The ability to synch to devices data has tremendous potential. I've tried
John's Newtourage and was very impressed with its simplicity and ease of
use. Very cool stuff.
Now, more to the point, I believe that there is little need for synching
with the exception of a few groups of PDA users.
1) people that enter all of their data at their computer and occasionally
modify an entry on their PDA "in the field".
2) people that need to constantly have a common data set among multiple
users where the data is modified frequently
3) people that frequently find themselves entering and editing their data
into multiple devices depending on location, convenience, etc.
Perhaps their are many people that fall in to one of these categories but I
doubt it. All of the non-Newton PDA users that I know love the simplicity of
synching their devices. Most of them only use their cradle for charging.
They either never look at their data on their desktop machine or only use
their PDA for lookups (for which synching is not necessary, just the ability
to export data from one device to another, which is distinct from
synchronizing).
So, for the office that needs a group of people to constantly have accurate
data common to all, synching is mission critical. I, for one, just have not
seen anyone using it to this advantage.
What is my point? Synching is cool, but way overrated in my humble opinion.
FWIW, I have a licensed copy of Wayfarer server software. This is, as far as
I can tell (and please illuminate me if you know more or better than I) a
database server that had potential for wireless access. I have not spent any
time with it since I don't have an NT box (which I think it needs) but
believe that this type of application has much more value for accessing
up-to-date information rather than merely synching two devices.
Apologies for lack of brevity,
Ken Whitcomb
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