Twelve Black Code Monkeys

I know what this looks like, but please pay no attention to today’s date! I know many people who have blackberries for work. They’ve seen my new Treo 650 and would love to buy one themselves, but they need to stay connected to the office. When I was first researching options to synch my information last summer, I came across Good Technology which offers a server-based solution similar to Blackberry’s. However, the price was prohibitive for a single user. It was more of a solution for a large business. A few days ago, Good Technologies announced a similar offering designed more for small and medium-sized businesses called GoodLink Small Business Server Edition. Although no prices are given, it’s still likely way to costly for the average individual consumer, but will smaller businesses decide to scrap their blackberries or blackberry plans due to the Treo’s superior overall connectivity and vastly greater selection of third-party applications (which are also generally much less costly)? RIM has been working on a version of their blackberry software specifically for Treos, but we still don’t know when it will be out. The last news from a month or so ago was that it was in “final beta.” Maybe now they will be rushing it into production.

I came across a post in a Yahoo Group earlier today from a Treo 600 owner, Tom Wendell. Tom was lucky enough to have tested the new GoodLink product at his company and shared his thoughts about it in a long post, which he gave me permission to reprint:

“I’ve been selected as an alpha tester for the evaluation of the GoodLink product for our company (> 22K employees worldwide). I thought I’d give you some info on the initial installation of GoodLink and some first impressions of the product.

I’ve been using PalmPilots for around a decade, IIRC (started out with
PPilot Personal). I have accumulated a number of apps which I consider to be indispensable for my work as a field engineer for a medical device company. I currently use a Treo 600 on Verizon with a 256MB SD card.

Our company had been using Visio for e-mail wireless updates, but we ran into a number of issues with the product that could not be resolved, so the company is looking to use another product to sync with Outlook. GoodLink is the current target of our testing.

The GoodLink (GL) installation is initiated by connecting via Treo web
browser to the Good company website. Once the product is downloaded, the .prc file sets up the GL app and the wireless connection. The product then connects to the GL server at the company to populate the on-board GL databases. Once in place, the GL program provides you with immediate updating of the Outlook database for mail, calendar, notes, contacts, and attachments to e-mail messages.

Immediately upon opening the GL app, you are presented with a Today screen (similar to Outlook), with the ability to go to Calendar, Contacts, E-Mail, or Notes. The e-mail client is impressive, with a preview screen and the ability to access a drop-down menu containing all of the folders you would find to the left side of your Outlook desktop application. The preferences to allow these folders to be populated is not immediately apparent when perusing the menus, but I hope to find it this weekend (note: found the navigation on the FAQ on good.com). The calendar is OK, with appointments blocked out, but not color-coded or otherwise identified unless you touch the appointment to bring up the detail. You do have the ability to dial a call directly from the appointment text - an important feature if you’re driving and have to join a teleconference or contact a colleague.

As slick as the interface appears, there are several glaring issues that are serious obstacles (for me, at least). One is the amount of memory the app takes up out of the 32 MB on board the Treo. Other issues include incompatibility with other mainstream programs and the inability to implement some features in Outlook that are very handy for setting up meetings (like busy search). Another issue with the GL contact list is that the list no longer has the 16 user-defined categories that the Palm OS uses, it only has 2 categories - Personal Contacts and Company History. Additionally, the Notes app also had lost it’s categories and there is no way to define anything in any of the databases as ‘Personal.’ Everything and anything is liked up with Outlook. This is a serious shortcoming for someone who uses their company-purchased Treo as their own Day-Runner to schedule work and home activities.

As I mentioned earlier , the install process is very memory-intensive. From the Treo_Users’ Guide: “Treo 600 - first time GL install = 12.5 MB (…) Treo 650 - first time GL install = 14.6 MB.” (ref: GoodLink Treo Users’ Guide, p.30). Knowing the number of applications our company’s field personnel have on their Palms and Treos, the recommendation
from IT was to do a backup, hard reset, install GL, then re-sync to get the other apps and related databases back onto the Treo. This caused many of the applications to think they weren’t registered when they were re-sync’ed back onto the Treo, so I have some more digging to do in my files to find all the registration codes (but that’s MY fault for blindly trusting our IT dweebs). The large size of the installed GL app caused several apps on my Treo to be removed and put into Archive on the desktop. I’ll have to see what I can get to run from an SD card - it doen’t appear that GL will store any of it’s databases on an SD card.

Now, about the on-going memory allocations for GL. According to the Guide, the product supposedly uses about 5.8-6.0 MB for data storage after installation. However, upon opening the Delete screen from the default app launcher, you see that GoodLink is listed as using 8257K of memory. The discrepancy between what is listed as memory requirement and the actual requirements was resolved after contacting Good. The other 2 MB is taken up by sounds, images, and application logic (it looks like a little shuck ‘n jive by the company to make the memory usage seem not as bad). There are several other GL items that are listed separately (i.e. Contacts 115K, Calendar 109K, etc.). I know that the calendar and contact databases are highly dependent upon the contents of the Outlook calendar and contact lists, but here’s an interesting quirk about GL - the app does NOT use the Palm OS internal databases for calendar and contact lists.

This quirk is probably the most significant hurdle for power users to
overcome if they want (or are forced by their company) to use GL. The use of a separate database for calendar items, contacts, notes and the like means that applications like DateBk5, Beyond Contacts and other programs will not co-exist on a Treo that has GoodLink installed. The Outlook calendar doesn’t change on the desktop, but the Treo databases are blank. I have also noted (on the Delete screen from AppLauncher), that there are now two calendar databases. Since I have been a registered user of DateBk5 since the v3 days, I have optimized DateBk and my shortcuts to allow me to rapidly input appointments and contact info using Graffiti (now Jot), shortcuts, and DateBk templates. Furthermore, I have my calendar appointment color coded by category, with icons denoting the type of appointment (implant, follow-up, meeting, teleconference, etc.). Going from the integrated DateBk5 calendar, contact list, and todo list to the plain vanilla of the GoodLink calendar system is like going from a large, HD, flat-screen TV to a console B&W TV of the 60’s. This is a HUGE shortcoming, IMNSHO.

Oh, and did I mention that Jot doesn’t work in GL? It is activated and
works in other non-GL apps, but not while in any of the linked GL
apps. HUGE shortcoming #2….

Oh, and did I mention that you can’t beam (send or receive) contacts and appointments in GL? HUGE shortcoming #3….

So far, the programs we have found that don’t play well with GL are
DateBk5, Jot, Beyond Contacts, MMS (under Verizon) <BTW, it works when GL was unloaded again>, and Voice Dialing by Voice Signal.

I had great hopes for this application, but I am not willing to
significantly change the way I use my Palm (Treo or otherwise) just so that I can have wireless updating of my Outlook e-mail and calendar. I think that someone who is just starting to use a Palm OS device would be thrilled to use GL to get their Outlook functionality on their Treo. The loss of so many powerful apps to allow GoodLink to run is simply too high for me, personally. This message was not intended as a slam against the GL product, just an observation of how its installation would affect this self-described Palm power user. I’m sure that for some people, this app would be the cat’s meow.

In my job, I work pretty much independently from others in the company. My schedule changes on a minute-to-minute basis (therefore I am the one updating the calendar, in most cases). I only have slight interaction with other teams at my company, mostly via teleconferences. Therefore, the wireless updates that are the main selling points of the GL app are of limited value to me. If I were working in-house on development teams, my assessment of this app might have been wildly enthusiastic about the capability to keep up to date with emergency meetings and the like.

I have been looking forward to getting a Treo 650 upgrade from my company when Verizon finally gets their tail in gear and puts it on the list of supported devices. Now, if my company goes ahead with using GoodLink, I’m going to have to seriously consider getting a high-res screen Palm device instead and go back to carrying two devices again. I should be able to sync the DateBk5-enabled unit to Outlook using Chapura, like I do now.”

While this has some great info for people who are thinking about such a solution, it is definitely a very individual evaluation. Tom has been using Palm devices for a while and has developed an adherence to some PalmOS applications that don’t work with GoodLink. For people who are new to the Treo or haven’t even bought one yet, these issues probably won’t be that important. Of course memory is always an issue especially given the relatively small amount of it on all Treos as well as the inefficient use of it on the Treo 650. Although where I work everyone uses a blackberry, I would love to at least have the option of carrying around a Treo instead. It will be very interesting to see once RIM has unveiled their Blackberry Service for Treo how these products compare with each other!