[ssbtech]

Since I use a BlackBerry phone for my email, contacts and calendar I am unable to play with the PlayBook's new native PIM apps.

I thought I'd ask here for people's opinions on how well the new stuff works on the PlayBook.

[howarmat]

you are not "unable" to use them, you are choosing not to use them.

They work ok but are very slow and are not very robust IMO. RIM still have a great deal of work to do here to get this ready for bb10

[jamesbondOO7]

The main problem for me is that I cannot simply upload contacts onto it and then severe the ombilical cord of gmail for example. If you delete the gmail account, all contacts disappear. Why not have the possibility to have them stay on their own on the PlayBook???

[howarmat]

android phone work the same basically. On those devices you can save all your google contacts to "phone" contacts though if you want and then they would be on the phone if you delete the account.

Personally if i take the account off the device i want all info off the device from that account. I guess i do have the option to turn of the "mail" function and just use it for calendar and contacts if i want. Like i said RIM has along way to go to get the software up to date and on par with other systems.

[ssbtech]

you are not "unable" to use them, you are choosing not to use them.

It's been made so difficult to use that it is virtually impossible to use if you have a BB phone.

[howarmat]

im not sure what you mean. just dont bridge your phone and setup native and you are done. That is how I have used it ever since i got the playbook.

[papped]

The point of account sync is that the contacts are tied to the service.

[ssbtech]

im not sure what you mean. just dont bridge your phone and setup native and you are done. That is how I have used it ever since i got the playbook.

I could use native, but then I have emails going to my PlayBook instead of the phone.
If I use the native contacts, then there's no way to sync it between the phone and PB.
Same thing with the calendar. It's already a pain having to plug in and sync my phone with Outlook every time I make a calendar entry or update a contact.

Make contact/calendar entry in Outlook. Plug in phone, run sync. Unplug phone, plug in PlayBook, run sync, unplug PlayBook. I'm not doing that every time I make a change/addition.

[howarmat]

i guess that could be an issue with the type of email you are using...all of mine sync (work, google, hotmail) so i can check email on any of my devices and it all syncs back, same with contacts and such. Might not be instant sync but within a couple minutes. Not usb or anything needed

[mmcan]

I gave chaoshost a try since I already use their desktop software and don't want Google. They don't sync any email but that works on it's own for me. When the trial ran out the contacts stayed on the PB. I didn't delete the account though.

Eventually I signed on for a year, figure it will take RIM a while to make the pim work with os7. But was without for a week and kept the contacts on PB. Signed up since I found it useful especially if I run out and forget to sync the phone with the desktop. Not had any problems, do get a random dupe and not sure why, had 4 in a month which I can deal with.

You can get trials of everything you need this to load your phone contacts to their free desktop version, then load to a trial of the online service and then sync with the PB. They also have a free utility that lets you copy outlook to the desk, once. To sync you have to buy something. I posted the settings in the OS forum a while back, search for "the hard way". To use it all the time though between the service and companionlink or an Active sync app for the phone gets up to $150. I only had to add the service.

[BBplaybookJS]

Geeze its not that hard. If you want to "sync" all your calendar entries across work/blackberry/home/playbook simply create a meeting with whichever one your using at the moment and invite all the others to the meeting, bobs your uncle calendars are all "synced"

[ssbtech]

Heck, I don't even want to "sync". All I want the native PIM apps to do is display calendar/contacts straight from the phone.

[jpgrove]

The biggest headache i have with the PB is the fact that my Phone, my PB and my Mac won't sync together, not easily anyway.

This works for me, i use Outlook Calendar, this syncs to ical which syncs to the Blackberry Desktop Software, this syncs to my Phone but not my PB, very frustrating!