I've replied deep in another thread about this - but wanted to share my rant in its own thread - because I'm so annoyed with my Android!
Out of all the cool things I have to say about my wonderful Motorola Milestone and Android - coming from a Windows Mobile phone - I have to say that the syncing with Outlook with my phone ABSOLUTELY SUCKS!
I've tried CompanionLink (wired and wireless), Google Calendar Sync, HTC Sync*, Go Contacts Sync, and SyncCell. All do a horrible job compared with what I've grown accustomed to - connecting my phone and letting ActiveSync do the rest. Keeping my contacts intact, as well as my calendar.
(* - doesn't work with Milestone)
Now - it could very much be Google's calendar that stinks - but if that is the case I just find it extremely annoying that I'm being bullied out of using Outlook by Google.
The solutions I've found for syncing never worked well:
Calendar:
- in my phone I sometimes didn't get items to sync. Same for my desktop. Some items were just missing.
- Google's calendar doesn't retain the "Labels" of events (to have different colors for events).
- I would sometimes get duplicates of holidays and birthdays etc. - making me go through the whole yearly calendar and delete all the duplicates.
Contacts:
- I'd get tons of duplicates that had to manually be removed
- photos associated with contacts would be reset and erased
- some syncing solution placed all my notes as contacts - had to manually delete them.
I don't really know which software is to blame for all of these - but I do know that every one of the solutions has not reached the ease and friendliness that I expected to have. I wish there were a clean and easy solution - and Android certainly LACKS a proper syncing solution. I'd prefer a wired syncing solution and preferably one that works automatically on phone connect instead of going through a menu and setting it to sync (but - I can live with a manual sync as long as it works). Android is far superior to Windows Mobile, in my opinion, but syncing with Outlook doesn't even come close to WM, yet. Not in accuracy, and not in the time that it takes it to go over and check for changes. In fact - it seems like it often ignores changes and just does the whole lot over and over again - with all of them.
If anyone has a solution that worked for them well - I'd be happy to hear.
P.S. - I forgot to mention that when I had WM - I used to also sync with ActiveSync my SplashID data (passwords and encrypted data). With Android that has to go through its own sync - which again - makes the whole syncing so damn frustrating. Maybe I was just spoiled with WM...
Out of all the cool things I have to say about my wonderful Motorola Milestone and Android - coming from a Windows Mobile phone - I have to say that the syncing with Outlook with my phone ABSOLUTELY SUCKS!
I've tried CompanionLink (wired and wireless), Google Calendar Sync, HTC Sync*, Go Contacts Sync, and SyncCell. All do a horrible job compared with what I've grown accustomed to - connecting my phone and letting ActiveSync do the rest. Keeping my contacts intact, as well as my calendar.
(* - doesn't work with Milestone)
Now - it could very much be Google's calendar that stinks - but if that is the case I just find it extremely annoying that I'm being bullied out of using Outlook by Google.
The solutions I've found for syncing never worked well:
Calendar:
- in my phone I sometimes didn't get items to sync. Same for my desktop. Some items were just missing.
- Google's calendar doesn't retain the "Labels" of events (to have different colors for events).
- I would sometimes get duplicates of holidays and birthdays etc. - making me go through the whole yearly calendar and delete all the duplicates.
Contacts:
- I'd get tons of duplicates that had to manually be removed
- photos associated with contacts would be reset and erased
- some syncing solution placed all my notes as contacts - had to manually delete them.
I don't really know which software is to blame for all of these - but I do know that every one of the solutions has not reached the ease and friendliness that I expected to have. I wish there were a clean and easy solution - and Android certainly LACKS a proper syncing solution. I'd prefer a wired syncing solution and preferably one that works automatically on phone connect instead of going through a menu and setting it to sync (but - I can live with a manual sync as long as it works). Android is far superior to Windows Mobile, in my opinion, but syncing with Outlook doesn't even come close to WM, yet. Not in accuracy, and not in the time that it takes it to go over and check for changes. In fact - it seems like it often ignores changes and just does the whole lot over and over again - with all of them.
If anyone has a solution that worked for them well - I'd be happy to hear.
P.S. - I forgot to mention that when I had WM - I used to also sync with ActiveSync my SplashID data (passwords and encrypted data). With Android that has to go through its own sync - which again - makes the whole syncing so damn frustrating. Maybe I was just spoiled with WM...