Windows Mobile ruins another day
Yes, I finally caved in and decided I needed Outlook Calendar to be working on all of my PCs until a suitable alternative is found. I was also sick of certain important documents not being available on my tablet.
So joy oh joy, I know have Activesync working and guess what? My Pocket PC has decided that daylight savings in Victoria has finished for the year. But oh no! Steve Bracks, our hair-do Premier, has extended it for another week thanks to the Uncommon-wealth Games. So… now the PDA thinks it is 8.34pm desite my telling it 20 times today that it is only 7.34pm and, what’s even better, ALL OF MY APPOINTMENTS IN OUTLOOK ARE NOW AN HOUR OUT. My 9am appointment for tomorrow is scheduled to 10am. My 10am for 11am. FOR MY ENTIRE DIARY FOREVER INTO ETERNITY.
That appointment I have for July? Yep, it’s wrong. The one for September? Yep it’s wrong too. I would change them - but I don’t even know they are there. I have to search through my whole goddamn calendar into eternity.
But wait - it gets even better. If I DON’T change all of those appointments, and figure everything will sort itself out in a week when DLS finally finishes? Then all of the appointments I enter into my calendar in the next week will ALSO be an hour out once the calendar changes.
Sometime I hate technology and think Merlin Mann and his hipster diary are probably right. I’ve wasted an entire day on this shit.
March 31st, 2006 at 8:45 pm
Hi Cam,
Yes I’ve been there too. about six months ago I spent half a day getting Bluetooth activesync working. I used it for a fews weeks, then sporadically for a month, then I stopped using it altogether. I set it up on my mistaken premise that I would just walk into the room, the pc and pocket pc would find each other and auto update my appointments. Rather the reality is, it’s slower to establish the connection and sync that using a cable, so I just abandoned it.
Re: daylight saving in Vic, yes that stuffed me up too. I missed one appointment because of it. Anyhow MS official fix was to change your ppc clock to GMT+11 (rather than the usual GMT+10). See the doc here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/907494/ . Note that for more fun and games, the MS site only reads properly in IE!
I think you might have a similar disain toi me for MS/PC stuff. I’m seriously contemplating switching to MACs. I like the form factor of the Tablets and UMPCs on the PC side, but geez the Apple hardware/software combination, simplicity and “just works” factor” just might outweigh these. MACs are looking even more attractive now that several users have got MS windows working as a dual boot on their new Intel MACs. This is a nice reassurance for the transition period, where I would need a few windows-only apps, until I weaned myself off them.
Cheers,
David.
March 31st, 2006 at 9:27 pm
No David, I’m actually a big fan of Microsoft. I gave them too many years of my life! I just hate it when technology doesn’t work. I hate it when the promise of technology is not fulfilled. Be it by Microsoft (in this case) or by Apple when the hard drive of my iPod fails again and again and again.