Alternative to Power Tasks?

[Guest Bingo Accent]

I was surprised to see DeveloperOne’s ‘Power Tasks’ listed as one of the Killer Apps for WM Smart-phones in PDA Essentials magazine recently.

I found myself very frustrated by the lack of compatibility with Outlook’s Task functionality in the basic software on my SPV C500, and bought Power Tasks believing it would be the answer to my prayers (there’s even a recommendation on Microsoft’s website http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/com...s/outlook.mspx).

However, it seems to me to be far from the ‘killer’ application I sought.

- If a task reminder goes off when you have the keypad locked, unlocking the keys causes the reminder to disappear – usually before you’ve had the chance to read it. You then have to open up the Power Tasks application and find what you have just been reminded to do.

- There is no functionality to defer a reminder for a period of time which suits you – only to snooze it for a few minutes. When you are sat at your PC, Outlook always chooses to remind you to buy your mother a birthday present, on a day when you can’t get out for lunch – but you simply tell it to remind you X minutes or hours later, so you can get something on the way home. I would have thought that this functionality would be extended to the Mobile version.

- The really annoying ‘feature’ of Power Tasks though, is the lack of synching with task reminder times. It basically ignores the time you have set for a reminder within Outlook, and instead sets the reminders for all tasks due on a given day at the same time. They even try and dress it up as 'A Good Thing' in their documentation – “When ActiveSync syncs a new task from Outlook to the phone, if the reminder is set on the same day as the due date, the alarm time information from Outlook is not sent to the device. This allows you to have those alarms automatically change to a more suitable time once they have been synced to your device”. Do they not think that a ‘suitable time’ might be the time you set in Outlook in the first place? I have a recurring task to put out my bin on a Sunday evening, before the bin men come on Monday morning – just the kind of little prompt an app like this should be perfect for. However, having synced to my PC, I find myself woken up at 8:00 am every Sunday morning, as my phone tells me it’s time to put the bin out. Aaaarrrgghh!!! And every time I try and put things right, I get mis-matches when I use ActiveSync. Double aaaaarrrggghhh!!!

Is there an alternative application oiut there, which won't drive me mad???

[Guest argh]

I use Papyrus to manage my tasks (also the calendar).

I think that it also uses the standard task reminders though, so still no delaying reminders after the initial one.

I'm not sure about the unlock issue, but that is probably also due to the standard task reminder.

The reminder times of tasks do seem to synch though.

[Guest Paul [MVP]]

Give Oxios To Do List a bash... don't know if it'll fulfil your needs, but it's worth a bash!

P