Pylon products have the same drawback that the Intellisync products do, mainly that there's a separate version for both Palm OS and Pocket PC devices. Also, when I recently checked the Pylon Web site, Pylon Pro was only available for Palm OS devices, so I guess Pocket PC users will have to be happy with Pylon Conduit for now.

Lotus EasySync Pro
Lotus EasySync Pro can be found at http://lotus.com/easysyncpro. It's priced at $51 for the Web download from IBM.

Lotus EasySync was the first program I used to synchronize Lotus Notes information with my Palm handheld way back in 1998. I later wrote a review of EasySync 3.0 in the July 1999 issue of DominoPower (at http://www.dominopower.com/issues/issue199907/ezsync001.html) in which I was very happy with the product and its capabilities.

The latest version of EasySync, EasySync Pro 4.0, is one that I'm not currently recommending to general users. One major flaw with EasySync Pro 4.0 is that it doesn't currently support synchronization with the Notes journal, something that EasySync 3.0 did support. This was a deal-killer for me, since I use my handheld to take extensive notes and have customized my Notes personal journal to help categorize them. Check out the article, "How to add Palm device categories to your Notes Journal," by Tom Lowery in the March 1999 issue of DominoPower at http://www.dominopower.com/issues/issue199903/palmfriend001.html for more information.

At Lotusphere this year I heard that EasySync Pro 4.1 should be released in the coming weeks and would include some bug fixes and address some Pocket PC 2002 compatibility issues. It's now been about five weeks since the conference, and I haven't seen 4.1 released yet. I also heard that EasySync Pro 5.0 won't be available until later in the year and will, hopefully, re-add the capability to synchronize the Notes journal.

You might ask yourself what the benefits of EasySync Pro are over the previous version, since I already mentioned that you can no longer synchronize with the Notes journal. Well, there have been enhancements made, such as Pocket PC support and the ability to choose separate data sources for email, calendar tasks, and contacts. The EasySync Pro Web site also says that you can "synchronize with either client or server replicas" as well, and that "EasySync Pro checks your current Notes location settings to automatically synchronize with the mail database on your desktop or its replica on your home server."

I've found the ability to synchronize directly with my mail file on the server to be a useful feature (the other two products offer this as well), since I usually work on the server and don't replicate my mail file locally that much. One thing to watch out for, however, is to be careful to make sure your location documents are in order and set correctly. Also, use the same location every time you synchronize. I haven't tested this recently, but I have run into synchronization problems in the past when I switched or modified location documents and then synchronized. Most users shouldn't experience any problems, but if you do this it's one of the first things to check.