PC Suite 6.6.18 still has problems

martinjohnson wrote:
....Now, I'll copy this lot to the boys and girls at Nokia. Will they respond? Nah, they never do. Their support gets a lousy 1 out of 5.

... but they make darned good phones, so we love 'em anyway 😃

br.
J

I started a thread named "PC sync nightmare" on the N6630/N6680 forum so you can trust me when I say that I am thinking about moving away from Symbian because of this lousy synchronisation software. But the question is: how much of this is a problem with bad software and how much is a matter of microsoft providing bad APIs to 3rd party software while they build their ActiveSync software in a way no other 3rd party software can, i.e. using non documented APIs...

UA

martinjohnson wrote:Laptop is IBM ThinkPad T40, corporate issue with OL 2003 Corporate installation but with Contacts only on laptop. Win2k SP4. Have 1,999 OL contacts in DB.

Uninstalled old vsn of PC Suite (6.5.12) and performed fresh instal of 6.6.16 (yes, fix 16). On 9500, formatted system (SHIFT+CTRL+F+<insert battery>😉. All nice and fresh.

Config PC Suite and 9500 to only synch Calendar and Contacts and towards 9500 only.

PC Suite only sends 81 of the 1,999 contacts to the 9500. Not good. Took a look at OL and these 81 are the ones which had been modified in the last 24 hrs. Odd eh?

Completely uninstalled 6.6.16 and installed the new (30SEP05) version 6.6.18. Same format 9500 process, etc, etc. PC Suite only selects 1,615 of the 1,999 contacts to send to 9500.

So, Nokia have the concept of "Test Pilots" (see their Club Nokia site) to test new handsets. Me thinks they should enlist a few of us to test their flakey software!

Or, they could take some leaves out of the PalmPilot book. SIX years ago, I was synching 3,000 contacts between PalmPilot and OL with no problems. And the speed? Even back then, it went like gravel off a shovel; not like these Nokia software jocks. They seem to think it's ok for this stuff to take an hour to build the contacts DB on the 9500.

So, back to the main plot. Uninstalled 6.6.18 and resinstalled 6.5.12; same format of 9500. PC Suite is now sending all 1,999 contacts to the 9500. Hmmm......you Nokia boys; shame on you....how could you do this to your customers?

With a brave heart and with all my contacts on the 9500, I then decided to upgrade from 6.5.12 to 6.6.18. Did the auto-upgrade, the one where it uninstals the previous vsn for you. Well, it doesn't remember which disk you place the old vsn on (so, unless you have a keen eye, you could end up with both vsns) AND, after all that, on the first synch, it decides that 384 entries have been deleted from OL and merrily deletes them from the phone! How could it know to do that? Nothing had changed on either DB (OL or the 9500). Me thinks an "uninstall" actually doesn't actually uninstal everything (e.g. it still remembers your old synch preferences).

Now, I'll copy this lot to the boys and girls at Nokia. Will they respond? Nah, they never do. Their support gets a lousy 1 out of 5.

Martin Johnson
Biz Dev Roadwarrior and General Gadget Freak
Cisco Systems Technical Support
UK

I read this post with particular interest since it comes from someone else in the IT industry. It echoes completely the problems I have had both with the phone, the firmware, the use of large 1gb MMC and PC SUite. In just the same way I have escalated this to senior managers in Nokia and in just the same way no solutions have been forthcoming, and they appear to keep pushing out untested software to the market which is damaging their reputation. What happened to Beta Testing???

Yes they do make quite good phones, but there is an old saying that reputations are earned by a series of actions, but ruined by just one.

Nokia's official response regarding PC Suite, is that it is unwarranted and the
users use it at their own risk. Bearing in mind many buyers buy the wretched phones purely because of the functionality offered by PC SUite as well, then how can they take that line.

There are serious power users of these phones using all of its capabilities every day, and when they suddenly stop working or lose your data, it completely destroys the very purpose of the product. And when that happens, those power users will simply say forget it and buy something else.

Nokia clearly are danger of killing off a loyal customer base if they continue like this. There are far too many posts on this website about faulty firmware, flakey PC Suite software, MMC problems etc. And if I did not already have the phone, I would be very wary of buying it.

Mike Wardle at Nokia, you should read this.

stubby wrote:I read this post with particular interest since it comes from someone else in the IT industry. It echoes completely the problems I have had both with the phone, the firmware, the use of large 1gb MMC and PC SUite. In just the same way I have escalated this to senior managers in Nokia and in just the same way no solutions have been forthcoming, and they appear to keep pushing out untested software to the market which is damaging their reputation. What happened to Beta Testing???

Yes they do make quite good phones, but there is an old saying that reputations are earned by a series of actions, but ruined by just one.

Nokia's official response regarding PC Suite, is that it is unwarranted and the
users use it at their own risk. Bearing in mind many buyers buy the wretched phones purely because of the functionality offered by PC SUite as well, then how can they take that line.

There are serious power users of these phones using all of its capabilities every day, and when they suddenly stop working or lose your data, it completely destroys the very purpose of the product. And when that happens, those power users will simply say forget it and buy something else.

Nokia clearly are danger of killing off a loyal customer base if they continue like this. There are far too many posts on this website about faulty firmware, flakey PC Suite software, MMC problems etc. And if I did not already have the phone, I would be very wary of buying it.

Mike Wardle at Nokia, you should read this.

I could not find the actual problem in your post? The combination of PC and phone is a complex setup and sometimes the user may have a configuration that only very few users ever come across such conditions, so it is difficult, if not altogether impossible to test all combinations. If you can be very specific in describing your problem it may help to solve it also. There are many Nokians who follow these forums regularly so please use this as a channel to get your message through.

manta wrote:I could not find the actual problem in your post? The combination of PC and phone is a complex setup and sometimes the user may have a configuration that only very few users ever come across such conditions, so it is difficult, if not altogether impossible to test all combinations. If you can be very specific in describing your problem it may help to solve it also. There are many Nokians who follow these forums regularly so please use this as a channel to get your message through.

I think it is implied when I refer to "far too many problems with firware, large MMC support, PC Suite problems", etc, all of which are posts on this site, and most of which I have either started or added to. They are all there for Nokians to see.

Specifically in respect of PC Suite, (which I have not yet had time to post) I have had problems of installation and uninstallation of both old and latest versions. ALso ongoing problem of Connection Manager seeing and not seeing the phone when connected via USB cradle. Problems of being unable to see Contacts on the phone at all.
As far as I am concerned Contacts Editor might just as well not exist. I maintain my contacts on the phone only, and back up the files. But PC Suite is of no value in this respect.

It is still a great phone, but perhaps you should read my last post suggesting that Nokia ignore clamour for yet more features and simply concentrate on making the 9500 as it is work perfectly. That will make a lot of users happy.