Registered: Dec 1999
Location:
Posts: 2

I' m thinking of getting a visor, actually, I would get 2. Here's my question. I've been using Now Conctact & Now Up to date for years and I' worried about transfering all my 1200 + contacts into the palm software. How good is the Palm software and how cutomisable is it?
Thanks

Registered: Nov 1999
Location: Provo, UT
Posts: 64

It looks like there is a conduit available for your software. Check out http://www.handspring.com/support/t...desktoppims.asp


[This message has been edited by ronbot (edited 12-21-1999).]

Registered: Oct 1999
Location: College Station, TX
Posts: 143

terrasson,

I switched from the Now products, and I have to say that while the Palm software isn't bad, in some ways it's not as flexible as Now was ("Now was"? sounds strange!), particularly in terms of multi-user access to contacts and calendars.

As single-user programs, I think the Palm is better. The contacts part of the Palm Desktop has some nice features.

The contact list is displayed in a way that looks like an Excel spreadsheet. You can sort by any of the fields, and filter the display based on assigned categories, or you can create custom filters to display only those contacts whose first name is "Mike" or who are at a specific company, for example.

When you open an individual contact, you get a box with 5 sub-boxes. These show 1) Name, company, title etc 2) phone numbers, 3) Primary address 4) Secondary address and 5) Other info. The standard fields cover a lot of ground - there are fields for 4 phone numbers, each customizable by category (home, work, fax, mobile etc.) and fields for nicknames, birthdays, email, and web site. If that's not enough, there are 5 customizable fields.

This is more info than is in the standard contact app on the handheld. I haven't experimented with what happens to the extra fields on Hotsync, since I don't use that many fields in my own address book.

The main reason I switched is that I'm a Mac user, and although Now Up-to-Date and Now Contact still run on the newer Macs, the Now conduit couldn't cope with the G3 chips when they came out. NOTE - the comments above apply to the Mac version of Palm desktop...I'd be curious to see how that Windows version differs.

What I really miss about the Now package was the ability to share appointments over a network and how Now allowed calendars to show up on the web, even for those who didn't have Now software. We still use this to post seminar schedules and departmental events, but now, I don't get these automatically updated when I sync.

As for importing, it was reasonably painless and straightforward to transfer everything. Hope this helps!

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Ronbot,

Although the conduits exist, Qualcomm (which bought Now Software a couple of years ago) stopped supporting Now products quite a while ago. I signed up to beta test their Calendar/Contacts package, which was largely based on Now technology, but never heard anything about getting it to market. I heard somewhere that they had sold the rights to Now stuff to someone else. Someone might try to use Now's conduit with the HS Palm stuff, but I think it would be a disaster.

Bottom line...I think the info in the HS site is out of date on this one.

[This message has been edited by huski (edited 12-21-1999).]