Syncing Outlook from one PC to another with no PDA in between
 

Is this possible? I'm thinking about carrying an OQO Model 2 or similar as a personal PC along with my new Dell as a business PC, and my current PDA is an old, trusty HP Jornada that I'd like to retire.

I've been able to sync calendar and contacts among both my personal and business side previously, using the Jornada as intermediary. Without the PDA and ActiveSync, how would I sync two PCs?

Have a look at Plaxo - I use it to do what you've described. In fact, I keep contacts, calendar, and notes sync'ed between three machines.

Thanks and welcome to FT! I did come across Plaxo as a possible solution, but their forums seem to have some angry people talking bout sync bugs that haven't been fixed for months. Any problems with your 'puters?

(And I can't believe ScottC hasn't chimed in on my possible OQO Model 02 purchase!) :D :D :D

I hate hate Plaxo.

One solution that may work is setting up an exchange account with someone like mailstreet. Though, this looks like an easier solution:

http://www.synchpst.com/index.htm

Other options would be using something like Yahoo for it.

There seem to be quite a few applications that can share these, but they are offline. If I were you I'd contact Mailstreet and see if an exchange account will do what you want.

I use the exchange server at my isp to do it, my outlook is always synched on several machines. There's nothing to do, whenever you do a send and receive, it updates everything to the latest from everywhere.

I love it.

If it's an option, it's the way to go.

I hate syncing outlook so when I travel I simple copy my pst file to my laptop. I pefer to have only one location with the latest information. On my pda I only sync TO the pda, never the other way.

That worries me - my pst file is half a gig; don't want it to corrupt and prefer a more automated solution.

I find it amazing that it's simple to sync two PCs using my PDA as the intermediary - but no one has yet developed an easy solution for taking the PDA out of the equation.

I'll see if my ISP has an exchange server, but I'm wondering if my new company's IT department will allow or support the idea.

If we're just talking about Calendar/Contacts/Notes/Tasks, you can actually use Yahoo Calendar for exactly this.

Yahoo offers "Intellisync for Yahoo" which syncs Outlook with their calendar product. You can effectively have an infinite number of Outlook instances that synchronize data.

I use it to sync my personal Outlook with Calendar/Contacts/Notes/Tasks from work. That way I can enter something in any location and as long as I sync everything up (which just takes a few moments) the changes propogate through.

It also allows me to display my basic availability (without details) to the public by pointing them at the Yahoo calendar.

As far as reliability...well, I've been doing it for several years now without an issue.

Steve

I'm trying it and will let you know! Software seems easy enough...and it's free.