Wednesday, 13 February 2008

Connecting my phone to Linux, but not really

My trusty Nokia 6288 (running Symbian S40) was being repaired during the Great Office Linux Switch, so I had yet to see it in action with Ubuntu until now. On Windows I had set up an elaborate but effective chain of tools for automatic data synchronisation like so:

Phone <--USB--> Nokia PC Suite <--> Microsoft Outlook <--(plugin)--> Google Calendar

It works like a charm except that the Outlook plugin (Remote Calendars) does its slow network access and sync in the same thread as the Outlook user interface. It locks the whole thing up for a minute or so, which is annoying but not a deal breaker. The two things I like best about this setup are (1) it costs me zero in phone company data charges since I'm going via a wired internet connection and (2) it doesn't require any third-party website memberships.

On Linux, the best replacement I can find for the Nokia PC Suite is MultiSync, but it's not working for me so far. I may need to read up on it some more. For now, the solution is to run Windows in VMWare Player and just use the old way virtually.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's not what I wanted to do.
PPS - Maybe another option will open up further down the line.

2 comments:

Erin Marie said...

Yeah, when they introduce some 'new' and 'better' technology.

John said...

Heh. Well, when the Mozilla Calendar application reaches version 1.0 they plan to allow for device synchronisation. But that will probably not be until late next year at least. By then I might be using a different device.