Grand Unified Addressbok theory. (or, iSync utterly rocks!)

The General aim: Have a single contacts source sync'd between three
dissimilar devices, without using Outlook or MS Exchange[1].

The specific aim: Get all my billions of contacts from Groupwise to the
mac and mobile phone without too much pissing about.

The method:
The only device I have found that talks to Groupwise reliably is the
Palm series, and until the Treo 600, there was no PalmOS smartphone I
could get my hands on.

Bought Treo600. Fab! Utter usefulness! I can pitch out the 7650 and my
Palm TungstenT (gone to my assistant).

Had SyncWise Pro from Toffa (www.toffa.com) already syncing the Palm. It
just fed all the data over to the Treo.

Then I found the iSync conduit for Palm Desktop on the Mac. It
installed. It recognised there was only one PalmOS user. It said (My
TiBook appears to be turning into a bit of a geezer) "Press the Sync
button mate" So I did.

"Hang about, more than 5% of your contacts are being changed. Are you
sure about that?" says iSync. Nice touch.

"too right I am matey. Get on with it"

It's a bit slow, even with subsequent syncs, but boy does it work.

I've had no quibbles or dead-halt problems or nuffink with this. It's
only taken six years of software development and about £400 to get it
working (over and above the GW software and hardware costs which we're
using anyway) - progress!



[1] Because they're utter fucking bollocks from a sysadmin's PoV. I
would have thought that an old Dual PentiumII/450 server would have been
fine for Exchange, but oh no. My opposite number at another college
significantly less well off than us has to run Exchange (Irony! The
licenses are not cheap!) on this, and it has a gig of ram. And it crawls
with 100 users, and they're not using web access either, like what we
have got. That requires IIS, which is a pestilential bug-hole. Like
Outlook.

And Outlook appears just plain nuts to me: by default data is stored in
the User's profile directory, meaning it's moved twixt server and
workstation every login/out. Which sucks bandwidth and slows logout.
Someone tell me just /why/ this is a good idea - it's not machine
specific data, so it should be left centrally. DUUUUH!
--
James Dore,
IT Officer,
New College
james.dore@new / it-support@new

James Dore <james.dore@new.oxford.ac.uk> wrote:

> [1] Because they're utter fucking bollocks from a sysadmin's PoV. I
> would have thought that an old Dual PentiumII/450 server would have been
> fine for Exchange, but oh no. My opposite number at another college
> significantly less well off than us has to run Exchange (Irony! The
> licenses are not cheap!) on this, and it has a gig of ram. And it crawls
> with 100 users, and they're not using web access either, like what we
> have got. That requires IIS, which is a pestilential bug-hole. Like
> Outlook.

I'm no MS fan, but we run exchange server at work on a Pentium 200 at
work (the Outlook Web Access/IIS is on another server)

> And Outlook appears just plain nuts to me: by default data is stored in
> the User's profile directory, meaning it's moved twixt server and
> workstation every login/out. Which sucks bandwidth and slows logout.
> Someone tell me just /why/ this is a good idea - it's not machine
> specific data, so it should be left centrally. DUUUUH!

No.. all mailboxes, contacts, calendars etc are in the server's
information store.

Not that I like how any of outlook formats messages, so I use Eudora.