I want to replace the venerable Outlook .pst with something a little more transportable.
My target is something that will maintain
contacts,
email (including sent), and
calendar in sync across multiple real and reduced computing devices (ie: desktop, notebook, PDA). I'd also like contacts, current email and current calendar to be
available offline and sync up and down when the notebook or PDA are reconnected.
Now I can pull out my smartphone to check full contact information or notes I've chosen to synchronize. When I enter an appointment in the doctor's office, I see conflicts and it reminds me on my desktop. And I want my information
offline! I don't want to pay for a data plan and WiFi is not available everywhere so a certain amount of data needs to be resident on the device.
This is basically the model I've used for a decade with Outlook and ActiveSync. I just want to expand it from
one desktop and a Windows PDA or smartphone to non-Windows Mobile fixed and mobile devices. I found some dead searches that seemed to refer to using ActiveSync with WinCE netbooks. That's a good start; except netbooks now come with Win7 "Starter Edition."
I'm thinking I may end up with something like hosted Exchange or Google Apps. I have not looked into either yet and am hoping someone has experience with a similar goal. Barring that, someone to commiserate on the task is nice, too. Free is better than cost; but a few dollars
a year may be tolerable.
