Jeff Sandstrom’s Blog

Keeping My Devices in Sync

Jan 22

JeffTech Live, Mesh, Microsoft, synchronize, Windows 2 Comments

REVISED: I am now using Google Sync for Win­dows Mobile in place of Nueva Sync to syn­chro­nize my Google Cal­en­dar and Google Con­tacts with my Win­dows Mobile phone. I’ve edited this post to show those changes.

I recently picked up a net­book - the Sam­sung NC10. As much as I love it, it threw a giant wrench in how I keep my cal­en­dars and con­tacts syn­chro­nized (the nerve!). In the pre-​netbook days, I had my PC and my Win­dows Mobile device. Since I don’t use an Exchange server, I just teth­ered my phone to my PC and had cabled sync­ing. Easy. But now I have three devices to syn­chro­nize, and on top of that, I decided I don’t like cables. What’s a geek to do?

Solu­tion (after much dig­ging): Win­dows Live Mesh, Google Cal­en­dar, Google Con­tacts, Nueva Sync Google Sync for Win­dows Mobile and a couple connectors.

I’ll take you through each device to show what sync application(s) I’m using, I’ll explain why every­one - geek and non-​geek alike - should check out Microsoft Live Mesh, and how Microsoft dashed my hopes for using the newly-​relaunched Live ser­vices to sync cal­en­dar and con­tacts across three Microsoft plat­forms. (Yes, I’m slightly bitter.)

Calendar and Contact Syncing

File Syncing

Three words: Microsoft Live Mesh. Yes - it’s still in beta - but it works like a dream. Each device (includ­ing Win­dows Mobile) requires a small piece of soft­ware which runs qui­etly in the back­ground. Once installed, just right-​click on a folder you want to share across the devices, select “Add folder to Live Mesh…” and from then on, every time you change the con­tents of the folder - by mod­i­fy­ing, adding or delet­ing files - those updates will be made across all devices. I can even sync my phone’s pic­ture folder, so new photos are auto­mat­i­cally (and wire­lessly!) avail­able to my PC and netbook.

Equally as useful as device syn­chro­niza­tion is Live Mesh’s “desk­top in the cloud.” Login to Live Mesh from any Internet-​connected machine and access the synced fold­ers. This is extremely useful for me when I’m at school and need to print doc­u­ments in the com­puter lab. I no longer need to remem­ber to copy my docs over to my USB stick before I leave home; because I have my school-​related fold­ers auto­mat­i­cally synced to Live Mesh, the latest ver­sions of all of my doc­u­ments will be wait­ing for me wher­ever and when­ever I need to access them.

Why Not Microsoft for Calendar and Contact Syncing?

These are three Windows-​based devices that need to be syn­chro­nized. You would think Microsoft would have a way to do this. Apple has it with Mobile Me. Google has it with Android and Google Cal­en­dar. I thought, “With the new Microsoft Live relaunch, surely there will be a way to use Live as the cloud ser­vice that syncs my three devices!” Nope. Wrong. Here’s why Live fails:

• Live Cal­en­dar does not sync with Out­look Mobile’s calendar
• Live Cal­en­dar does not sync with Out­look cal­en­dar. The folks at Live make it sound like it does, but it doesn’t. The Out­look Con­nec­tor simply makes the Live Cal­en­dar vis­i­ble as a second cal­en­dar within Out­look, just as you would view any ordi­nary iCal calendar.

I hope that Microsoft will soon figure out if it wants Win­dows Mobile to play in the con­sumer space. If it does, maybe - just maybe - it will offer a user-​friendly way to syn­chro­nize cal­en­dar and con­tacts across mul­ti­ple Win­dows devices.

If you’ve found a dif­fer­ent (or better) way to keep your devices in sync, or if you com­pletely dis­agree with some­thing I’ve writ­ten, please leave a com­ment! We geeks love to learn new things.