I have been a long-time PalmPilot and Macintosh user. Although I understand the Palm Desktop software for the Mac has been a little behind its Windows counterpart in terms of overall functionality, I have found it more than adequate for my organisational needs. At my new place of employment, office policy and equipment dictates that I use a Windows-based PC. For scheduling, contact management and e-mail, everyone in the office uses Microsoft Outlook. I know that I can move my Palm data over to Outlook easily enough, or just install Palm Desktop on my Windows PC and use that. What would you advise? ROGER HUMPHRIES Hong Kong If you want to get your Palm data over to your PC, you have to install Palm Desktop software on your Windows PC anyway. However, if everyone else in your office uses Microsoft Outlook, I suggest you do so, too. Outlook includes features that are much more powerful than those of the Palm system, and can really help you in a workgroup environment. First, moving your Palm data into Outlook is simple enough. Once you have Palm Desktop installed, you simply launch Microsoft Outlook and perform a Hot Sync. The data in your Palm handheld device will automatically be imported to Outlook. One of the functions of Outlook I find personally quite useful is the meeting scheduler, which lets you inform other participants electronically. Now this in itself is not unique to Outlook; plenty of other schedulers, including on-line schedulers such as My Yahoo!, allow you to do this. But since, more often than not, Outlook comes pre-installed with most Windows PCs and is easy enough for any Joe Blow to figure out and use, it tends to be more common in an average modern office environment than other workgroup and collaboration tools. I also like being able to do my e-mail, scheduling, contact management and even some rudimentary project management from within one program. On the subject of e-mail, though, bear in mind that Outlook in a client-server environment is set to work off an e-mail server, leaving mail by default on the server. As such, if your company's technology department has set a limit of, for argument's sake, 10 MB on each user's mail box, and you receive a lot of e-mail, you will find annoying messages informing you that your mailbox has exceeded its capacity limit. More annoyingly, if you exceed this limit, Outlook will not let you send mail that you might be working on - let alone receive mail - until you get your mail off your server. But I digress. Your question was simple enough. The simple answer, again, is use Outlook in your office if everyone else is using it. If, as I assume, you have a Mac at home, you should have no problem using your Palm with Outlook in the office and with the Palm Desktop for the Mac at your home.
