Thursday, February 02, 2006

Microsoft creating new calendar swamp in Windows Vista?

I had questions, Microsoft's Steve Makofsky has some answers (scroll down to the 11th comment) regarding Windows Calendar in Vista:
"'Outlook Sync': To be honest, we're not sure that most users will be running *both* Windows Calendar and Outlook. Windows Calendar is designed for personal calendaring, while Outlook 2007 has more advanced calendaring features, especially for groups running Exchange. You'll be able to import Windows Calendar calendars into Outlook by simply opening these files from within Outlook. However, beyond this import scenario, full interop between the two clients (such as the ability for both of them to edit the same data set simultaneously) is not planned for the Vista/Office 2007 release."
Steve doesn't mentioning importing Outlook calendars into Windows Calendar, so I'm going to speculate that doing this won't be very pretty. We'll wait to hear more from Steve, or, perhaps Robert Scoble will get the answers on Channel 9, which has yet to do a segment on Windows Calendar.

For the overall calendar interoperability picture, Steve's revelations mean more confusion, not less, at least in the short term. Consider this. Millions of people have mobile phones that know how to synchronize with Outlook. None of them synchronize yet with Windows Calendar, though some might sync with some iCal-based services (raising all my privacy concerns again).

So the question may become, how soon will mobile phones appear that support synchronizing with Windows Calendar, and how long will it take to get those phones into peoples' hands?

Steve's comment isn't encouraging:
"Pocket Outlook currently doesn’t have a built in ActiveSync provider to convert/sync ICS [iCal] data at this time. I’m not sure what their plan is for Vista."
It's still mighty swampy, and maybe getting swampier, if you run Windows.

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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Crazy - surely it's a no brainer to synch them

Anonymous said...

I can't figure out how to sync my WiMo (windows mobile) phone with Windows Calendar. ...But I have to say I *LOVE* Vista. Anyone who talks shit about it is an idiot. I'm running on a IBM T60p notebook with 1.5G of RAM, 512MB video card and a 7200RPM drive. I have not customized this system. It gets a Vista's performance rating of 4.7 out of 5. It runs 200% better then XP ever did, it's NEVER crashed and it's so much easier to adapt to. XP was a bitch when it first came out.

Anonymous said...

you love vista, but yet you can't get it to sync with your Windows Mobile device. What's the use if the OS utilizes your hardware better than XP, but yet you don't have any functionality, meaning you can't sync.

Anonymous said...

Using outlook calendar is still better than windows calendar.

I use the OUTLOOK CAL exclusiviely
since my personal & work are so intertwined that it would be stupid to maintain two calendars.

Oh,I am self employed but even if i was in a gteam group I would not change use.

I would love however to pull up the OUTLOOK CALENDaR DIRECTLY.

Anonymous said...

one thing I wouldnt mind doing to at least have windows calendar sync with OUTLOOK CaleNDAR.

But since WINDOWS CALENDAR is substandard it seems kinda like why bother?

For now, Im using OUTLOOK CALENDAR Directly.


You would think its posisble since the WINDOWS CONTACTS is in FACT the OUTLOOK CONTACTS in my case.