Posted by Louise on Aug 31, 2009 in
Mobile technology I’ve solved the problems of the small eeePC hard drive. Nick and I have each bought a brand new Acer Aspire One! They have a hard drive of 160 GB. The screen is larger than the eeePC (10.2 cm instead of 7.0 cm) and the processor is faster. They come with Windows XP Home and 1 GB of ram which we got PC world to upgrade to 2 GB. We had to take out accidental damage cover but we get the first month free and can cancel after that! We just paid £14.99 extra for the ram upgrade which was a real bargain.
It is a bit of a challenge to see who can make their computer the fastest and who will have the most hard drive free. I reckon I’ll win the first bit but as Nick is not needing to install Outlook or OneNote he’ll win the second.
I still have to see if I can get ShareCalendar working but as I know a bit more about how it works and I’ll be able to do the Office updates I’m more confident about it working. Currently I’m still ploughing through the Windows updates. I don’t think I’ll have time ‘till Friday night to see if I can get it working :-(.
Tags: Aspire One, calendars, mobile tech
Posted by Louise on Aug 31, 2009 in
Mobile technology,
Technical I’ve been investigating calendars for the last couple of weeks. No, not the paper kind that hang on the wall but the electronic kind in Outlook 2007. I love Outlook 2007. I love the way OneNote and Outlook talk to each other and pass on linked info. I love categories. I even love tasks (the function not the actual stuff I have to do. However, I have a very complex (you’d think) list of calendar desires:
- · I’d love my Outlook calendar to be the same on my main PC, my PDA, my work PC, my mobile and my eeePC
- · I also would like the facility to share busy/free information with selected people
- · I want to be able to edit, add and delete items on the main PC, eeePC, PDA and work PC
- · I want other people to be “read only”
- · I want everything to be synchronised automatically, or at least semi automatically. I don’t mind initiating synchronisation.
- · I want to be able to access my calendars either online or offline. I don’t want to be disconnected after an hour or so.
I’m not the only one out there with a list of wants a mile long. I found a bloke after my own heart and with slightly higher expectations. Brad doesn’t just want synchronisation, he wants intelligent binding, roaming, alerts and free form input!
Calendaring to my prerequisites has been no small challenge. I have investigated several options in the past couple of weeks. The main contenders were:
None of these have provided all the functionality I want but all provided me with something.
Google calendar
Probably the strongest contender out of all those I looked at. Via the new Google Calendar Sync addon/plugin I am able to upload my main Outlook calendar to my Google account space. I can set it to sync either one direction (PC to Google or Google to PC) or both ways. I can set the frequency of synchronisation down to 10 minutes. Via my Google account I can share the calendar either fully or free/busy. I can also set the working day time that is visible to my colleagues. The only way to add appointments myself is online. Others can suggest appointments and I have to accept or decline them. So far so good.
Unfortunately I do a lot of work on the train between Norwich and Ipswich and there is frequently no mobile phone signal so I am not able to connect to the internet to access the calendar. Gears does do some way to solving this problem. It allows me to view the calendar when there is no internet signal but I can’t view appointment details, add appointments or amend them. Not much good for a neo-nomad .
At my work (University Campus Suffolk) we have a freely accessible wireless connection in the new building but it seems to disconnect me after an hour or so. Google also logs me out after about the same length of time if I don’t do anything on the page.
In short, good for sharing my calendar but not good for me personally. All software is free which is great but details are held on Google’s servers. Google is in the business of making money and I am not sure I like my info being in their hands.
Windows Live via Outlook Connector
Another newish piece of software. I imported my calendar file into Windows Live and now changes can be synchronised with Outlook. Windows Live looks much prettier than Google Calendar and more closely resembles Outlook which I like. It is not available offline though and the biggest problem is that although it transfer data from the internet to Outlook this is one way only – no Outlook to Windows Live. Not much good to me.
MS Office Online Internet Calendars
I’ve used this a fair bit in the last 18 months. Again the synchronisation is only one way – Outlook to the internet. It is manages from within Outlook by just clicking “Publish my calendar”. A link can be sent to the people you want to share with and you can share full or free/busy info. I’ve got a VERT calendar showing when I am working for UCS and when I’m not. My UCS colleagues can click on the link (if they have bookmarked it) and see where I am likely to be. Neither they nor I can make amendments or additions to the calendar. The lack of an offline facility and two way synchronisation is again the only real problem.
On the plus side, if they are running Outlook 2007 like me the calendar can be added to their own Outlook so they can see at a glance, in glorious categorised Technicolor, but again no adding, deleting or editing of appointments.
Mozilla Thunderbird and Lightening
I thought these would be the answer to my problems. I used and quite liked Thunderbird when I was on holiday. It is not as pretty as Outlook but takes up a lot less space on the eeePC. Lightening is the integrated calendar package. Unfortunately I couldn’t import a iCal file. I did find a Google calendar plugin which downloads my Google calendar but it is online only. That is not going to be possible in the signal black spot between Diss and Stowemarket. Lightening can show 7 days or 5 days but unfortunately the 5 day view can include weekends, it isn’t a working week it shows. I’m used to the Outlook view I’m afraid.
Nokia PC Suite
Does exactly what it should without any trouble at all. It syncs both ways between my N95 and Outlook. It is calm, collected and you can see a log after the sync which I find reassuring. I like to see if I have made any monumental synchronisation disasters. Only slight irritation is that there is no option to turn off reminders and they seem to set the phone ringing at midnight! I have no idea if there is a setting in the phone to sort this. It is minor and not worth changing the software for. PC Suite also provided a simple and almost 100% reliable way to use my mobile as a modem. If only it would not insist on installing to the C:\ drive of the eeePC I would have it on that computer too. I just don’t have room on that drive.
ActiveSync/Windows Mobile Device Manager
AS was the bain of my life for so long. It has an overwhelming desire to rename my PDA and then cancel its partnerships. I struggled to find a solution for almost two years before I gave up. I have a work around though. Before synchronisation look at the device ID in Settings > System > About > Device ID. If it has changed itself to something with WM_….. at the start then change it back to what it should be (make sure the ID you give it has an underscore somewhere in it). Then reset the device. Go back to Device ID and check it hasn’t changed. With that page still open sync the device. This forces AS to keep the name and the partnership. Always go through the same process when changing the PC you are sync’ing to. No exceptions, just get in the habit of doing it. I haven’t had any partnership problems for ages now.
Anyway, these two pieces of software keep my PDA in sync. The PDA keeps the work PC and the home PC calendars the same too. Shame work uses Outlook 2003 so my nicely coloured catagories don’t show at work unless I add labels. There are a limited number of labels you can add so this is not ideal. It is certainly the easiest and most effective way of keeping a sync’d calendar on two PCs. However, I have 3 PCs now. I am using the eeePC much, much more. Windows Mobile PDAs can’t sync with more than two PCs. There is software you can get to try to circumvent this problems but I’m in PDA synchronisation nirvana and am not going to risk mucking it all up.
ShareCalendar (formerly Calendar4Outlook) by 4Team Corporation
Lastly the piece of software I found today. ShareCalendar. It claims to be able to keep shared calendars sync’d on two or more PCs. Once installed on both PCs and shared from one, changes are sent via email to the other whenever Outlook sends and receives.
I downloaded and installed the free 14 day trial yesterday. After mucking up the first share because I didn’t read the directions I seem to be almost there. I have the same calendar on both the main PC and the eeePC now and any changes I make on the main one are sent to the eeePC. However I seem to have a problem with the reverse direction. I can make changes but they don’t seem to go anywhere. I’ve had a couple of error messages too. After reading the help files (which are really quite good) I’ve decided to install any Outlook updates. The 4Team Corporation suggest doing this if there are any problems.
The only issue I’m having now is that I don’t have enough room on my eeePC C:\ drive to install the blasted updates. I did have about 600 MB free before I started now I’ve had 3 the lack of disk space warning message and the main updates haven’t installed. Not sure I’ll ever get them done on this netbook. I’m certainly not going to get my calendar sync’d tonight.
Update 15th September 2009 I did a fresh install on the new Acer (see above) and have had no problems what so ever. 4Team gave me a 10% discount and were really, really helpful, even when I think it was my fault for mucking up the installation. I have purchased two licences and so far no problems. Having to purchase a licence for each computer is the downside but I think it is worth the expense. In the end I paid £27.65 ($44.91).
Tags: calendars, software
Posted by Louise on Apr 12, 2008 in
Technical I’ve been busy starting my VERT job for the last couple of weeks. For the last couple of days I have been trying to figure out ways of sharing my calendar and importing VERT only stuff into my SoR (Society of Radiographers) calendar. I use Outlook on both my PDA and main computer here at home, UCS (University Campus Suffolk) and SoR. All four are different versions which amazingly has not caused as many issues as I though it would, though I haven’t attached my new O2 Stellar (HTC TyTN II) yet.
- Home - Office 2007
- UCS - Office 2003
- SoR - Office 2003 but via terminal server
- iPaq PDA - WM5 (not sure what version of Mobile Office)
- Stellar - WM6 (not sure what version of Mobile Office)
Anyway I have sussed how to share just the categories I want. Microsoft (in its infinite wisdom) does not let users export appointments from individual categories. It is all categories or nothing. Not satisfied with this I did a bit of a search and found a macro that does just that. You follow the instructions to install it and then just select the categories you want to export to an iCal file. It may have been written in 2005 but it works just fine with Outlook 2007.
After exporting the appropriate categories I imported the file into a new calendar (I never even knew I could do this in Outlook!). I then had to publish the new calendar to the internet (right click the calendar and then click publish to internet) I picked publish to Office Online. This may be restricted to Office 2007 but I’m not sure. I followed the instructions logging in with my Windows Live u/n and p/w and hey presto, my calender was published. I then went back to Outlook. My online calendar appears there too. I now have three calendars. You can untick the ones you don’t want to see - the online one. Magically (ok, maybe not magically) when you make an alteration to your category calendar it synchronises to the online version. When you click share calendar and insert an email address Outlook sends a link to people you want to tell about your calendar. If they have Outlook 2007 it appears in their outlook if they pick the subscribe to this calendar option in the emial they receive (very handy for the husband).
Word of advice. Locate the link that your email recipients get sent and save it somewhere safe. It took me two days to find my online calendar again!
Tags: calendars, Outlook, PDAs