The world as frankps sees it!
Posts tagged Syncronization
Upgrading to Leo?
04 years ago
I have the last days gotten a lot of questions about what I think about MacOS X 10.5. I sadly cannot tell you yet, but I will be getting a copy of Leopard from the central computer department at work on Monday or Thuesday. I hope to be able to install it on a test machine the very same day.
I am eager to try many of the new features, but there are also features that we will not be getting full benefit from, as for instance Time Machine. If I have understood it correctly, you will not be able to sync with Time Machine to Samba shares. We also don’t have any MacOS X 10.5 server at work, so any new features on the client OS that is titly integrated with the server OS will not work for us. I personally don’t have an .Mac account any more either, so these features are excluded as well.
There are, as far as I can see, three other real “show stopers” that I will run in to with MacOS X 10.5, two at work and one at home. The Mac guys at the central computer department have, as so many others, not been able to bind the MacOS X 10.5 clients to Active Directory. So what does that mean? We have no working centralized login (network authentification), and that also leads me to the second problem, as we are using Windows servers (kerberos) for printing, we also don’t have any working print service for MacOS X 10.5. Having said this, I should end with saying a few things about the many reviews I have been reading lately: Many of them pisses me off. Why? They compare Vista with Leo. One of the biggest things with Vista is the enhanced use of Active Directory and Group Policies, in other words getting it easier to administrate big networks with Windows machines from one place. Apple also have these tools for clean MacOS networks. But when the magazines write that MacOS X 10.5 is so much better then Vista, and that it should be considered as an option, then please also consider the costs of mantaining a few Macs in an Windows environment! Administrators will find themselves setting most of the configurations manually on each machine. For home users MacOS X might be a great option, especially if you have some friends around that can help you the few times you get stuck on something. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Macs (MacBook Pro, Mac Mini, Cube, Apple TV and iPod Touch).
The third problem I will mostly meet at home, and that is to get Leopard to see Windows file shares on your home network. I have a Vista machine with a bigger hard drive than on the Mac, so I guess that Vista will be used as “server” once in a while.
These are the negative parts, hopefully some of them will be fixed in the nearby future. I have never been the biggest fan of Exposé, so I am really excited about Apple finally integrating virtual desktops in to the OS. Some third party solutions have been around, but not met my needs. I loved BeOS and it’s Workspaces, and by the little I have seen of MacOS X 10.5, I can say that Spaces is the closest I have seen to Workspaces. I will now be a happy “BeOS-user” on my Mac! I am looking forward to try the small integrated applications, like iCal, Mail and iChat. With iCal, what are the new features and can I get them on my iPod Touch? We don’t use Mail at work, but Thunderbird, but I would love to try out the html-templates that comes with Mail, even though I prefer getting mails as simple text! And iChat, wow, finally an easy way to take over the screen and help my scientific staff and now the possibility to work on presentations, spreadsheets and documents together online. Taking over somebody’s screen has also been possible before, but then through Apple Remote Desktop or Timbuktu.
Finally, will all the shareware, freeware and other software that I am using be working? The next following days are gonna be fun.
Nokia E60 syncs with my MacBook Pro
04 years ago
I just had to try to sync my new mobilephone with my Mac. Not much a problem, only that some e-mails started appearing twice on my Mac, filed under both work and other. I guess this is explainable: At work I sync with Lotus Notes 7.x, at home under Vista with Outlook 2007 and on the mac with the inbuilt AddressBook and iCal. Only in a perfect world would this have worked flawlessly!
Nokia? You? Heh? What Happened?
04 years ago
These were more or less the words from my sister today, when she heard that I had bought a new phone yesterday. It was more or less as meeting yourself in the door. She remembered very well how much I disliked Nokia two, three years ago. But things have, as so often, changed.
Today I am a satisfied owner of a Nokia E60. Sony Ericsson is still making great phone, don’t me wrong, but they are not going for the features that are important for me. I admire Nokia for their E and N series. These phones are impressive. I have bought E70 and N70 phones for the management group at my department, and recommended them for a few of my colleagues (at other departments).
This blog entry is not to be a review of E60, the phone is already aging and about to leave the market! The fact that I bought it for 1 NOK, tells me that! There are mainly two reasons why I have developed an interest for Nokia’s business phones:
- Syncronization: Nokia delivers one of the best syncronzation technologies in market – period! It’s not discussible. Easy to set up and stable, both for Outlook and Lotus Notes 7.x. It also works well with Microsoft Vista, and even with Vista’s Contacts. Not even Microsoft’s own syncronization tool does that!
- E-mail: Support for Push Mail and a great implementation of IMAP, with support for both SSL/TLS. Works flawlessly with our IMAP server.
I find myself quite old fashioned when it comes to mobilephones. I still mostly use it for telephone calls, a few SMSes and now and then some data transfers. That’s more or less what I want from a mobilephone. People that know me, all know that I don’t care to much about SMS, MMS or camera technology on the phone. For taking digital photos you are still better of with a traditional camera. They are in quality 2-3 years ahead of the cameras included on phones. When it comes to video conferencing, the only time I established a video conference was with a friend to simply test the technology. I don’t know of anyone among my friends and colleagues that actually use this technology. But something I will give HTC and Sony Ericsson credits for, is that they have included MP3 players and memory card slots on their phones that works better then the Nokia ones. As I have to have a HTC smartphone for my work (my department is paying), I fast found myself using the included MP3 player instead of my Sandisk player.
One last thing, I love that Nokia has added wifi to some of their phones. It works brilliantly, and I am now a fringster! And I will try to set up my VoIP phone from Phonzo on the included SIP phone if possible.
Syncing My HTC P4350 With Windows Vista
0I am not only syncing my smartphone with MacOS X, but also with Windows Vista. Gone is the horrible sync application ActiveSync, and in comes Windows Mobile Device Center. The tool is still in beta, but has for me already proven to be a far better solution the ActiveSync. Sadly Microsoft decided not to include this tool in Vista. The first thing I think of, is to avoid any new unneccessary anti-monopoly lawsuits. Windows Mobile Device Center can be download from Microsoft manually or through Windows Update.
The installation couldn’t get smoother. Windows Vista detected all the neccessary drivers automatically and mounted my device. The first thing I noticed was that Windows Mobile Device Center had a complete redesign of the graphical user interface compared to ActiveSync, making it a far easier approach for endusers.
Just as ActiveSync the new sync solution synchronizes business-critical information such as e-mail, contacts and calendar appointments with Outlook, new is the focus on syncing media. My smartphone also syncs with Vista’s Photo Gallery and Media Player.
Problematic is that Windows Mobile Sync Center yet again breaks compatibility with Lotus Easy Sync and Commontime mNotes, both for syncing with Lotus Notes. I need at least one of them before I will be able to move myself completly over to Windows Vista from XP.
One thing that I find strange is that Microsoft has chosen to not let us synchronize our devices with Windows Calendar and Contacts, two applications that come preinstalled in all versions of Vista. It is not a big problem, but it for now forces all to install the copy of Outlook that comes included with each device.