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Jun 26

On Calendars, Contacts, Email and Anti-Microsoft People

Seriously?  You still read my blog?  Shocking.  I’m just writing cause I want to vent.

This morning I went to Phil Windley’s CTO Breakfast which is a breakfast meeting of a great group of techies.  I haven’t been in a while -I haven’t done much of anything public lately, except blogging on Utah Preppers, and I was pretty surprised by what went on.  This tweet from Phil Windley kind of summarizes it:

Big topics of discussion at #ctobreakfast: calendaring and syncing contacts.  Funny how these are still broken for most people.

Here’s the thing – they’re not broken for me, haven’t been for YEARS.  The only people they’re broken for are those with so much Microsoft hate that they refuse to use their software.  I’m blown away that so many of the techies at that meeting are having problems with this!  There is a very simple and elegant fix – it’s called Microsoft Exchange.  Here are the complaints from the meeting:

  • My calendar doesn’t sync to my phone (in real time)
  • My contacts don’t sync to my phone (from mail clients etc)
  • My Email doesn’t sync to my phone (using gmail)
  • When someone updates their contact info, I don’t receive it (and Plaxo tastes bad because of a mistake 3 years ago)
  • gmail and google apps uptime isn’t that great

Seriously????  Really??  All these great techies and you’re all living like this?   I can’t believe that you haven’t heard of this hot new crazy named web 2.0 super awesome web service called Exchange!  Yeah, it’s actually been around for years – which is how long I’ve had all of the above issues resolved on my phone.

But it seems that the hot sexy thing is to use fragmented half-built “web services” that aren’t compatible with each other and don’t work but HEY!  THEY’RE FREE!   ….. Well, hope you’re enjoying what you pay for.

Oh yeah, then there’s the stupid iPhone – the over-hyped piece of garbage that can’t do half of what my NonIphone  can do.

Here’s what I do:

  •  I use a Windows Mobile phone
  • I use Outlook Mobile on my phone
  • I use Plaxo with a LOT of my contacts
  • I use a hosted Exchange Service for 10 bucks a month
  • I use Outlook on my desktop and my laptop

What does this give me, all for 10 bucks a month?

Any time I add or change a contact on my phone, laptop, desktop or web outlook – the change automatically and instantly shows up on my phone, laptop, desktop and web outlook.  Any time I read an email on any of the previously mentioned devices – it automatically and instantly shows up on all the other devices as read.  Any time I schedule an appointment on ……. you get it?  It shows up.

Uptime has never been a problem for me actually – my email has NEVER gone down in the years that I’ve been using 4Smartphone.  It’s professionally managed and when everyone’s hollering about gmail being dead, I’m happily sending email.

Sharing calendars was brought up – everyone uses google calendars for that.  Yeah, me too.  But there’s also an Outlook sync that google provides so any changes that someone makes to my public google calendar …… automatically and almost instantly shows up on my phone, lap……

Tethering to your laptop for an internet connection was also brought up – you have to hack your stupid iPhone to get that to work – I use AT&T too iPhone people.  My phone natively tethers to my laptop – always has.  My phone has interactive gps with google maps too – I believe you finally sort of got that with the latest iPhone – hurry up and spend $400 bucks on the newest one!!!

By using Plaxo, many of my contacts are automatically updated in Outlook when they change their personal settings (like phone number) in Plaxo.   And guess where that goes?  To my phone of course.  So to recap that – if Johnny changes his phone number in Plaxo it automatically changes it in ALL my contact lists so next time I call Johnny I’m calling his new number without even realizing it.

So Phil, Sam, et al – syncing isn’t broke and waiting for a fix – it’s been available for a LONG time, it’s just not available to you because you hate Microsoft.  Hec, Outlook even works on a worthless Mac.

UPDATE:  My friend, Jesse Stay, has written a great tutorial in response to this post showing how to connect your iPhone with Exchange.  Check it out if you’re interested!

9 comments

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  1. Connor

    Let the (umpteenth round of) flame wars begin!

  2. Brad Baldwin

    Been using Google Apps as my Exchange replacement w/ no real problems.
    http://www.google.com/mobile/apple/sync.html

    I gave up Outlook / Entourage for native Gmail web client — the benefit of any computer or device access outweights Outlook / Entourage benefit. That said, on my WIndows PC I just installed Google App Sync for Outlook. Works like a charm for me.
    http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/outlook_sync.html

    iPhone, Outlook, Gmail, Google Calendar all work fine.

    I’m probably going to shut off Plaxo and the 50 other wannabe services to simplify to LinkedIn and Facebook.

  3. Phil801

    Lol Brad – clearly we have different views on services!

    Does your solution provide synching of calendars, contacts and email to your phone, desktop and laptop?

    My hosted exchange service provides a full web interface to my email – I assume that’s what you were referring to with “any computer or device access outweighs outlook/entourage”

    If you’ve got it all working, you should have been at the CTO Breakfast this morning so you could explain how to do it!

  4. Tyler Jensen

    Oh, Phil, you’re such a Microsoft schill. Next thing you know you’ll be spouting off about your computer, it’s low low price and all the software it will run. After that you’ll probably tell us the only apple worth buying is from Washington and can only be found in your local produce section. Pathetic. Just pathetic. If you’re not careful, you’ll offend all the Microsoft haters and they’ll write all kinds of crazy stuff in your comments section.

  5. Jesse Stay

    I connect my iPhone to Gmail via an Exchange interface – syncs great, immediately! All my contacts, mail, and calendar.

  6. designbyidentity

    But I had some problems while connecting my I phone and transfering my contacts. i am not sure wat happened.

  7. Jayson

    Agreed, hating Microsoft seems silly and I’ve wondered for years what the big deal is – are they really that bad? They’ve helped me be more productive for years.

  8. Gary

    It’s a good thing there’s more than one way to do it :D

    You prefer your data to sync to all of your devices, and Exchange gives you that. I’d rather that my data be kept in one place and accessible from any device that happens to have a browser, and Google and Yahoo give me that.

    That doesn’t mean I like Microsoft — I get along in Windows about as well as you do on a Mac, which is why I doubt I’ll ever own a Windows machine again — but it’s great that there are options available for both of us!

  9. Phil801

    @Gary – Just to clarify – I ALSO have browser access to my email, contacts and calendars. But you’re absolutely right, everyone wants it a bit different. The issue I had was that they were all wanting a solution that is already there.

    @Jayson – same here!

    @Tyler LOL!

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