So, I’ve been wanting to get more organised. Ask anyone who knows me – its been something I’ve been wanting to do for years now, just never got round to it… 
Today, I decided to bite the bullet and set aside an evening to getting some sort of solution working. 60 minutes later and here I am!
I already knew the candidate toolset from earlier explorations: SynCE for the Linux to PocketPC connection (I’ve been using this for months to transfer individual files to and from my iPaq), MultiSync to do synchronisation with an organiser, and Evolution as my Organiser – Calendar/Task Tracker/Mail Client.
Thanks to the wonders of Debian, a quick apt-get, and I had all the goodies installed. A pleasant 15-30 minutes spent getting the mail client kind of how I like it. Then another 15 minutes to get synchronisation working. So smooth! And functional too – the first sync was over in seconds, but a quick check of my Evolution window showed all my tasks present. Then I marked one task as completed on the PC and one on the iPaq. A re-sync, and both devices showed the change. Likewise Calendar events went across as well.
I’ll grant that its a bit rough around the edges. The setup of the SynCE connection between the PC and the PocketPC uses some command line tools which I’ll be wanting to script up, but that shouldn’t take long. Likewise, the MultiSync plugin for SynCE generates heaps of debugging output, which I think is fascinating, but could scare the casual observer.
But, in summary, it works, I encountered no real gotchas in setting it up, and I have a real, bona-fide Personal Information Manager running happily on my desktop Linux PC, syncing up with my PDA. I’m a happy man!
When I think about my first experiences with Linux back in the 1.2 days (1994!), it just amazes me to see how its evolved into a real candidate for a desktop OS. Kudos to all involved!
Addendum – almost perfect ;( I now notice that entries synced across from the Pocket PC to the PC have their time set to UTC which (in my case) makes the 10 hours later they should be! Both the PC and PDA are set up with the right time-zone. A quick search of the web shows this to be a known problem. Well, at least I have Tasks ok! Maybe a little kludgery will sort me out till the official fix arrives – I’ll see what I can do…..