ben robison
when only more words will do
Subscribe to RSSPlaxo = Buyer’s Remorse
A while ago, I wrote about gSyncIt which syncs your Outlook Calendars to Google Calendar. After playing with the free/trial version, I ran into a few problems. I worked with it for 1 week or so, but when syncing (which was quite slow) constantly ran into problems with object references pointing to null objects.
It was the same calendar item each time and even though I had my settings to continue syncing on failure, that didn’t happen, so I couldn’t get my whole calendar to sync anymore. A friend at work has been using SyncMyCal quite successfully for awhile, so I finally went that route. Even thought it is $15 more than the $10 gSyncIt, I figured the price was still nice to get my calendars synched without having to deal with errors all the time. I want my technology to work and get out of my way.
Not 20 minutes after making my purchase and registering SyncMyCal, I talked to another friend here at work who has been using Plaxo to sync his contacts and calendars with Google. Plaxo is Free. Buyer’s Remorse sets in.
In addition to syncing your calendars and contacts between every conceivable operating system and program, Plaxo is also integrated with a number of web applications most notably for me, Last.fm, Flickr, del.icio.us, etc.
After waiting for 4 weeks to make my purchase, why couldn’t I have waited for another 30 minutes? Buyer’s Remorse.
So even though I was upset about wasting some money, I figured it would still be stupid to pass on Plaxo just because I had already spent money, so I downloaded it and gave it a spin.
Turns out, my money wasn’t a complete waste. Plaxo does sync with Outlook and GCal, but you don’t have a lot of flexibility over how that happens. Plaxo will only sync to GCal’s default calendar which doesn’t exactly meet my needs (that’s what I tell myself to feel better anyway). Plaxo also appears to only support 2-way syncing which definitely doesn’t meet my needs.
Plaxo still does a lot of neat things though. With an understanding of those limitations, Plaxo might be just what you need.