Thursday, February 11, 2010

Switching from the Palm Treo to Nexus One/Google - Continued

Count me as totally sold on the Nexus One/Google combo. It's not even so much the Nexus One, though I'm fairly happy with that. It's just the productivity improvements that come from never having to sync, and having my personal workspace (mail, contacts, docs/memos, calendar, tasks) available everywhere I am, no mater which computer I'm on.

But it sure was a big transition. A quick review:

1. Contacts - still using Google Contacts, still fairly happy with it. Actually dialing phone numbers on my Nexus One is more of a hassle than it was on my Treo - many more keystrokes/screen swipes. Also, I can't search the contact notes on the Nexus One, although I can search when using Google Contacts directly.

2. Calendar - using Google Calendar, quite happy with it. I almost missed a dentist appointment yesterday - don't know what happened, did I just not hear the alarm or what? But overall it's good.

3. Tasks/ToDos - I started out wanting to use Google tasks, but it didn't have enough features, so I'm with Remember The Milk (pro membership - I think it was $25/year) and loving it. Before switching I had in my mind the features that the Palm had for todos, and wanted exactly what they had - and frankly, doing that takes more manipulation in the Nexus One. But I've switched to using some of the newer features that RememberTheMilk has, that the Palm system doesn't - basically Tags and Smart Lists and it's really cool. You can basically organize them any way you can dream up - you're not just stuck with 1 category per task. Also - I've started using voice recognition a lot on the Nexus One, and it rocks. Tip - talk directly into the microphone on the bottom of the phone.

4. Memos/Notes/Docs - this was a real pain, and continues to be a thorn in my side. I started out trying to do things in Gmail, using drafts that have a label of Notes. However, this is really clunky and cumbersome. So, now I'm using Google Docs, and using Gdocs to access them on the Nexus One. At first I was really excited about Gdocs - it seemed like the perfect solution - but there appear to be a lot of bugs and syncing problems. Hopefully the problems will be fixed, or maybe Google will come up with an app.