Plus Snyc & Go - Anyone Use This?

[shawnc]

As we welcome Jason back to the 2-device world, he mentioned a software called Plus Sync & Go

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/plus/dme/portabledevices.asp

Does anyone have experience with this product or can someone point me in the direction of a review? Here are some things I'm curious about:

1. I've read some posts about .asx files. It appears as though this filetype is used when saving live radio or video feeds. Is that true?

2. Do I need this software to be able to play these type of files? Doesn't WMP9 play them?

3. My interest is in going to the NPR site mentioned and downloading news content to play back on my PPC during the bus ride into the city. Again, do I need this software to do that?

4. Is this truly for the PPC? When reading the system requirements, it indicates that 68MB of free hard disk space is needed. Anyone have 68MB of free space on their PPC :wink: ?

5. Does this work similar to avantgo? I am intrigued by the notion of syncing web content in the morning similar to what I now do with avantgo.

Sorry for what must seem like ridiculously elementary questions. Any help is appreciated?

Thanx,

[Dave Potter]

These questions aren't silly at all. After reading the same article I had many of the same questions. I will be following this thread carefully over the next few days.

[ATraveler]

I can't help you regarding Plus Synch and Go, but I can tell you that there are other apps out there that can do what you want with NPR. For example, Replay Radio will record any stream that would pass through your sound card as an MP3. There is at least one other similar app, but the name escapes me at the moment. If you want to play the file on WMP, there is a free converter available from MS. IIRC, I first learned about this right here, so you might want to search on Replay Radio.

Re. the file size, my guess would be that most of that is taken up by the recording/synching functions on your PC, not the PPC install. HTH.

[ChristopherTD]

I used this for a short time. It is used to copy music to SD cards. you can set up playlists and it will automatically sync than when it detects a SD card has been inserted into your PC. There were So many limitations I never really used it. It only supported WMA fiLes and all mine were in MP3, you had to have a card reader connected to the PC.

Basically I didn't get on with it, whereas with iTunes I can quickly create a smart playlist restricted to 190MB and drag that to my SD card. Manual but easy.

Sync & Go did other things, but I didn't explore.

[Sven Johannsen]

Sync and Go has some pre-ordained feeds that copy (sync) some audio/video information to your PPC per a schedule or on demand. They are on you PPC as WMV (or WMA) and are viewable in MP9 if you so desire. The application that is loaded with S&G on the PPC has a reasonable nice interface to select and play the various pieces you downlod (sync). It is to me very much a Multimedia Avantgo, with a very reduced content set. It comes with the Plus multimedia pack which does have a number of other fairly useful items on it, so it was a minimal cost as far as I was concerned.

My only gripe with it has been that it is dog slow to sync, and there is no option to keep the backlight on during playback, so the screen is constantly dimming, usually in the good spots. It is worth checking out IMHO.

[shawnc]

Sven,

Thanx for the info. I agree that for $20 and no subscription costs, this is pretty reasonably priced. I was hoping it worked similar to avantgo and your post confirmed this.

This was very helpful.

[jkendrick]

DonS of BostonPocketPC has an excellent review here:

http://www.bostonpocketpc.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Reviews&file=index&req=showcontent&id=65

I have used it a bit but if you get any video be sure you have lots of space on a storage card. The very first time you sync will take a while too.

It's cool though and blows people away when you show them the news headlines in video on the PPC. Invariably someone will ask me where the cable TV hookup is. :D

[Sven Johannsen]

Just wanted to clarify one thing. S&G is separate from ActiveSync. It does not sit in it like Avantgo. Sync&Go is a separate app that is run on the desktop, or sits in the system tray. So you have to sync it separately, or set it to sync on detection.

[ctmagnus]

My only gripe with it has been that it is dog slow to sync

Slow like transferring the files to the PPC manually, or faster than that?

[tvalentin]

I've been using Sync and Go for about two months now and find it pretty useful.

The preset streams are of varing usefulness, but a few are very good. Particuarly the Kenradio feed and the WebTalkRadio Guys stream. Also the NPR news feed is interesting with lots of news from a global perspective. The video is usually of acceptable quality as well although sometimes a bit grainy in full screen.

I haven't really used the music playlist feature very much, but thats mostly to my media library not being very well organised so it can't sort my music in any meaningful fashion.

It comes with it's own player but i have had some problems with this as it often skips when playing video files. This does not happen when play the same files using winmedia player 9. Anyone else had a similar problem?

As for the transfer of data to the ppc being slow, i also have this problem, but it is a reasonalbly large quantity of data to tranfer, so i hapily put up with this, and if you leave you pocket pc syncing/charging overnight this shouldn't be much of problem to you.

Overall i'd recommend this product to anyone who wants something to listen/watch during there daily commute. And the price is reasonalble at $20. Plus you get a buch of other utulities included in the pack.

Hope this answers some of you questions. Let me know if you need clarification/ more information.
Tom

[shawnc]

Tom,

Thanx for the info, it does help considerably. I really like the idea of video/audio on my PPC. The flipside is that I just started syncing my avantgo content wirelessly and really like the idea of syncing without the need to turn on my laptop. My guess is this would be impossible/impractical with such large files.

But I'm going to kick it around for a few more days before deciding.

Thanx again.

[tvalentin]

As far as i know (ie i've never tried it) it isn't possible to do a wireless sync & go in the same way as avantgo. You may be able to use it over a bluetooth/wireless sync but i think the pc installed client is a necessity.

As an addendum to my earlier post about frequent slow downs in syncing the content i've notice that the process on my pc for my McAffee Antivirus software frequently uses the maximum available processing power. Anyone else noticed this?

Let me know if you need more info Shawn.

Tom

[Sven Johannsen]

You an sync wirelessly but only if you establish an ActiveSync connection. I said it didn't use AS and what i meant was there isn't a new icon on AS and Sync&Go doesn't sync when you hit the sync button on AS, but it does require the connection that is set up by AS.

Actualy WiFi sync should be a bit faster because of the speed of WiFi over the USB speed.

I also found a silly thing that makes the sync time less of an irritant. There is a sync continuously setting. I hadn't selected that because it seemed silly to me to continuously sync stuff that only changes now and again. So I had it set to sync on demand and that took forever. With continouous, it just seems to happen in the background and not every channel seems to sync everytime. So most time now when I check it, the last sync listed is fairly recent and I don't have to mess with anything.