Introducing myself.

[mariov]

Hi. Maybe this is not the place to do this, but i´m not able to found the "everything else" forum anywhere. Please feel free to move this post where it belongs if you want to.

I´ll say a few things about myself, since i think i´ll be posting here sometimes from now on. Here´s why.

I´m a very long time pocket pc user, since 2000. I´m on my 7° iPAQ. Once i had a treo 600 for about a month.

I use pocket informant, i have been using it for years now, and i like it a lot. I used agenda fusion before that and it was fine.

I´m a hardcore PIM user. I´m a lawyer, and a serius PIM on my PDA is a must for me.

When i had the treo, i tried agendus. It was not intuite as PI as i saw it, but i tested it for a very short time. I was happy with the fact it had a desktop companion, something PI user have been asking for a long time.

Once i wrote a detailed review to test AF vs. PI for gadgetaddict. It had about 10,000 reads, so i think it was fine. I´ll be really happy to review agendus for WM. I´ll like to make a detailed review, between agendus for wm and windows at the same time on one side, and AF and PI using outlook on the other side. I´ll love to have a review copy of agendus, both for wm and windows, to make this. I promise i´ll be fair, and that i´ll suggest all that i think it will be needed to make agendus a serius choice for pocket pc users. I think that the desktop companion is an advantage, so i really expect to see good integration between both. I guess it will take an active sync extra module to sync the additional info.

Also, i expect agendus to play nice with pocket breeze, spb today plugin, and with dialing... well, there is a lot of stuff to test.

Well, that´s all for now. I can´t wait to try the beta.

[J-Mac001]

Well, since we are in an introduction mode, I may as well start fresh here. I have been a member here for quite a while - originally with a different user name which seems to be no longer available. I am a Pocket PC user for about four years. I have also used Symbian OS devices extensively, and Palm devices since their inception in 1992 and then Handspring in 1998 when Hawkins founded that company. Not to mention my daliances with the old Newton and Epoch devices. I've been on the handheld device bandwagon since there was such an animal.

I moved primarily to the Windows Mobile platform at a time when Palm development was a bit stagnant, and the development of applications was swinging heavily toward the WM platform. Though I am not pleased at all with Microsoft's apparent determination to ruin the Windows Mobile OS along with its sync vehicle, Activesync. Each successive release of the WM OS seems to become more and more flawed, which is frustrating. But WM is still the premiere OS for handhelds that act as computers to some degree. (I will exclude the Symbian OS here, as it is still primarily a phone OS that has some other capabilities more so than a computing-oriented OS).

I have done a certain amount of software development in all three platforms - WM, Palm, and Symbian Series 60 - but nothing major, and not for my own company. I used Agendus for Palm way back, and never really did decide which I preferred, Agendus or Datebook. With each successive release one would leapfrog over the other with regard to my own favorite features. However now I feel that Windows Mobile has the most robust applications. That is most likely due to the fact that Microsoft allows the most complete access to APIs for third party developers. Of course that caused them no end of security problems on the PC, but with no real threat of viruses, etc. on handhelds, it is not an issue, IMO. (And no, I will not even discuss malware on handhelds, except to say that I still know of no actual infections in the real world, and thus I have no fear of such!) Agendus for Symbian Series 60, IMO, was a different story altogether. That version did not resemble what Agendus had been for Palm devices at all. Very few features, and not much that you could do even with those that were there. Of course I attribute that to the refusal by Nokia to allow any serious access to the OS hooks by third party deleopers. It would appear that they wanted to keep that revenue stream all for themselves. (And, yes - in my opinion, Symbian = Nokia, though others may disagree!)

With WM, I have been an avid fan of WebIS's Pocket Informant. While it is not everything to everyone, it has certainly ruled the roost in the world of Windows Mobile. In my opinion, nothing else has come close, to date. Also, I do know that there is some sort of arrangement between iambic and WebIS - or at least there has been in the recent past, so it is entirely possible that WebIS and iambic are collaborating on Agendus for WM. I am not in any position to know; that's just my own purely idle speculation.

I have a keen interest in Agendus for Windows Mobile for a couple of reasons: For one, Agendus was initially developed by iambic purely for handheld devices, and they have been in that specific development business longer than anyone around. If anyone can create something close to perfection in a Windows Mobile Power PIM, it is iambic.


I have a license for Agendus for Outlook Edition, though I have not been using it for almost a year. While I can tolerate plenty of little idiosynchrasies in Agendus for Ooutlook, all versions since 3.4 that I have tried have caused my at some point to lose Outlook data - which is not acceptable. Though I backup Outlook frequently, after the last data loss I found that I also had a corrupt backup, which meant rebuilding all of my Outlook data - Yikes! with a few thousand contacts, that was a true challenge! Fortunately, a self-contained, self-extracting backup on my Pocket PC partially saved me then. I previously used Plaxo as a backup source for my Outlook data, but I abandoned that for a few reasons. One, they do not handle calendar nor task data very well. Actually they handle it quite poorly. Secondly, Plaxo just plays too fast and loose with my personal data. They are primarily interested in having you share your data and they gear everything toward sharing contact data with other Plaxo members. Also, they have no real stated business model; it is difficult to see just how they will be able to maintian such a business without profiting from the use of users' PIM data at some point. Or, if not Plaxo, then whomever eventually takes over that business, as they will own the rights to my data, whether I like it or not!

Additionally, Agendus for Outlook continually corrupted the Notes on my Pocket PC by inserting the icon coding in the Notes field. Now with iambic having Agendus for Outlook AND a Windows Mobile version, synchronization with Pocket PCs should be made much smoother. Hopefully! A good working, Agendus for Outlook and Pocket PC would be a true killer application. The end all for both platforms, IMO. Talk about a launching platform for more and better Windows programs! This is an excellent business decision. One that should benefit both Windows and Windows Mobile users - as well as iambic itself.

So I'm here to help and to hope that this is a good working development. My devices are available for testing - I have a number of Pocket PC's, bith VGA and QVGA.

Looking forward to trying this baby out!

[adriano]

Hi All,

thank you for making your introductions here. Even if this is a quick reply, I did throughly read your posts. I look forward to see you around during the beta program.

As far as integration between AGWM and AGW, this is something we'll definitely focus onto in order to create a seameless environment between the two.

- Adriano