Hardware leaves you with ‘synching’ feeling

Can we talk? It all depends.

If I were, say, a PDA and you were a laptop, then probably not. If I were a cellular phone and you were a workstation, unlikely. In fact, if you were a PC and I were a PC, we might have trouble connecting.

Whether it’s different hardware platforms or operating systems, getting two or more machines to communicate can be a challenge. I’m not even talking about the corporate networks that require a team of brain surgeons to be on call 24-and-7. I’m referring to simple machine-to-machine data transfer – an address book, a word processor file or a couple of e-mails.

There are no formal surveys that measure the compatibility gap between the gadgets on the market. There would be no real way to gauge it. In a situation like this we have to make two assumptions: first, that despite all of the software and cables that ship with each new computing device we buy, the contraptions generally don’t play nice together. And second, that this taciturn hardware disproportionately affects frequent travelers.

After this weekend, I’m willing to make both assumptions. With a large chunk of information to move between a Macintosh G3 tower and an Acer TravelMate 736 TL that I’m evaluating, I’m willing to make those and any other number of assumptions regarding the intelligence of the engineers who created these PCs.

I’ve tried chopping my files into smaller increments and putting them on disk. I’ve tried moving them to a ZIP drive. I’ve tried networking the computers. I’ve tried patching them together with cables. And, I even looked for an infrared connection so that I could “beam” the information over.

But after a full day of the Amateur Computer Show, I concluded that these two PCs weren’t meant to talk to one another in a meaningful way. I could share some data on a disk, thanks to programs like MacDrive. However, syncing one PC with another would remain elusive, despite the pre-installed version of Intellisync, which promises, “to synchronize ALL your data.”

A brief aside – technically there’s a difference between synchronizing data and sharing it. The computer dictionaries I consulted were a little fuzzy when it came to separating the two, but from what I can gather, synchronizing refers to a “parallel occurrence” of sorts, meaning that the data on one machine is virtually identical to the data on the other. Sharing data, on the other hand, seems to be a more limited transfer of information.

The propellerheads among you probably are thinking, “Gee, Elliott, you shoulda just hooked up the ‘x’ cable to the ‘y’ plug and been done with it.” And yeah, there probably is a perfectly straightforward solution, and by this time next week, I’ll have found it and transferred all the data, thank you very much.

But that’s not the point. Fumbling around between laptop and desktop made me wonder: why is this so difficult in the first place?

Why, for example, did it take nearly two hours to sync my cellular phone to my PC recently? Why did it take half a day for me to network two Apple Macintoshes (back in the days when I still used them)? Why, in the glory days of the Information Age, can’t our computers exchange information efficiently?

It’s difficult to find one person or company to blame, but Bill Gates would probably be at the top of my list. As a recent issue of Time pointed out, Gates’ philosophy is “Simple is Difficult.” That may explain why, even after I managed to get some of my files in Microsoft Word migrated from my Mac to my PC, my version of Word refused to read the files. It may also help us understand why importing data into Outlook is just slightly easier than typing the whole file over again.

I don’t want to pick on Bill. There are also folks like Michael Dell of Dell Computer and Max Wu, the president of Acer, who also are responsible for this mess. Their hardware often doesn’t make any sense, at least to me. The software designers who promise “all-in-one” solutions to our syncing needs should also share some of the fault. They know who they are, no need to name names.

The hardest-hit victims, as always, are business travelers. Not so long ago I returned from a weeklong trip to find a nasty note from one of the companies that had lent me a laptop to evaluate. They wanted their PC back – ASAP. I struggled for hours to move the data from notebook to desktop until I was finally relegated to running between both computers with a disk. The two computers simply weren’t on talking terms.

A good friend likened my syncing challenge to marriage: the PDA and the PC like each other in principle, and they may want to talk to one another, but most conversations end up going nowhere.

Here are a few strategies I’ve used to “patch things up”:

- Read the manual. OK, it sounds obvious, but for many of us who prefer the trial-and-error, method maybe it isn’t.

- Slip them a disk. CDs, ZIP disks, are better than cables. They’re slower, but they’re less finicky.

- Remember the ‘net. If all else fails, you can always post the files to a remote server and then retrieve them from the other computer. It’s not elegant, but it works.

Many of you must be thinking: “du-uh!” I admire you. You’ve figured out how to make your gadgets chitchat, and my hat’s off to you. For the rest of us who are still trying to make our digital assistants speak the same language as our cell phones or our notebooks, here’s your chance to share your syncing war stories and your tips on how to bridge the communication gap. I’m all ears.

Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

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