If you heard the Windows Mobile MVPs talking to Microsoft about ActiveSync,
you'd know that it's not accepted ;-).

Microsoft (remember that no one in this group works there), is listening, as
they commonly do, to 'big' customers.  Any single individual is not
qualified on that score, so the phone OEMs and the carriers are the ones who
usually get what they want, with some attention paid to corporate customers
who might buy a few thousand devices (which is why WiFi sync went away, I
think; security risk = nervous network admin = nervous corporate customer =
no more WiFi sync).

It's not clear to me what the fix is, other than a change of culture at the
largest software company on the planet.  I suppose that, if enough people
demand refunds for their Windows Mobile-based devices, that might get
someone's attention (got a few thousand friends?  and the email address of a
technical editor at CNet?).  If anyone in the group works in the upper
echelons of AT&T, it would be a great help if you'd call up your Microsoft
contact and indicate that you're going to drop all Windows Mobile devices
from your product offering if ActiveSync isn't reliable by the time the next
version of WM is released, etc.

Paul T.

Maybe we've simply been beaten into submission!  ;-)

You're only noticing now because you just "upgraded" but this newsgroup was
full of complainers when WM5 first rolled out, including yours truly.
Many, like Bev Howard, basically have refused to upgrade, sticking with PPC
2003 or 2003SE.

 

As I said in other response to you, Enterprise users don't notice since
they're using Exchange, and most consumers don't notice because these are
their first devices and for them it's "always" been like this.

But Activesync is a special case- it's just sync software for hardware that
has improved.  It's why we put up with it.  I want a GSM phone/PDA combo
that works well in the USA.  While I'd prefer WM2003, there are (nor were)
no quad-band, 3G, WiFi, bluetooth, GPS-enabled WM2003 devices ever built,
period.  To get the hardware I want, I accept that I have to suffer through
WM6/AS 4.5.  Had I never used a WM2003 device, I wouldn't know what I was
missing.
 

My jury is still out on Vista- I don't particularly like it, but in
fairness to Microsoft, I HATED XP at first, believing it was overblown,
incompatible bloatware compared to Win98- the same complaints many of us
level at Vista.  In retrospect, I love XP, and on those rare occasions I
boot my old Toshiba Tecra running Win98, I can't imagine why I ever was so
down on XP!  

I'm man enough to admit I was wrong about XP initially, so I'm trying to
give Vista the benefit of the doubt before making the same mistake.
(Though I have nothing good to say about WMDC- the Vista equivalent  of
Activesync!)  

Agreed.  I hate the performance hit of the "persistent" flash memory, and
in nearly ten years of using Windows CE/Windows Mobile devices have never
lost data due to a dead battery (that's why older devices had "backup
batteries!")

I can't- going back to separate devices for PDA and phone are out of the
question for me.  Convergence is too powerful of a drug for me to stop
smoking i!  ;-)

I've been lucky- even when syncing with multiple PCs, I've tended to rely
on my PPC a the primary data entry source for contacts and calendar
because, unlike my PCs, the PPCs were always on me.

Fair enough- I wasn't my first bad assumption ever, Nor will it be my last!
;-) >

Agreed.  

Apparently.  I think the feeling at MS was that most enterprise users are
using Exchange, which is in constant sync, so the horribly slow Activesync
performance doesn't apply to them, and that most recent home/small business
users are new to WinMo (considering that PPCs were a pretty niche market
before the modern "smartphone era") so most WM5/6 users don't have a
yardstick to compare the older snappy performance to.

You're preaching to the choir, mate!  I think WinMo peaked at PPC 2003.
However, the convenience of a convergence device (phone/PDA combo) plus a
few of the newer WinMo features (push e-mail, HTML messging, integrated
VoIP) make it a little less painful.

Plus, any long time WinMo user is used to gaming the system via 3rd-party
apps.  My solution to the Activesync problem is simply not to use it.  I've
installed Funambol's SyncML client software (sort of  poor man's Exchange
server) on my WinMo devices and their Outlook plug-in on my three Outlook-
equipped PCs.  Now all of my devices sync over the net without Activesync.
I sync my device via Activesync maybe once a month to sync Files and IE
Favorites, but all PIM data syncs via Funambol.