05-21-2007, 04:00 PM
|
|
Contributing Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 8,228
|
|
Windows Mobile Device Center Poked Me In The Eye
It is amazing to me how the synchronization experience continues to get worse as time goes by. As slow as it was, some of the most reliable syncronizations were via serial cables with Windows CE Services 2.x back in the late 90's. Now everything is so fast and simple with USB. :roll:
Last week I sat down at my month old brand new freshly formatted Vista Ultimate laptop to do my weekly ritual of synchronizing my documents and make a copy of everything on my SD card. I had set the partnership up the day after loading the OS, and after a few reboots, soft resets and some WMDC automatic updates, everything was working fine. Then last week, I docked the device and got an error in WMDC. I unplugged my device and plugged it back in. It started to sync and I thought all was ok. However, I soon realized that my partnership had been renamed. It now said "Ed's Smartphone" instead of HansWizard. WMDC proceeded to then rename my sync folder on my PC from "Documents on HansWizard" to "Documents on Ed's Smartphone." This was especially useful to me now as applications like ListPro, eWallet and HanDBase no longer knew where to find the files. :evil: This turned out to be not much of a problem though, as WMDC also decided to delete about 90% of my files from both the PC and device, so there were really no files to be found. :bad-words: It was that same feeling when you get poked in the eye. It hurts, you aren't sure exactly what happened and you can't quite regain your senses fast enough. You are just stunned.
Fortunately, I had backed up my machine to a USB drive recently, so I got my files back as they existed on my PC, but a weeks worth of work on the device was now gone. Thankfully, no new userIDs and passwords had been added to eWallet on my device, but I still lost some info in ListPro, PocketBible and a few other apps.
Preparing for the worst, today I made a copy of the My Documents folder on the device before starting the sync routine. I am happy to report it wasn't necessary. WMDC refused to connect at all. No amount of rebooting, bouncing WMDC services or device soft resets would fix it. Therefore, nothing no my PC or device was deleted. Of course, I have files out of sync now. Thanks goodness for Exchange as that is how my PIM info is sync'd.
It is really a sad state of affairs when I pull out my device to do something and think "why bother? I'll never get this data to my PC reliably anyway." I am to the point now that if I can't put it in a task that syncs back to Outlook, I just about don't fool with apps on my Pocket PC anymore. I never thought I'd find myself wishing I could install ActiveSync.
|
| |
|
|
|
05-21-2007, 04:39 PM
|
|
Pontificator
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 1,202
|
|
Ed,
I can feel your pain. It seems that with each release of AS, WMDC or whatever MS calls it, we lose features AND reliability. You would think they could get one or the other right. I had a similar issue with my i730 and WMDC, where no about of hammer swinging would get device to be recognized by by Dell Laptop. Fortunately, I was just in progress of updating my laptop, and haven't had problems, yet, with my new machine. I'm pretty sure it's only a matter of time though.
It's quite obvious MS has virtually no interest in supporting sync with our devices other than over the air with Exchange. They have no concern over third party applications and the whole companion to your PC thing has been thrown out the window. One more reason I am hoping we will see a linux based competitor spring up over the next year. MS only seems to regress unless a pushed by a true competitor in whatever space they compete in.
|
| |
|
|
|
05-21-2007, 04:44 PM
|
|
Intellectual
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 237
|
|
Windows Mobile Device Center is :evil:
At work I still have XP -- and syncing there is nice.
At home with the Vista box -- well, I've had my device renamed, etc...
But most irritatingly I can't copy largish files to the device using the Device Center -- it starts then reports an error. For these files (MP3s and movies) I have to take out the microSD, put it in it's adapter, plug it in to the Vista machine and then copy.
This is a known reported issue -- I hope MS fixes it soon.
Oh, and Ed, on your device look at Start>Settings>Connections Tab>USB to PC. If "Enable advanced network functionality" is checked, uncheck it, and see if that helps you get the partnership back.
|
| |
|
|
|
05-21-2007, 06:51 PM
|
|
Thinker
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 486
|
|
I am usually on the forefront of everything gadgety, but Vista is one of those things I plan to stay away from until its baked. Its sad that even after 5 years (I know, even less considering MS had to "reboot" Vista dev) Vista is in this state.
I stick with XP for now. And even there I rarely use AS since its still fairly flaky.
|
| |
|
|
|
05-21-2007, 06:53 PM
|
|
Contributing Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 1,389
|
|
I've had WMDC remove my profile for me once so far... :evil:
I just had to start all over and resync everything.. Which, of course, duplicated many of my appointments and contacts.
I gave up on syncing files LOOOOONG ago after loosing weeks worth of work on several occasions. I just use Spb Backup to back my device up to my SD card and manually make backups of my important files and such. I will never rely on "Syncing" for a backup again. I've lost way too much that way. Syncing for me is only used to keep my PIM data synced between my ppc, laptop and exchange server. I don't trust is as far as i could throw the CD. 
|
| |
|
|
|
05-21-2007, 08:40 PM
|
|
Thinker
Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 327
|
|
I gave up on Vista and went back to XP because of all the syncing issues. Fortunately, this was easy because I am running both XP and Vista on my Intel Macbook in Parallels. It just became to much of a hassle to deal with the various Vista quirks. I finally swithched when it refused to sync, deleted my partnership, and then would not allow me to recreate it again.
I really tried to get used to Vista. I gave it a full month and decided to deal with it. I finally realized that I had settled, much like two people who live with each other sometimes do, even though they are not happy with the arrangement. It was not until I went back to using XP that I realized how absolutely crappy Vista was. I really hate Microsoft for cramming this down our throats. :evil:
|
| |
|
|
|
05-21-2007, 08:56 PM
|
|
Sage
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 784
|
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by alex_kac
I am usually on the forefront of everything gadgety, but Vista is one of those things I plan to stay away from until its baked.
|
Same here, I'm usually one of the "early adopters" (completely crashing my PC with early versions of Memphis, aka Win98). I installed Vista on my laptop, but now it takes nearly 5 minutes to boot into a usable state (XP would take about 1 min). Since my main XP box works fine and I haven't had any major AS issues, I'm going to stick with XP for a while (might need to replace my main hard drive soon though, it's about 4 years-old).
I'm surprised Microsoft hasn't implemented some type of file storage within Exchange/Outlook that would allow Windows Mobile Devices to sync files directly with the server. At that point I'd most likely switch to using Exchange only.
__________________
T-Mobile Dash | HP iPAQ 4100 | HP iPAQ 2210 | HP iPAQ 1910 | Intermec 6651 | Toshiba E570 | Compaq iPAQ 3600 | Casio Pocket Viewer
|
| |
|
|
|
05-21-2007, 09:51 PM
|
|
Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 3,060
|
|
I'm not a programmer, so I know that I'm a bit naive when it comes to my expectations. But, to have a system that's set up and working and suddenly have it go kerflooey just seems silly. If my device/PC setup doesn't work consistently, 100% of the time, it's of no use.
It's like back when the whole disappearing notifications issue came up years ago; if I can't trust things to notify/synch/etc. the same each day, it's WORSE than having nothing at all.
__________________
Old Market Researchers never die...they just get broken down by age and sex.
|
| |
|
|
|
05-21-2007, 10:01 PM
|
|
Pupil
Join Date: Sep 2005
Posts: 11
|
|
Well, I thought I was alone with my sync problems, so I really don't know if I should smile or cry after reading this...
On about every other sync attempt I get an error telling me that it failed, and I should be prepared on losing new items on the next sync. Sweet...
I started out running Office 2007 on Vista but had to give up on that, since 80% of the times I started Outlook I was told the .pst file wasn't closed properly and it would have to be checked. Performance would go down during that check. Fortunately the check was usually only 45 minutes (!) and that made Outlook ready to go again, until the next time I started it. I trashed Office 2007 and now run 2003 again. It's better, only I have to remember to start Outlook before cradeling my WM5 pda or I get a sync error and the part of Outlook that is automatically started to sync crashes and demands a reboot of the pc.
Of course MS doesn't allow us to sync using wifi. That goes without saying. But couldn't they at least then make Bluetooth work? I have two dongles and none of them is supported by Vista. One of them (Tecom BT3030) is completely unknown and the manufacturer doesn't even seem to remember making it, so it is now at the bottom of the drawer. The other one (Microtune) seems to be recognized by Vista, but unfortunately PC Windows and Mobile Windows are incompatible, so no protocol for syncing (ActiveSync) can be recognized by either device. Doesn't really matter, though, because at least once every week the pc forgets all about the Bluetooth settings and I have to set up everything from scratch.
All the sync'ing capabilities I had 1-2 years ago with XP, ActiveSync and WM2003SE are gone now. MS has destroyed everything. Now there's only USB and Windows Mobile Device Center left, and it hardly ever works. Funny that while the hardware developes at incredible speed, software is a completely different matter. Well, at least we don't depend on MS for making hardware, or we'd be screwed!
If I hadn't paid good money for Vista I'd consider going back to XP, but I keep hoping for a patch to solve these problems. I am naive that way.
|
| |
|
|
|
05-21-2007, 10:58 PM
|
|
Philosopher
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 524
|
|
I have to say that I am sooooo glad for once I wasn't tempted to be an 'early adopter' of Vista/Office 2007! I feel for you guys - really! But cant help remembering back to early days of XP. I'm waiting until SP1 is out (at least). AS4.5 is already bad enough! Come on MS - get this sorted! :evil:
__________________
Regards
Griph
iPhone 4 32GB Jailbroken and iPad 3G 64GB .
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
Linear Mode
