iPhone Outlook Sync: Take II

So after my phone stopped syncing with Outlook again, I realized the trigger might have been my re-import of my old tasks. So I’ve redone what I said in my last post and just manually entered the tasks I had. So far, things are behaving. The true test will be one full week of meetings changing, etc.

Update: So far, so good! Things are now syncing fine. I think it was my tasks, but what might also be helping now is iTunes 7.3.2, which I believe has a new sync services bundle. It must, since if I reset my sync history now, the sync service no longer crashes.

Outlook Calendar iPhone Sync Fun

Since I’ve gotten my iPhone (which btw I refer to as the first true 21st century device – yes, it’s that much better than anything I’ve used), I’ve had major problems trying to sync it with Outlook’s calendar. Everything else would sync fine, but the calendar would come over really weird, and once it even got to the phone it wouldn’t sync back and forth properly. On top of that, every appointment that was sent to me via an email seemed to be in GMT, so it was 7 hours earlier than it was supposed to be. This is the story of how I think I’ve finally fixed it.

EDIT: since I first wrote this, I’ve just experience a non-sync again. See my latest post for more info.

(more…)

Lenovo Strikes Back!

So, if you read my previous post about my Lenovo fun, you’d know that I had a tablet PC on order. BTW, noone ever responded to my nastygram that I sent them. They are swell people. But anyway, as of late I’ve been thinking maybe I don’t really need a tablet and I should get a larger machine. I’ve been pricing out one of their ‘z’ machines. I figure it’s more powerful and cheaper. So I’ve been going back and forth and back and forth on this because the tablet wasn’t shipping for a while. Yesterday, I decided you know what, maybe I’ll get the z. But I had a few days left before having to do anything about it. I went out last night and got an email on my phone…

The tablet shipped. Fate has spoken.

Sony Reader

I have been following the reader ever since I ran across it on the Sony site earlier this year. I set myself up on the mailing list to be notified when the unit finally started shipping. I never got that email though I did get another teaser email earlier in the year. I found out it was shipping by walking through Fry’s and seeing it sitting here. I hoped Santa might bring me one this year, and in fact I did get one for Christmas. Hooray!

(more…)

My Newfound Hate for Lenovo

I hate Lenovo. A brief history is in order.

12/1/2006 Oh happy day! Life is great! After doing a lot of investigating and reading, I decided I’d finally go ahead and order me a new X60 ThinkPad with the SXGA screen. I was given an estimated ship date of 12/15. After I put it through I thought perhaps I’d have to get two day shipping just in case so I could get it before I have to leave for Christmas. So I called and they had to completely redo my order. Not sure why, but there you have it. In any case, I was now all set with two-day shipping.

12/8/2006 I get another email. Why? It didn’t say… so I went to look at the web site. My ship date was now the 19th. This was getting close to when I had to fly home for Christmas. Now my two day shipping wouldn’t help me unless it shipped early. So I waited.

12/18/2006 It hadn’t shipped so I called to get the address changed to get it shipped to where I was going to be for Christmas.

12/19/2006 Theoretical ship day. I went to the site to make sure my address was now my new ship-to address. It wasn’t. I wasn’t pleased. But then I looked up and my ship date was 2/6/2007!! I should note that I did not get an email this time. So now they’ve not only not changed my ship-to address, but they’ve moved my ship date out over a month, all without informing me in any way. Very annoying.

So I called and asked what was up. I spoke to one guy that didn’t seem to be able to tell me much of anything and he could write a note to the shipping department and someone would contact me in a business day. I asked why can’t he tell me right now what’s backordered. He didn’t have a good answer. In the end I had to run to a meeting so I just hung up a bit rudely (and who can blame me at this point).

After my meeting I called back and got someone who had more of a clue. I told him the whole story about how the only reason I got two day shipping was to get it before I left for vacation, but since my ship date was moved out to crazyland, I would hardly need it anymore. I asked him to remove the two day shipping and change my ship-to address back to my bill-to address. He confirmed he would do both things. I also asked what the holdup was as the current estimated ship time on the site was 1-3 weeks (same as when I ordered. I should also mention that I had checked the week previous just to see what their lead time was and it was 1-5 days). He said the ones with the SXGA screens were all on backorder. Why did they not know that three weeks ago when I ordered? I asked if the new date was any more real than the last one. He said yeah. I highly doubt it.

12/21/2006 I get two emails from them (Thanks for your order. Yay.) and again I have to go to the site to guess what’s different. Seems my ship date slipped out again to 2/9 and my ship-to address was changed… to the exact address I asked that it NOT be sent to any longer. So I had to call these idiots again to get my address changed. Then I decided to write to the email address in the emails they send me to complain about how this order has been handled.

To date, noone from shipping ever contacted me within that ‘one business day’ window that one guy told me. Nor has anyone answered my complaint email. Of course, the latter could just be because of the time of year.

But at the end of the day, they told me 1-3 weeks originally now it’s like 2 months from my order date. And they have bungled my address changes twice now. They really need to get their act together. I am sitting here wondering why I haven’t already cancelled. It’s just too bad they get to treat their individual customers like crap. I bet their corporate customers aren’t having these sorts of issues.

Screw you Lenovo.

Verdict: Blackberry Pearl Rocks

After using my Pearl for the last few days, I have to say that I love this phone to death. Finally, after all this time I found a phone I like and works well for all the things I use it for. I even forgive the not-quite-as-good-looking-as-the-tmobile-one looks. And the Cingular theme has really grown on me.

I cancelled my Verizon account tonight in celebration. I know how to party.

The Blackberry Saga Continues

I received my new T-Mobile Blackberry Pearl two days ago. I unpacked it and admired its beauty, turned it on, and went through the setup. Setup went without a hitch. Set up my email account on the Blackberry service with zero issues. The out of box experience (OOBE) was second to none, in my opinion. Everything worked great. I played with the phone for at least an hour, tweaking settings, exploring the features. I fell in love with it. It’s certainly the best phone I’ve owned, particularly in that form factor. Surely nothing would dampen my excitement and enthusiasm for finally finding a great phone!

Until I went to work the next day. (more…)

Blackberry Pearl On Its Way

I am sadly still in search for the perfect cell phone that does it all well. After getting my Treo a while back I stopped using it. Because the software was bad? No. Because of the Verizon coverage issues? No. As silly as it sounds (more…)

Ryan Seacrest never looked so real!

So, my HD Tivo arrive a week or two ago, and I’m now enjoying the blissful existence that is HD. I cannot believe how incredible it looks. On the other hand, you see everyone as they really are. They aren’t all blurry. So watching people in HD you can see every line and wrinkle, etc. on everyone’s face. The most crazy thing was watching 24 and when they were on a shot of the President, we noticed that he had earring holes in his ear! It was quite distracting once we noticed it. That was actually quite amusing, but it does take you out of the drama.

But at least I get to watch Battlestar Galactica in HD (albeit in reruns) on the Universal HD channel. There was an exterior shot of the Pegasus that was simply incredible, with Vipers flying by, etc. Wow.

That about sums it up: Wow.

HD Coming Soon To A TV Near Me

As I posted about earlier, deciding which way to go to get HD channels, etc. was quite confusing. In the end, I decided that TiVo was most important to me, and I wanted to keep using it. So I opted to get the HD TiVo through DirecTV. Yeah, it costed me, but I was actually able to get some freebies and discounts on my programming at the same time that made it more worth my while. I didn’t get as good a deal as some of the people on the TiVo Community board got, but I did well enough to feel good about it. Sadly, I have to wait until March 1 to get the install. But at this point it’s only two weeks away (I actually ordered a week or so ago). I’ve been busy getting the TV room back together anyway. The new TV is awesome, but it makes SD look like crap. The Xbox 360 on the other hand is money, baby. So I can’t wait for March 1 to get this HD party started.