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.

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

I spent hours looking at the Apple support boards and reading whatever I could find to try to get to the bottom of this. Invariably, it kept seeming like there must be something wrong with my data (others seemed to have fixed it by rebuilding their calendars). But I had tried exporting my calendar to another file and using that, etc. but nothing was working. What’s worse, Outlook was getting more and more confused as I went. For example, I’d get 2 or 3 meeting reminders for the same meeting. There were ghost meetings in my calendar somehow that I could not see.

I finally figured out how to list all my appointments out in Outlook and saw that I had about 15 of them (which was about right). But none of the recurring ones said they were recurring, and guess what: they all had the times in GMT. The phone wasn’t lying!

My next step was to fix them (I merely had to re-accept the recurrence on them and save them). Then I outputted my calendar as a .ics file. I then wiped my calendar clean and told iTunes to replace the calendar on the phone. And as I suspected, the iPhone calendar wasn’t blank after that. It seemed to have all the ghost meetings that were causing me to get the multiple reminders.

The next thing I did was just create a new Personal Folders file and set it to the default. I then removed my old data file. For whatever reason though, it started to show all the calendar items that used to be ghosts. I still have no idea where it got them all from, but when I viewed it in calendar view, it did indeed have all the times 7 hours off. So this time I deleted all the calendar items again and forced a sync to the phone, replacing the current calendar (and not sync my contacts, since this new file didn’t have any as it was new). My iPhone calendar was finally blank. Progress!

Next, I imported my contacts from my old personal folders file and sync’d that. Still empty calendar, and my contacts were fine. So far, so good. Then I imported the .ics file into my calendar. It all looked perfect. I resync’d to the phone and voila! It finally had my correct calendar!

I’ve been able to (so far) successfully add an item on the phone, sync it to Outlook, change it there and resync it back to the phone. I think it might finally been working. It’s only been almost a month!

To recap what I did:

• Use Save As… in the calendar to create a .ics file with full detail and attachments. If necessary, modify the resultant file to trim what you don’t want, etc. (You best know what you’re doing).
• Create a new Personal Folders file. Make it the default. Quit and restart Outlook.
• Remove your old Personal Folders file using the Data File Management option.
• Show all calendar items. Make sure there aren’t any. Delete them and even go so far as to delete them from the Deleted Items folder.
• Import your contacts, tasks from your old Personal Folders file.
• Import your calendar from your .ics file.
• Resync your phone, telling it to replace the calendar on the phone (under Advanced in the Info tab in iTunes).

Also keep in mind that I’m not using an Exchange server. This is all local data, so I’m not sure how well something like this would work in that scenario.

Good Luck!

The tablet shipped. Fate has spoken.

The Reader looks and feels cool. It’s just about the right size for easy reading and the screen is amazing. It is viewable from any angle and looks just like a paperback book page. This is due to the use of Electronic Paper Display technology from E-Ink. I read part of 1984 on it for a while with no discomfort or fatigue. You can also increase the font size for easier reading (there are a total of three sizes you can use). It could stand to be a bit whiter though, IMO. Under low-light conditions it’s still easier to read a real book than this screen.

The unit is light enough to carry around with you and it can store a whole lot of books. It can store even more if you insert a large SD card (not included).

The only complaints I have about the Reader is the fact that it takes so long (well, a second) to ‘turn’ the page and that when the page switches, the screen inverts and then repaints. Given that turning the page only happens only once every few minutes, and the quality of what it displays, I can live with it. The other thing is that there’s no backlight, so you can’t read in the dark. This is no different than reading a real book, so again, I can live with it. I think that the benefits outweigh the restrictions. It also reportedly consumes little or no electricity once the page is rendered. It only needs power while it’s changing pages. That’s pretty cool.

To get books onto your Reader, you apparently need to use the Sony Connect software if you want to get anything interesting, such as Michael Crichton’s latest. It’s essentially iTunes for eBooks. I haven’t found any way to use something like ebooks.com to get something onto your Reader. You can also import PDF files (and I believe other formats) onto your device. So you could always print something to PDF that you might want to read on a trip and take it with you.

You can also play MP3s and view pictures, though the pictures are just black and white since that’s all the screen can do. I’ve not used the MP3 feature. I may never use it, as that isn’t why I wanted it.

One other thing I should mention: if you are a Mac user, I think you are out of luck. There doesn’t appear to be any solution for using this device with a Mac that I’ve found.

All in all, I’m very much enjoying this cool device. I bought “The Tipping Point” in ebook form so I can finally finish that book. Reading all of that should be a good way to see how this device feels as a reader. So far I’ve had to up the text size as that book seems to use smaller type by default. I’m hoping that overall it meets or exceeds my expectations. Who knows, maybe I’ll finally read more, so I can get reel smot.

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.

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

Until I went to work the next day.

No signal. Totally zero. I was not happy. At home I didn’t have the best signal in the world, but if I can’t get a signal at work, the phone is useless to me. A friend had told me this might be the case, but hey, the phone was effectively free with the rebate so I thought I’d give it a whirl. Considering how much I really liked the phone at that point, not being able to have it like… you know…. work… was pretty depressing.

Then my friend told me they had the Pearl in the Cingular store up the road from my house. Originally they weren’t supposed to have it for a couple of weeks which, in concert with the low low price of $0, made me try the T-Mobile. But instead it turned out to be days. So literally, the day after I received mine I found out they were right up the road. 

By now I was hooked on the phone and liked it enough to just buy one outright at full price (I’m in a contract, so I can’t get a break). So I went there and got it. I thought that would be that. I’d get a phone with a great signal and all would be well. It didn’t turn out quite that rosy.

Four things irked me about the Cingular phone vs. the T-Mobile one:

It Looks Different And not in a good way. The keypad is solid gray/white in the center instead of having stripes of white across the keys. If you look at screenshots of the 8100 from both carriers you’ll see what I mean. The T-Mobile look is much more elegant (and is what you see on blackberrypearl.com). I have a big problem with this, as the look of the phone was one of the major things that drew me to it in the first place.

More Cluttered The theme is much more cluttered than the T-Mobile theme. I really liked the T-Mobile’s simplicity and the scrolling list of applications (with name and icon) better than the grid of icons on the Cingular. On the flip side, the fit, finish, and iconography on the Cingular is much nicer. I just prefer a simpler theme (and the built-in Zen one doesn’t really thrill me either). That said, I’ve gotten used to the Cingular theme as I’ve been using it. I wish I could take it and just modify it to be more like the T-Mobile’s layout with the Cingular graphics.

Network Integration The OOBE and network integration is not as well-done as the T-Mobile phone. The biggest issue for me was setting up email addresses. On the T-Mobile, you just click on “Set Up Internet E-Mail” and it takes you right to the screen to set up an email address to add. On Cingular, you need to go through an extra step to set up your own account in order to add email addresses to it. Seems the T-Mobile software just logs you in automatically with some existing account per phone – a very nice touch. But if it were only that I probably wouldn’t have included it here as an irk. 

The real problem is that using that interface often times fails to connect, making the phone just say “Requesting” at the bottom and it will stay like that for minutes at a time. If you try it again while it’s busy, the phone will just hang for minutes while it figures out it can’t connect. The combination of the extra step with the iffy connection on that server is pretty annoying and makes the setup take forever. In the end I found a web interface you can use from your computer to do this, but it seems like this is an area of their integration they really need to work on.

Blackberry + YIM + Cingular = 0 You can’t run Yahoo! Messenger for Blackberry on the Cingular phone. After I had installed it and tried to run it I was greeted with an error message (“Please visit www.blackberry.com/go/yahoo to activate your handheld for Yahoo! Messenger.”). Turns out just doesn’t work on Cingular, and it’s in a small disclaimer on the download page that I apparently missed. I tried it on the T-Mobile phone and it worked fine. (I should point out this is not the YIM that comes with the T-Mobile phone. That version works via SMS, not data. This was a separate download.)

At that point I had an application that wasn’t going to work, so I tried to remove it. But it wouldn’t disappear. At all. I selected delete in the Applications menu and it went away from the list, but not from the device. It doesn’t show up in the Desktop Manager at all, so I can’t remove it from there. I tried wiping the phone to no avail (that only erases data, not apps). I was on the web searching for information about how to remove applications until about 2am this morning. All the instructions I found for clearing apps doesn’t seem to apply to the Pearl. There’s a checkbox you can click in the Desktop Manager software to do this, but it seems to be disabled for this phone, possibly because if you did that you’d erase the stuff that comes from the carriers and they don’t like that. Witness our brand! Do not avert your eyes!

In the end, today I stumbled across a post about uploading a Service Book to your phone to get YIM to work on Cingular. It worked flawlessly, so as of this afternoon, I finally have a working YIM on my phone. This made me feel a lot better about things.

Conclusion: No Perfect Solution It’s certainly frustrating when you have one carrier that works amazing, but you can’t get a signal and another with a great signal but really frustrating integration points. It might be because the T-Mobile version has been out for a while and the kinks are worked out of it whereas the Cingular phone just came out last week. So I’m sending the T-Mobile back to Amazon and praying it will cancel properly. I’ll keep the Cingular as I get a really good signal with it at work and at home (really, anywhere around here in the Bay Area). And now that I have YIM working and a way to get my email straight, I’m content.

I may try to get an unlocked T-Mobile phone and put my SIM in that because yes, I’m just that fussy about the look. But that’s me.

Recently the Blackberry Pearl came out. Almost the same size as the SLVR, but with Blackberry’s renowned server-side email and calendaring capabilities. I heart push email. I used to have it when I had my Sidekick, but like the Treo, it was too big. And I am not going to be Mr. Utility Belt. So I gave it up… but this phone might be a good blend of what I’m looking for. The only thing that will decide it is their qwerty-like text input where there’s two letters per key. We shall see.

Anyhoo, this Blackberry is on its way to me and I should have it Thursday. Hopefully it will be worth it. Of course, I got it for free through Amazon, and the data plan is cheaper than though Verizon, so I’m thinking it will be.

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.