It's been an intense 7 days since I bought my BB 8700g on BES and BIS plans (SingTel charges separately for them!) It took a few days to get all the email issues sorted out. My connectivity woes aren't over yet though. I still can't get any of the proxy-less IM clients to work on my 8700g, and access to my corporate intranet is broken. But that's another story.
I use Pocket Informant on my iPAQ 2210 as the replacement for Pocket Outlook. Unfortunately Cross River System's PocketDay is an inferior product. Perhaps the BB platform doesn't provide the necessary underlying functionality required for more sophisticated PIM implementations? On the other hand, the BB wins hands down as a convergent platform for messaging (email, SMS, IM).
I really like the BB very much and would like to ditch the iPAQ. But I haven't yet worked out a suitable workflow for using the BB in combination with my laptop. The current combination I am testing is to use PocketDay in combination with TodoMatrix from REXwireless, but with PocketDay's Tasks pane turned off. Unfortunately it also means that I have to insert duplicate task entries on the iPAQ until I am satisfied that I can live with the PocketDay + TodoMatrix combination. It's very kludgy but the supercharged task management provided by TodoMatrix seems to be worth the inconvenience and extra time needed to keep them in synch.
Now, here's the real problem I have with TodoMatrix. It was designed under the assumption that the BB becomes the user's "center of taskdom". Although the hierarchical task paradigm (which Pocket Informant has) is helpful it doesn't work for me because:
- It is too difficult to work with large hierarchical lists on a small screen.
- I can't attach relevant emails and documents to a task.
- I can't capture task dependencies (and using MS Project would be a dumb idea!).
Out of desperation I even tried using ListPro in combination with Pocket Informant. That's why I eventually ended up forking out the $$$ for MindManager and ResultsManager for use on the laptop as my main organizational tool. They are well integrated with Outlook and MS Office.
I therefore need to have seamless bi-directional calendar and task synchronization between laptop and the BB's Calendar and TodoMatrix. I also need to be able to schedule a task as an event on the calendar, and then have TodoMatrix track the association so that when I delete a task I am given the option of also deleting the associated calendar event.
All this puts a dampener on what started out as an exciting week. At the same time my initial experience has been so positive that I am willing to give the BB tree a good shake.
PocketDay + TodoMatrix = ?
