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PRODUCT REVIEW
Group features of the MyPalm portal
By Ray Rischpater
In the first installment of this series (at http://www.palmpower.com/issues/issue200108/mypalm001.html), I introduced you to the MyPalm portal, an Internet portal with services that will help many of you get more from your Palm OS handhelds using the Internet. It's found at http://my.palm.com. This month, we'll go deeper into the functionality of this useful service.
Synchronization
MyPalm's synchronization is fast and it works. However, I was somewhat disappointed with the user interface, which lacks the polish one expects from Palm. Palm uses Extended System's XTNDConnect PC to support synchronization between your Palm handheld and your PC.
As you see in Figure A, the desktop synchronization tool doesn't resemble typical Palm applications that run on the desktop.
FIGURE A
This is a screenshot of the MyPalm desktop synchronization application. Click picture for a larger image.
Configuration is a bit obtuse as well, as seen in Figure B.
FIGURE B
Configuring the MyPalm desktop synchronization application is obtuse. Click picture for a larger image.
Fortunately, most users don't have to configure the application at all. Nonetheless, in the process of writing this review I was able to obfuscate my settings badly enough that I repeatedly lost my MyPalm portal data and had to re-synchronize the portal databases with the information from my PC. Because synchronization is fast, this isn't as grievous as it sounds, but it is disturbing. Moreover, it leads to a fundamental question: why is the configuration application so obtuse to begin with? HotSync certainly isn't.
As near as I can tell, XTNDConnect PC is a general-purpose application, and most of the configuration options let you use a variety of other PIM products with both your Palm handheld and the MyPalm portal, something that's not clear from the MyPalm documentation.
Synchronization itself is fast and painless. Unlike the HotSync application, synchronization itself doesn't occur between your Palm OS handheld and the MyPalm portal. Instead, the MyPalm portal synchronization application appears to rifle through the Palm Desktop application running on your PC, using the records that reside on the PC directly. Regardless of how it works, synchronization is very fast. The only time you have to intervene in the synchronization process is if you change or delete a record on both the MyPalm portal and on the desktop between synchronizations. As you'd expect, you have to select what action you want the synchronization application to take in this case.
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