BlackBerries, and Address Book Management....
 

What a joke.

While I LOOOVE my new BlackBerry, RIM's Desktop Management software is THE biggest joke I've ever seen. I'm a software developer that's been writing code professionally since 1986, and this piece of crap software is a joke.

You mean I HAVE to sync with either Outlook or Yahoo to get my contacts in there? No. I have tons of Outlook contacts that are "email only", that I have no desire to have in my BB. Same thing even with Yahoo.

For my BB, I have a SELECT "set" of contacts I want stored in there. So you're (RIM) going to make me sync a bunch of contacts I have NO desire to be in there, in order to get the ones I *do* want in there? No thank you, RIM.

With my Palm, I could fire up my Desktop Manager and easily just edit the contacts and then sync it back up... no sweat.

What I ended up doing, is creating a new YAHOO account JUST for creating/syncing contacts with my BB. Works just fine, but there's no way I should have to do that.


And no, the ASCII Importer/Exporter isn't really an option either. I tried doing that, and editing the file with Excel. When I saved the file back, it didn't "keep" the double quotation marks around the fields that the BB had put in (you have to select that option in the "Choose the character that marks the beginning and the end of a field value", dialog box).

Even then... you can't select the "two way sync" option, you have to set it up the first time with the "one way FROM device", then change it back to "one way TO device"... what a pain.

No... RIM sucks when it comes to a Desktop Manager. Can't believe they are as "big" as they are, and don't have a PC-based application available that serves as the sync source in the event you don't want to use Outlook/Yahoo as your sync source.

</rant off>

Well you could use Google sync for contacts. Only the 'my contacts' gets sync'd to the BB and its wireless.

Wirelessly posted (Tmo's cheapest BB customer)

I do agree with you about Palm though. I had that before my BB and I loved it. Their software was easy and intuitive to use. It was a slight adjustment to change over to Outlook. Too bad it was proprietary. Would have loved to continue using that.

I guess it's just a matter of preference. I love the fact that my BlackBerry syncs seamlessly and completely with my outlook contacts, but that just fits how I use my contact database. I wonder if there is a way to create a second contacts database or group in outlook that wouldn't sync to you BlackBerry.

The other side of the argument is that RIM decided to use a fairly widespread, and powerful existing PIM application instead of forcing you into a proprietary application. (even though Outlook IS proprietary to Microsoft, it is one of the most used PIM applications on the planet, expecially in businesses)

Again, I guess it just boils down to how you use you PIM info.

Moved to Rants and Raves

That's the one thing I miss about using my Centro, was the desktop manager with a built-in calendar & contact list that I could edit to my heart's content, with multiple color-coded calendar entries that didn't require a different email for each color, and a contact list that I didn't have to set up a separate folder in outlook for so my personal contacts wouldn't get merged with the 200+ people listed in my work computer's Outlook folder....

OTOH, it didn't prevent run-on sentences :(