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How To Former Palm Users Transition to Droid Guide

I am also concerned about the privacy issue. What other convenient way is there to backup (or sync) the Droid without using the gmail account?
 
I am also concerned about the privacy issue. What other convenient way is there to backup (or sync) the Droid without using the gmail account?
I accepted the google non privacy issue for the calendar & gmail. I am not sure about how to handle memos/ notes which normally sysns with your pc if using a pDA.
 
I'll hafta look at gtasks, I haven't heard of it before.

I liked GDocs, but this 100 limit is troublesome. Also moving my existing Palm memos into google is a project.


NoteEverything Pro looks like the best for old Palmy's
-making quick notes
-freehand sketches
-attaching pics to notes
-imports Palm Memos !!!!!! and keeps them in groups (categories)!!!
- can import and export multiple formats


"Pro" version
- lets you markup pics like you could on your Palm
- can do full backups - which you can keep externally


BUT (presently at least)

doesn't use "the cloud". No interface with googledocs/ gmail/ googlecalendar etc.


I'm still trying to get more familiar with NoteEverything, and now I'm wondering about 3Bananna. Anybody got any experience / insights with it?
 
Thanks katahdin. I also finally went with the google contacts sync.

Can anyone suggest the best way to transfer my Palm Desktop Calendar to Google Calendar? If the best way is with Companionlink, can I transfer ONLY the calendar without touching the contacts, etc.? I have already exported my contacts using the V-card export method (which worked very well btw. Got everything over in separate categories, just as I wanted.) Now I need to move my calendar over, as well.
 
Thanks katahdin. I also finally went with the google contacts sync.

Can anyone suggest the best way to transfer my Palm Desktop Calendar to Google Calendar? If the best way is with Companionlink, can I transfer ONLY the calendar without touching the contacts, etc.? I have already exported my contacts using the V-card export method (which worked very well btw. Got everything over in separate categories, just as I wanted.) Now I need to move my calendar over, as well.

yes, you can specify on companion link which you want to sync (just calendar, just contacts, just memos, or all of them). Just make sure you check / uncheck options before doing the sync.
 
yes, you can specify on companion link which you want to sync (just calendar, just contacts, just memos, or all of them). Just make sure you check / uncheck options before doing the sync.


Thanks for the help. Companionlink worked fine and everything looks good except for one day that shows all my appointments with colored bars and no text on the Droid (ok on Google Calendar, though). Some minor glitch. Otherwise, this was a major help without spending the $ on Dba2Csv as some others have done.
 
The only issue I found was that addresses are tagged with work. Easy enuf to change ;=} I havent looked to figure out why - maybe it was GIGO or maybe if there is an entry on company name - it assumed it was work addr.
 
I am trying to convert from about 13 years of Palm experience to Droid. Trying to move contacts over first as described however I receive an error... Reading of vCard data has failed. Failed to parse vCard for unexpected reason (Invalid line:"/9j.... blah, blah, blah). Anyway, I went back and searched the file using WordPad and found out the the pictures I had associated with the contacts were failing the import. Removed the pictures from the contacts, reattempted import and all is well. Thank you so much. 868 contacts imported in a couple of short minutes, nice.
 
I am trying to convert from about 13 years of Palm experience to Droid. Trying to move contacts over first as described however I receive an error... Reading of vCard data has failed. Failed to parse vCard for unexpected reason (Invalid line:"/9j.... blah, blah, blah). Anyway, I went back and searched the file using WordPad and found out the the pictures I had associated with the contacts were failing the import. Removed the pictures from the contacts, reattempted import and all is well. Thank you so much. 868 contacts imported in a couple of short minutes, nice.

I never received the error message as you did. The pics just didn't move to the droid. I never had to remove them to do the export. However, I did copy and paste them to my desktop, then to my droid contacts. I only had about a dozen or so, so it didn't take too long......something to keep me busy during our snow storm here in northeast!!
 
I settled on GooMemo to replace the Memos from my Centro. I exported each category from Palm Desktop to a TXT file, then made a few modifications to each TXT file to match GooMemo's import format... namely, adding the tags (to be synonymous with the categories on the Palm side). Had 107 memos to move, it was pretty smooth.

Thanks for the tip on GooMemo! If I had hair, it would all be gone right now from all of the apps I've tried and deleted this week while trying to find a decent replacement for my Palm m515 notepad. GooMemo comes REAL close! There are other note apps out there with categories, but this one fits my needs for now. I'm now trying to find out when the Pro version will be available.
 
Presently I'm becoming a fanboy of GooMemo. This is really close to what I'm looking for to replace Palm Notepad. It has user-created categories (tabs), works directly on the SDcard, quick and clean interface. The Pro version is suppose to let you import/export individual notes as TXT on the SD too (presently only supports import/export in a single import.txt or export.txt file). It'll also support gDocs, but that's not a plus for me - seriousl?? limit of 100?? holy carps!

For sync'ing of the SD card, I'm looking at Best Sync 2010. There are plenty of sync programs out there but they all only seem to sync (or backup) whole directories instead of individual files. Many let you filter out unwanted files but when I want one file out of 100, that's not much of a solution. Best Sync is easier for me to exclude but I'm still looking for a better way (gosh I miss HotSync and DocsToGo).

So, I'm tinkering with 2 different note apps: B-Folders, and GooMemo. B-Folders will really be something if they come out with their desktop app. It's suppose to let you edit notes on the PC and then provide 2-way sync with the phone. Until then, GooMemo is beating them in my productivity tests.
 
I had more trouble than use out of "Documents to Go" on my Treo, but it is available for Android in the Marketplace now. I messed with the "lite" version and promptly uninstalled it. BTW, BeamReader does pdfs far better than "Doc's to Go" ever did.

What's out there for a "local" PC / windows app that'll sync with gmail contacts?
 
I had more trouble than use out of "Documents to Go" on my Treo, but it is available for Android in the Marketplace now. I messed with the "lite" version and promptly uninstalled it. BTW, BeamReader does pdfs far better than "Doc's to Go" ever did.

What's out there for a "local" PC / windows app that'll sync with gmail contacts?


LOVED Docs2Go on my palm m515. I have many kinds of files spread across my office's network and I need to be able to view and or edit them. I didn't care for D2G's pdf viewer so much, but the word and excel editors worked great in a pinch. I didn't have much use for the power point part of it - but now that mini-projectors are coming out, I can see where it might be real handy.
 
Another former Palm Centro to Droid Switch Experience.

One word... CompanionLink. Agree with the OP. Use the Free Trial. You will only need to do this once. Use the specific palm to Google product. It sent my 1000+ Contacts and Calendar over in a snap. I had flawless data transfer! No errors!! Even the Notes went to the right place and were not truncated.

Palm to Droid:
Contacts & Calendar Events using CompanionLink

For Memos:
I also used GDocs Notepad syncing with Google Docs. I am having to copy and paste them to Google Docs though.

For Calendar:
Use google calendar; love it and I used Palm Cal for 10 years.

For Contacts:
Use Gmail contacts

Bravo!
 
I'm still incredulous that there is NO integrated PIM app that has the functions of the OLD OLD OLD palm pda pim and desktop !

I still messing around and messing up my memos using the various notes apps. Note Everything definitely has the most responsive developer. I sent him an email regarding the difficulty of importing memos from the palm, with a few suggestions, he installed the palm desktop and within a few days wrote the option to import memos from a palm export !!

Evernote is pretty good having a pc based DB of your notes, but is really a replacement for Googles notebook which is based on web clipping etc . Its droid app is slow aamong other issues. Would be nice if you could control which notes stayed on the pc and didnt get sent to the web. But thanks to Note Everything, you can import to evernote from note everything !

I found the companionlink import using the contacts notes as unusable for my needs. Just didnt display enuf of my notes and the type way too small.

3banana might be ok but will not save large notes - I only have a few - but I want them , and I dont really want to put my notes on the web for security. Plus initially dont like the web format.

So I have ALMOST settled on using a roundabout solution! That is using the description field for my notes in .. ... the calendar event !! It syncs immediately, is searchable via aurora and online.

actually by using this, you can search for your Doctor name, get the appointment info, contact info and memo notes items. Actually a function I liked in my PDA
 
I'm still incredulous that there is NO integrated PIM app that has the functions of the OLD OLD OLD palm pda ......

....have ALMOST settled on using a roundabout solution! That is using the description field for my notes in .. ... the calendar event !! It syncs immediately, is searchable via aurora and online.

actually by using this, you can search for your Doctor name, get the appointment info, contact info and memo notes items. Actually a function I liked in my PDA

I'm not quite understanding,,,, your achieving searchable notes, for your contacts,, by entering them in calendar events??? I mean, I'm happy for you if you're getting good results, but would love to understand enough to emulate your methods and results!

Additionally

- I also have high regard for the NoteEverything developer as being very responsive, continuously refining and improving the app, etc.. It is presently the best notepad / memo app I've used on my DROID. I have not however attempted to use it with documents larger than a page or 2.
- The GDocs developer has removed the 100 doc limitation of his app in a recent update. I believe that GDocs stores a local copy of docs which have been viewed or edited on your android device, which means that you can quickly open a given doc to view and edit, even if you have poor/no network connection at your location at the moment.
- a "withdrawn" release of aTAKEphONE was the best "Contacts" app I've yet found, but the developer is struggling to get it working reliably on the growing variety of Android devices. Keep an eye open, we may get a decent phone app with good search abilities fairly soon.
 
Received as a Christmas gift, today is 1 month for me on the Droid. My response to friends that ask me about it is that "it is really a techy's phone. Not something you buy your less tech-savy spouse or child and let them go crazy". It's a decent phone, and a great web browser (just wish you could do both while on 3g), and it can run apps. A great PDA or a PIM it is not. Fair to good... maybe, but not great. They relied to heavily on the open source community to build good apps for it instead of shipping it with a good solid set of apps that could be enhanced or replaced (like us old old old Palm users are use to).

That's great news about Note Everything having a better import for palm data than before. Their previous method failed miserably for me (and I'm a data import/export professional). Maybe I'll take another look at them.

Presently I'm using GooMemo to take the place of Palm's MemoPad and using GDocs to take the place of Documents To Go, and using Google Calendar until the people at Pimlico finish their DateBk app for Android. Sorry Google Calendar lovers but it just can't do what power-calendar people need, and the developers of it are NOT interested in what we want.

Cloud computing with Google Docs and a few of the other note applications has its advantages, but it also can be a real pain. I want my data accessible quickly and not dependent on spotty network access. I was in a meeting last week and went to access a document that I had just loaded up prior, but it couldn't load it. The screen just kept telling me that the document was loading- it was not that big of a file. After 15 minutes (and the meeting was over) I finally gave up. Got back to my desk and was able to pull it up just fine - I must have been in a spot not covered on our Verizon map :P
Perhaps I'll contact the GDocs people and see if they can build in an option to automatically save a copy of all documents to SD upon synch. If that can be done, then I'll really like it. The only thing missing then would be to have a live link to the real document on my office network (like Documents To Go does with Palm). And, no, getting my entire office to switch to Google Docs and put all of our data on their servers for sharing purposes is not an option.

I really like GooMemo for a memopad replacement. It could be better by having an easier way to share data with my PC. Although thumb-typing is convenient when away from my computer, there are times when I want to create or edit large amounts of info. A real keyboard is a must for that. Using voice is intriguing, but not always convenient either. I couldn't use GDocs for this since it had a 100 document limitation, and I still really need to have the data physically in the phone and not in the cloud.

Google Calendar is handy in its ability to share calendars with others, and to have multiple calendars layered on yours. I can easily add appointments myself or by others that I've shared it with - VERY nice. But it still needs plenty of improvement (just check out their help forum for the hundreds of suggestions that get ignored). It is just not a power-user's calendar.

The iPhone can't do these things well either, but the Droid was suppose to be the iPhone killer, not just an alternative. I'm hopeful that someone will create the ultimate app for being more like a PDA or a PIM.
 
SWYPE - A great way to ease your transition from Palm to Droid.

Okay - I saw this name a few times over the past month or so, and I looked at a screen shot once and wasn't interested. First, I hadn't gotten use to the virtual keyboard yet and I was determined to use the physical keyboard as much as possible. Second, I thought it was a bad implementation of Graffiti (drawing over the keyboard? wtf?)

Well, I just ran across it again (while reading an article about the Nexus One and it seems to have it built in??). My love affair with the virtual keyboard and the physical is long gone... neither were living up to my expectations. So I thought maybe going back to Graffiti is worth a shot.
SWYPE is soooo much more than Graffiti... Check this out! Watch the first video: How To Swype.
Swype | Text Input for Screens

After watching a couple of times, trying to convince myself that it won't work as shown, I researched a bit more and downloaded a trial version from the link provided here:
Swype keyboard preview for Droid leaked DroidMuff.in

No rooting involve, just a manual install. This thing is magically intuitive! You don't draw letters or memorize gesture shortcuts - you simply trace your finger from one letter to the next! It's kind of like a Ouija board. Anyone who's seen my other threads on this board (or the moto board) know that I am NOT easy to please. Within seconds I was doing the exact same text entry that they were doing on the videos. I'm blown away.

This very app has seriously brought my droid back into the Love It category.

SWYPE FTW!


Terry
 
[Hope this works] I posted a message about my experiences converting from Palm Centro to Droid at the address I hope appears below. If the link doesn't appear, my thoughts are in the Droid Tips and Tricks forum under the topic "Sync Outlook Contacts & Calendar to Google."

I may take some advice from the rest of you about Notes, though. Google Docs doesn't seem to let me edit on the Droid, which is a bummer. And I'm not crazy about having to use muliple products on my PC just to get at the four core apps (Calendar, Notes, Tasks, Contacts).

It certainly isn't a mature PDA yet. But it's awfully cute.

http://androidforums.com/how-tips/16345-sync-outlook-contacts-calendar-google.html#post378525
 
If it wasn't for 3rd party apps this 855 would be trash!
Power Search and Contact Search+ kept me from going back to my Treo
G Dialer widget is great; it just does what should be native / default (like PowerSearch)

Is there a windows desktop app that'll sync with either the Droid or gmail contacts? (I don't mean import/export, I mean SYNC) My laptop and desktop don't always have a connection to the net either, but I always want my contacts available!
 
Hey guys new here, as I was reading regarding note pad I came across the note everything post and decided to try it. Works good, it opened my note pad text list I have for medications and whatnot. My question is,is there a search function so I can find indivual items?
Thx to any1 who answers this
 
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