I've been having a conversation with a user who wants to sync to multiple
desktops. I have presented my "theory" on what is happening and would be
interested if anyone here can validate/disprove this:
With the Palm desktop software, the syncing mechanism depends upon the
uniqueID for each event in order to match up events and "know" that they are
the same event. The Palm OS is set up so that the handheld and desktop
create uniqueID's that cannot possibly overlap each other, so there is no
chance that two events would get mistakenly associated.
The downside of this approach is that syncing to two desktops COULD result
in an identical uniqueID being generated independently on the two desktops.
On syncing, those two separate events would ultimately get narrowed down to
one as one of the events would get overwritten. I presume this problem is
why palm Computing officially states that syncing to multiple desktops is
not supported. The user I have talked to has seen this exact problem occur
sporadically as he needs to have data entered on three desktops as well as
his Palm Organizer.
However, this is only true of the Palm software - most other conduits
(PocketMirror, DesktopToGo, Intellisync etc.) appear to have a more
universal syncing mechanism since some of those products also handle WinCE.
Those conduits sync by comparing the appointments themselves (hence the need
to specify a date range over which to sync) rather than by matching up
records in the database. So, in theory, THESE types of conduits should NOT
be concerned about syncing to multiple desktops since they aren't paying any
specific attention to the uniqueID (since it's not present in MS Outlook
anyway, etc.).
Before I have this user rush out to switch everything to MS Outlook and
another conduit, I just wanted to know if anyone had direct experience with
this, or would confirm this theory...
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