Shortcomings in Mobile Device Centre

Windows Mobile Device Centre is all very good but if you do not want to use Outlook as a contact or calendar application on Vista you are pretty much out of luck as it will sync only with Outlook.  However there is an alternative...

Yahoo Go! for mobile devices allows you to sync your Yahoo address book, calendar and tasks with your windows mobile device.  The good thing about this application is that it syncs from the Yahoo web site straight directly to your mobile device default email application, calendar and task centre.  You can also import your address book from Windows Mail into Yahoo and then sync with your device.

The above shot shows the Yahoo Go! in action on your device. Tap on calendar and it will show the default calendar on your device with your new appointments, the same for tasks.  Tap on email and it will open your default email program. Tap on "news" and it will show...  news headlines of course :-)

It is not perfect of course.  I was unable to get it to login to the photos section, but maybe that is because my device does not have a camera.  Another minor problem I noted was on one of my appointments even though the date was correct it had slotted itself into two days prior.  Simple cut and paste into the correct day fixed this.  Maybe it was a 48 hour reminder before the event, I did not look too much into it.

Okay this blog post may not be specific to Windows Vista but it may help you deal with the shortcomings of the new Windows Mobile Device Centre until Microsoft gets around to adding Windows Mail and Calendar function which is apparently being worked on.

Download from Yahoo Go!

There are versions available for windows mobile 2003 and version 5 and also a smartphone version.  You can also choose an active sync installation or a cab file.  For the purposes of testing, I used the cab download.