Crackberry plans

So I started sketching out what I needed to do, data-wise, before they pry my Treo out of my cold, cracked fingers …

The biggest thing I’m facing is changing my contact software.  Back in the days when Micro$oft was adding different address books every time they updated Office, Outlook, and/or Windows, I ended up using a program called PSA Cards — a very simple but highly flexible contact manager, with the necessary bonus of it having a Palm conduit.  Nice.  So that’s where my address/phone book have been for the last, oh, 5-7 years.

Alas, the company that was producing the software is no longer in business.  The only people selling contact software these days are high-powered sales/business development software companies.  Something simple and straightforward and flexible?  Where’s the fun (and profit) in that?

Still, it’s continued to work just fine through various PC upgrades.  But with the Blackberry, my contacts list will be my Exchange/Outlook Contacts.  Now, that’s been pretty stable the past few releases, but I’ve refrained from swinging that way because, well, if I’m at home and need to look up Randy’s phone number, I’ll be damned if I’m going to fire up Outlook (“The World’s Most Bloated E-Mail and PIM Software!”) to do so.  Outlook takes a minutes (and 300K RAM) to start up.  PSA Cards takes seconds and about 20K.

But if I’m going to be using Outlook for my contacts manager … is that the route I’m stuck with?

Maybe not.  I’m looking at Contacts Plus, a program that works as an external Contacts manager using the Outlook/Exchange database.  In theory (and I have to download the trial and test it), I should be able to use that as a front end to my Contacts without having to open up Outlook.  I doubt it will be quite and snappy and robust as PSA Cards was … but it will let me use Outlook Contacts a lot more easily.  Assuming it doesn’t corrupt the Outlook message store or something exciting like that.

Now all I have to do is finish mapping out the PSA Cards export format to something that Outlook can import, and I should be … if not set, then at least on my way.