How to sync my Treo with Mozilla's Lightning?

July 6, 2008 10:05 PM

I'm looking for a way to sync my Palm Treo 650 with Mozilla's "Lightning" calendar add-on - on Linux - without having to use an over-the-air data service.

I've been happily using Ubuntu for quite awhile now; currently, Hardy/8.04 (which works *perfectly* on my Toshiba Satellite, btw). I would like to be able to synchronize the Datebook / Calendar app on my Treo 650, with the Thunderbird "Lightning" add-on. (If I can get Tasks to sync to, then, Rock; but that's a lesser need.)

It seems that at the moment, the number of synchronization-with-PDA options for Lightning seems small.

The best I've been able to think of, is:

- get a data plan for my Treo
- get an account with Goosync
- use Goosync to sync my Treo, over the data network, to Google Calendar
- use one of them add-ons I've seen for syncing the Google Calendar with Lightning

The problem is, I don't want to buy a data plan for my Treo. My thinking is: if that's what's needed in order to get my PDA to sync with my PIM of choice, then I really need to start being honest with myself and admit the sad truth that the Treo / PalmOS is a dying platform, and just go by a frikkin' iPhone. Sigh.

FWIW, I am able to successfully sync the Treo with my linux / KDE desktop, via KPilot, and get the data into Kontact. Wondering then if there's a way to get Thunderbird / Lightning to sync with Kontact?

All ideas will be entertained and appreciated. Thanks!

posted by armoir from antproof case to computers & internet (3 comments total)

I'll be keeping a close eye on this question, as it is something I desperately need.
The closest I've come to success is:

1. Treo syncs to Evolution (gpilot)
2. Evolution syncs to Google Calendar (native)
3. Google Calendar syncs to Lightning (Provider Plugin)

There are several intermittent problems in steps 1 and 2, and the entire thing is too Rube Goldbergesque for my liking, so I just load Windows onto VMWare and sync Palm Desktop, but that's becoming increasingly unreliable as well.

KPilot sounds tempting, but my last experiment resulted in lost data from two quarters: accented characters and the Treo's extended fields. How are you handling those?
posted by Cobalt at 3:25 PM on July 7, 2008

Thanks for posting. I might give your process that a try. I haven't become *too* accustomed to KDE, so the move back to Gnome, for Evolution, shouldn't be too painful. Seems a little bit of a shame, as Kontact (etc.) seem to have quite a bit of functionality, but, I'm willing to make the tradeoff.

As for losing data - admittedly I haven't yet done a thorough examination of What Might Be Lost.

* Accented Characters : I don't think I use any. I type like I think - in monotone.

* By "the Treo's extended fields" you mean things like, the "Birthday" field in Contacts, and the "Custom Field X" ?
posted by armoir from antproof case at 9:30 PM on July 7, 2008

Extended fields are mentioned here. The relevant part:

"The devices listed above have new extended fields for the built-in Personal Information Management (PIM) applications. For example, you can store up to three addresses for a person with the extended PIM fields; on previous devices, you could store only one address. If you install this version of Palm Desktop and use a device not listed above, you will only be able to synchronize with the fields on your Palm device. In this example, although you can store three addresses for a person in Palm Desktop, only the first address will be synchronized with your older device. The extended PIM fields will not synchronise with the older device.

Examples of extended fields not available on all devices (these may appear in Palm Desktop but will not synchronise with older devices):

* Contacts (Address Book): Picture, Birthday, IM address, Website, more than one address.
* Calendar (Date Book): Location, Category
* Tasks (To Do List): Repeating tasks, completion date, timed alarms
* Memos (Memo Pad): More than 4,000 characters in a memo item"
posted by Cobalt at 9:53 PM on July 8, 2008