Over the past few years, communication and mobility have had a huge amount of emphasis put on them. Laptops, PDA's and wireless networks have become common place technologies in the office environment. I have to move around a lot with my work, so the ability to take my office with me has almost become a necessity. I have decided to look into different laptop syncronisation software, starting with the most essential - e-mail.

For the past 3 years, I have been using Microsoft Outlook 2000 and then Outlook XP. Outlook is often shunned by geeks, mainly because of it's high price and it's susceptibility to be affected by the plethora of e-mail spread viruses. Oh, and the fact it's a Microsoft product. I have Norton AntiVirus 2004 scan my e-mail as it comes in and I've not once have I had a virus.

The fact I've been using Outlook for what feels like a life time, means I have a lot of e-mails in archive and I often reference back to them. It also synchronizes very well with my HP Jornada 565 PDA. Being able to carry a copy of my contact database and calendar with me everywhere is very useful. In general, it does what I want. So why change?

If I'm going away I will usually use the Horde webmail client. But if I am going away for more than a few days, I usually copy the Outlook PST file onto my laptop. This is a bit of a pain as it can be up to 300mb in size. It also means I can only have one open at once. If I open both, I'm going to end up with some mail being picked up to one Client and some to the other. Keeping them in Sync in this manner would be impossible.

I remember looking into this problem a while back and found a product called LBESync. This product was unfortunately discontinued because it was being problematic and unreliable. I managed to get hold of a copy from the program makers and I could see why they stopped it - it caused me more problems than it solved. Those who did manage to get it to work have been very pleased with it though. I have been told they may be doing a remake, so I shall keep my eyes open for this.

So, I decided to look into it again and found a product called SynchPST made by a German company, Wisco. Costing $39.95 for the basic version and $69.95 for the professional version, I figured this was something I should definitely look at. They were kind enough to supply us with the professional version for this evaluation. Before reading on, I highly recommend you got to their website and read a little more about it.

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