Moleskine VS PDA - how to decide?

posted at 09:00:00
By Flipping Heck!

Posted In
Review

I've been toying with the idea recently of going back to use my PDA again for calendar and task management.

I know, I know! I've long been a staunch supporter of using Moleskine's for managing my tasks, and my phone for managing my calendar but it's starting to get a bit too complicated for my poor little notebook to handle.

The issue I have is that I before I was tending to work on long-term project at a time; now I seem to be flitting between short, medium and long-term projects and the system I've developed (and that has worked well for the past year and a half) just won't cut the mustard any more.

I have several issues/requirements at the moment regarding project management:

The system needs to be simple - I can't be doing with too much rubbish otherwise I won't use it.
The system needs to be portable - I have to be able to take it anywhere without too much hassle
It needs minimal software/website access - Security policies at work make it difficult to use new software that's not sanctioned by management
It needs to be cross-platform - I need it to work on a PC and Mac as I don't know which platform I'll be working on.

Now, syncing Windows Mobile to a Mac is notoriously difficult and Microsoft (for some unknown reason) doesn't supply a Mac version of their ActivSync so I've purchased the Missing Sync from Mark/Space.

I've been trying it out for the past couple of days and tasks/calendar items seems to be syncing fine but Email (from Entourage) doesn't want to play nicely - probably as I'm using IMAP rather than "real" email, but it's not too much of an issue as I've set my Pocket PC up to look at my IMAP account anyway so they're both technically in sync although it won't see the labels/folders that I have set up which is a bit annoying.

I'm not too concerned about email though, it's mainly tasks and calendar items that I'm concerned with. Just in case anything goes horribly wrong or I can't get on with it, I'll be running my current system in tandem with my new one for a while to see which I prefer. Yes, I know it's going to cause a lot of duplication - having to put tasks in two places - but I'm sort of having to do that anyway.

I've also discovered that if I have wireless turned on on my PDA, it disrupts my wireless connection from my mouse which is a it frustrating but I can live with it.

So, soon we'll should be able to see which system is best - or at least the one I get on better. The problem is, I really like my current system but I can't justify using it any more if it's not helping me get things done.

Has anyone been through a similar experience? And if so, how did you cope with the migration from one system to another? Did you stick with the new one or find something new/go back?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments or contact me - I'd love to hear your advice!