Maximizer and Palm Pilots

I've used Palm integration for about 1 1/2 years. It's a bit of a pain to get it working (lots of little steps) and definitely requires advance planning and a structured process. Once it's going it's pretty stable - periodically I get duplicated entries in To-Do list and Address Book, but it's not serious enough I've spent cycles troubleshooting it. The biggest drawback is in Notes - Max allows multiple per Address Book entry, Palm only allows one. Another, smaller one, is the description field in the To-Do entries is MUCH smaller in Max than the Palm - leads to the need to all kinds of creative abbreviations. Another small point is that recurring entries made in the Palm need to be deleted and re-created in Max ... the Sync warns you, but it means you have to read the messages generated after every sync. Another point is that Palm allows To-Do's to have a category and a priority, but the priority can only be 1-5. That works if you use the TmeText style of time management (I use priority to describe the type of To-Do, where a 1 is done during the day, a 4 at night, and a 5 is one I'm waiting to get a message back from someone regarding; Then I use the user-defined category to represent the order of importance of my T-Do's within each type). However, Max only has one field which is hard coded to sync to the Palm priority. That means Max's wonderfully flexible user-defined priority codes are limited to the characters 1-5 and will be forcibly reset every thime you sync to the Palm.

Bottom line? I look with longing at friends running iPaq's with Pocket Outlook. Max is way better than Outlook as a sales force automation tool - except for this. The folks at Max would have a KILLER app if they wrote Max native for the Palm with tight syncronization to the desktop version. Syncing to PDA's plagues every single sales force automation package out there, from Siebel to Oracle - Outlook's the best there is currently, simply due to Pocket Outlook. We need Palm Max.

- R

Plam integration to Max cetainly requires care. Most of its weakness is derived from the fact that the data on the Palm (almost unbelievably) is not held in a relational way - hence for example downloading notes is of very limted practical use.

There is problem with W2K USB drivers that can cause may of the coms problems that occur, so make sure if you have this combination you get the patch (read about it on Palm.com)

I use my palm as a read only reference and for this its very useful.

I agree a really good Pocket Windows link would be great and made this plea when I had the opportunity at a recent Multiactive International Partner conference. I think they know! My guess is, they've have to balance where the put development effort and since the demise of the windows CE2.0 products its just not made it to the top of the list yet........

Ian

I recently purchased a new Palm M500 and have been attempting to get the interface going. I've had lots of obstacles and there are still some but one of Maxtalk's readers is assisting. Thanks Gord.

The Maximizer/Palm combination is certainly not as user friendly as it could be. The synchronization steps remind me of the efforts needed to use DOS. And Read-only use with the Palm seems to leave out a lot of what Palm is really trying to accomplish.
Interestingly, ACT has come out with a new package for complete interface with Palm. They have a sample version to review on the web. Frankly it looks real neat and appears to retain the kind of interface I would like to enjoy with Maximizer. Hope Multiactive is looking.