Interfacing with Pilot Desktop
What's in it for you as a PalmPilot user? The CardScan Plus 300 system only interfaces to one portion of the PalmPilot, the Address Book application, but it does that pretty well. The developers of the CardScan obviously worked with PalmPilot users to understand the many ways in which the PalmPilot is used with address information. The online documentation contained the following five different scenarios for using the CardScan Plus 300 with a PalmPilot:

• One-way synchronization
• Two-way synchronization
• Performing a HotSync with multiple PalmPilot organizers with one computer
• Performing a HotSync with one PalmPilot organizer with multiple computers
• Performing a HotSync with CardScan Plus 300 with PalmPilot, then synchronizing with another contact manager

Some of these scenarios are difficult using the normal 3Com conduit software so this is a clear value add for the CardScan Plus 300. After scanning and converting my business cards into the CardScan application I was ready to HotSync them over to my PalmPilot. Unfortunately, that is where I had my only real trouble doing this review.

Performing a HotSync with the CardScan Plus 300
During the installation of the CardScan Plus 300, I had selected two-way synchronization because my PalmPilot already had address information in it. My first HotSync with the CardScan Plus 300 completely moved all of the newly scanned information to the PalmPilot without a hitch. The existing information on the PalmPilot did not make it back down to the CardScan software however.

I checked and rechecked my settings, edited some data on both the PC and the PalmPilot and did another HotSync . Still no luck. I placed two tech support calls to Corex (more on that later) and was finally contacted by a very friendly and knowledgeable technician from their support group later that afternoon. After verifying installation and setup information, she determined that the problem was that my CardScan datafile and HotSync user information both had the same name, in this instance my name. Once I changed the name of the CardScan database name and updated the name of the database to HotSync with, everything worked correctly. Should you get a CardScan Plus 300 for yourself be sure that you use a different name for the contact manager database then your HotSync user name.

After I fixed this problem, the HotSync process seemed normal in every regard. Unlike some other third party conduits, the CardScan conduit seemed every bit as fast as the 3Com Address conduit and worked just as reliably.

The only other problem that I ran into while doing a HotSync to the PalmPilot was with phone number types. As with the PalmPilot, the CardScan software allows you to select from a drop down list for each phone number to display what kind of phone number it is. Some of the available choices in the CardScan have no comparable value in the PalmPilot world, the most notable being "Direct". If a phone number within CardScan is selected as "Direct", it will display on the PalmPilot in one of the Category fields the next time a HotSync is performed. This is a problem on the PalmPilot because the phone number is available for display in the sorted list. To correct this behavior I edited the new names to remove the "Direct" designation. The phone numbers then displayed correctly after the next HotSync.