Q-I’m trying to decide between a Palm Pre and an Apple iPhone 3GS. I now use an antiquated Treo 650, which contains all of my life. Will all my contacts, calendar info and memos in the Treo transfer to either phone?
A-Getting the data from the Treo 650 to either a Palm Pre or an Apple iPhone is possible, but it may take a little more effort (and software) for an iPhone. It all depends on what program you’re using to synchronize your Treo’s data with the computer.
On a Windows system, the iPhone can sync up contacts, calendars, notes and bookmarks from Microsoft Outlook 2003 or 2007 using Apple’s iTunes program. On the Mac, the iPhone can sync up the information with Microsoft Entourage–or with Apple’s own Mac OS X Address Book, iCal calendar program, and Safari Web browser. (It’s also possible to sync up Yahoo and Google contacts.)
If you’ve been synching the Treo to Outlook regularly, set the iPhone preferences in iTunes to sync with Outlook. If you’ve been using Palm Desktop for Windows, a third-party program like Chapura’s $25 PocketCopy is one of the easier ways to catapult Palm Desktop data into Outlook so it can sync up.
The Mac version of Palm Desktop lets you export contact and calendar information as vCard and vCal files, which can then be respectively imported into Mac OS X Address Book and iCal. Palm which prepares the data for use with a Palm Pre.
Palm’s new Pre smartphone uses a program called the Data Transfer Agent to harvest your contacts, calendars and other information from Palm Desktop or Outlook for Window, or Mac OS X Address Book and iCal for the Mac. According to Palm, this is a one-way transfer to move the data off the computer and onto the Pre–where it will actually be syncing with an online service compatible with Palm Synergy software like Google or Microsoft Exchange.
If you want to continue two-way data synchronization with a desktop program, the PalmInfoCenter site has a roundup of third-party software. The Treonauts blog also has a lengthy rundown of solutions.
article source: http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/30/q-a-to-pre-or-iphone/
