, Outlook offers several additional features, such as the Appointment window pictured in Figure D.
.FIGPAIR D Outlook’s Appointment window gives you everything you need to schedule a great meeting.
As with Palm Desktop’s Edit Event dialog box, shown in Figure E, you can change an event’s name, its start and end times, set an alarm, or schedule repeating appointments in Outlook’s Appointment window.
.FIGPAIR E Date Book’s Edit Event window allows you to make basic changes to your appointments.
However, Outlook’s advantages become clear when you select the Attendee Availability tab. Here you can specify which coworkers need to be in attendance. Then, with a single click, you can invite them. Likewise, when someone sends you an invitation to a meeting, simply accepting it places the meeting on your calendar, ready to synchronize with your Palm device.
Unlike the Date Book, Outlook also reminds you of upcoming events, as shown in Figure F.
.FIGPAIR F Outlook’s Appointment Reminder is always there to make sure you get where you need to be on time.
While this may seem redundant, I find it’s much easier to glance at my monitor than to pull my Palm device out of my pocket every time it beeps. Besides, if I’ve attached a note with a list of things I need to bring to a meeting, it’s infinitely more convenient to select the Open Item button and view my note. Also, if you’re not using Palm OS 3.5, Outlook’s snooze button is a nice feature, too.
Outlook also allows you to export your monthly schedule to HTML, which is a convenient way to share your monthly schedule with coworkers.
Without a doubt, I like Outlook Calendar much better than Date Book. It offers everything that Palm Desktop’s Date Book does, with many additional and useful features.
Verdict: Outlook Calendar wins by a landslide.
.H1 Outlook Contacts vs. Address Book
The Contacts module seems to offer many of the same advantages over the Address Book that the Calendar had over the Date Book. However, this contest is much more evenly matched.
Perhaps it’s only a matter of personal preference, but I think the Palm Desktop’s Address Book view, pictured in Figure G, is much easier to use than any of the views offered by Outlook.
.FIGPAIR G The Palm Desktop’s Address Book view offers easy one-stop access to your contacts.
On the left, every person in the Address Book is listed. The preview window on the right gives you easy access to all the information for the selected person.
On the other hand, Outlook’s list view, as seen in Figure H, allows you to sort your contacts by a number of differing criteria. However, to see all the contact information you’ll need to open the contact.
.FIGPAIR H Outlook Contacts’ list view feels cumbersome.
The address card view, shown in Figure I, offers an easy-to-view list of the primary information for each contact, but you can only sort alphabetically.
.FIGPAIR I Outlook Contacts’ address card view is easy to read but a bit awkward to navigate.
Additionally, the Palm Desktop’s Address Book makes it easy to sort by category when you use the Category dropdown menu, pictured in Figure J.
.FIGPAIR J Palm Desktop’s Category Menu makes it easy to change and edit your categories.
While you can sort your contacts in Outlook in a similar (admittedly more powerful) way, it’s not nearly as intuitive.
Also, assigning and changing categories is a snap in the Palm Desktop’s Address Book. You simply select a category from the category dropdown menu. In Outlook, PocketMirror’s default setting synchronizes your categories to a custom field called the "PalmPilot Category." To change or assign a category, you must either make the change on your Palm device or manually type the category in the PalmPilot Category field, leaving you open to the possibility of mistyping the category name.
It’s also painfully obvious in the Contacts module that Outlook and your Palm device were not designed to work together. As you can see in Figure K, an Outlook Contact card offers many of the same fields as an Address Book entry and then some.
.FIGPAIR K While most of these fields look familiar, there are a few extras too.
Under the General tab, you’ll see that Outlook supports up to three addresses, but only the one that’s marked as the mailing address is synchronized with your Palm device. There’s also a field for a Web address, but this isn’t synchronized with your Palm device either, unless you map it as one of your four custom fields. The PocketMirror help file explains how to do this.
The other tabs present the same problem. As shown in Figure L, the Details tab offers a number of useful fields.
.FIGPAIR L It’ll take some work to get this extra data onto your Palm device.
However, unless you map them to one of your four custom fields, this information won’t be synchronized. As you can see, there are many more than four extra fields in Outlook, which means you’ll have to pick and choose.
Another problem relates to the email addresses of the contact records for people in your organization. As you can see by looking at the email field back in Figure K, my email address shows up as Draper, Robert L., not robert@acompany.com. This happens because each address on your company’s Microsoft Exchange server is rendered in Outlook as an alias–and it’s this alias that gets synchronized to your Palm device. While the alias looks nice in the address field of an email message, it’s next to useless if you’re away from the office and trying to look up a coworker’s email address on your Palm device. PocketMirror 3.0 fixes this problem. You can get the upgrade at http://www.chapura.com/html/downloads.html.
Finally, I’ve noticed that Outlook has the bad habit of rearranging the order of phone numbers and email addresses on the Palm device. For example, let’s say you’ve arranged someone’s information in a particular order (like placing the work phone, work fax, and work email address together, then listing the home phone and home email address). Don’t be surprised if, after several weeks, these entries get rearranged.
So, while it can be nice to have instant access to everyone in the Address Book on your Palm device from within Outlook’s Mail module, there’s a price to be paid. If you’ve never used the Palm Desktop, you probably won’t have many problems acclimating yourself to how Outlook’s Contact module and your Palm device interact, though it’ll take some work to get everything set up. However, if you’ve been using Palm Desktop and are comfortable with it, you probably won’t want to switch.
Verdict: Palm Desktop’s Address Book wins by a narrow (and slightly biased) margin.
.H1 Outlook Task List vs. the To Do List
There really isn’t a whole lot to say about these two modules. The functionality of each is comparable and what differences do exist are minor.
As with all the Palm Desktop modules, the To Do List offers a clean, all-in-one interface. Each To Do item can be assigned a priority (one through five), a due date, and a category. See Figure M for an example.
.FIGPAIR M The To Do list is clean and easy to use.
Outlook’s Task List, pictured in Figure N, looks quite similar to Contact’s list view.
.FIGPAIR N Outlook’s Task List isn’t much different from the To Do List.
As with that Contacts, PocketMirror synchronizes your categories to the custom field "PalmPilot Category." Again, to change or assign a category you must either make the change on your Palm device or manually type the category in the PalmPilot Category field.
To edit a Task, simply double-click the item to open it, as in Figure O.
.FIGPAIR O The Task List item window lets you easily modify any task.
As with the other Outlook modules, you can easily add a note by typing in the note area at the bottom of the window. You can also use the Reoccurrence button to schedule repeating Tasks.
You’ll notice that Outlook only offers three priority settings: High, Normal, and Low. This presents a small problem, as the To Do List on your Palm device has five priority settings. To compensate, PocketMirror synchronizes Outlook’s priority settings by assigning High priority items as 1, Normal priority items as 3, and Low priority items as 5. All To Do items created on your Palm device and assigned a priority of 2, 3, or 4 will be labeled as Normal in Outlook.
Outlook also lets you track the status and progress of your task and set a reminder for each item. Of course, none of these items get synchronized to your Palm device. You’ll also find several additional fields under the Details tab, pictured in Figure P, but none of these items get synchronized to your Palm device either.
.FIGPAIR P The Details tab offers more fields that can’t be synchronized.
What matters most to you? While the Task List offers many more features than the To Do List (priority settings notwithstanding), all the extra stuff won’t be synchronized with your Palm device. Most of those extra fields are just fluff anyway.
Verdict: It’s a toss up, but I’ll give the edge to Outlook’s Task List.
.H1 Outlook Notes vs. Memo Pad
Now for our last match of the day. We’re all familiar with the Palm Desktop’s Memo Pad, pictured in Figure Q.
.FIGPAIR Q Palm Desktop’s Memo Pad is simple but functional.
You create and modify your notes in the pane on the right and use the Category dropdown menu to assign or change categories. It’s simple but functional.
Outlook’s Notes module is intended to function more as a pad of electronic sticky notes. The Note list view, shown in Figure R, allows you to view your notes and sort them by subject, date created, and PalmPilot Category.
.FIGPAIR R This list view is a common Outlook interface.
However, you can’t edit your notes in the preview pane, and there’s no way to edit the custom PalmPilot Category in Outlook.
In order to edit your notes, you must double-click a note to open it, as in Figure S.
.FIGPAIR S Outlook’s Notes look a lot like Post-it notes.
Outlook’s Notes module is not as functional nor as intuitive as the Memo Pad in Palm Desktop, and unlike the other modules in Outlook, Notes doesn’t offer speel chek (oops, make that spell check) capability. On the other hand, none of the modules in Palm Desktop do either.
Verdict: Palm Desktop’s Memo Pad wins, simply because it’s easier to use.
.H1 Now to wrap it all up
As I said earlier, deciding whether to use Palm Desktop or Outlook means looking at all the options and deciding what features are most important to you. Lastly, it depends heavily on how you use your Palm device. If you’re currently using Palm Desktop and it works for you, I see little reason to switch. On the other hand, if you’re new to the world of Palm handheld organizers, give Outlook a try; you have nothing to lose.
Fortunately, this isn’t an all-or-nothing choice. Although the basic installer doesn’t give you the option to pick and choose the conduits you want to use, you can do just that. For example, you can synchronize with Outlook Calendar and use Palm Desktop for everything else.
Next time I’ll discuss how to customize PocketMirror to better fit your individual needs.
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
For more information on Outlook, visit http://www.microsoft.com/office/outlook/.
For more information on Chapura PocketMirror, visit http://pocketmirror.com.
For a run-down of which Palm device models ship with PocketMirror, visit http://pocketmirror.com/html/products/pocketmirror/supported.html#support.
For more information about Palm computers, visit http://www.palm.com.
.H1 Bulk reprints
Bulk reprints of this article (in quantities of 100 or more) are available for a fee from Reprint Services, a ZATZ business partner. Contact them at reprints@zatz.com or by calling 1-800-217-7874.
.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO Bob Draper is a technical writer at Westar Corporation’s U.S. Army Dugway Proving Ground office. He’s also a Green Bay Fan and a certified but mellowing Mac addict. He can be reached at palmguy@mac.com.
.DISCUSS http://powerboards.zatz.com/cgi-bin/webx?50@@.ee6ec96
