Work Flow/Organization Advice?

[moderoom]

Has anyone figured out an excellent stress-free way to intergrate work flow between a PDA and a PC?

Issue: I have my important Word docs on my PDA. I also have them in my My documents folder on my PC. I also have them on my external harddrive in case of an emergency. They are also in the PDA folder in the My Documents folder on my harddrive (are these shortcuts or real files, I'm not sure)...

...In addition, they are also in a folder called "PRE-PDA" on my desktop, where I put files from my PC before copying them to the folder that is synchronised. (this is for the very good reason that I have lost a few important docs because I was transering files between My Documents and my PDA without an interim folder and files were mysteriously disappearing. Suddenly a precious file would exist neither on the PDA nor on the PC (!)

This means that I have 5 copies of all of my important files. I'm having trouble remembering which of the five is the latest update at any given time. I edit docs both on my PDA and on my PC but mostly on the PDA.

?? Any advice about this is appreciated. Overall, the Pocket PC has made my life easier, but at times I want to throw technology out the window and buy a spiral notebook.

[Gigi]

Instead of syncing files, which which is prone to error, have you tried transferring them with a card reader or a utility such as Card Export II?

[Nan]

For keeping the dating straight, I date the folders and indicate the number of documents in each. Being a belt and suspenders type, I am also considering 1.) Having a separate word list for each folder telling what is in it and each date AND 2.) backing up to cruzer drive.

[Alexim]

Instead of syncing files, which which is prone to error, have you tried transferring them with a card reader or a utility such as Card Export II?

Gigi - this comment worries me. How often do you get sync errors?

Alex

[Gigi]

Gigi - this comment worries me. How often do you get sync errors?

Alex

If you really wanna know...I ran out of fingers and toes counting the number of times I've gotten sync errors long ago... Take a look at the ActiveSync forums just to see how prevalent these problems are. Besides, even in the best case scenario when ActiveSync is working when it should, it does not do a good job syncing large files.