While I love the idea of Google Sync (GS) for Blackberry, I’m just not that into it … at this time. I tried it out for a few months and found it had some quirks that I couldn’t deal with. Here’s my list.

My Equipment

• Lotus Notes 8.0 client w/ 8.0 template (upgraded to 8.0.1 after I uninstalled GS)
• Blackberry 8800 with latest AT&T OS 4.2.1.79 (WHERE ARE YOU FABLED VERSION 4.5!!!)
• Thinkpad T61 Running Vista (SPK 1 RC at the time)
• Google Calendar beta
• Google Sync 0.4.2

My Issues w/ GS

• Uploaded my business (Lotus Notes) entries to Google Calendar. I was looking for a one way sync just Google Calender to my Lotus Notes. I’m hoping that a future version will have an option to select what should be synched. That said, I could live with this since Google has some security and I the entries weren’t made public.
• Can’t specify if you want the Google Calendar entries to be created as private entries. It would have been great if the entries could all have been marked as private since I was importing personal entries to my business calendar. Again, I could live with this.
• Corrupted repeating entries and sent out cancellation notices for repeating meetings. This was the deal breaker. I had setup sever repeating meeting entries and was confused when one of the meeting instances came up and no one attended my meeting. I called an attendee and they said “Didn’t you cancel the meeting? I received a cancellation notice.” Well I hadn’t canceled the meeting and it was still in my calendar. Upon further investigation noticed that my entry was last modified by my blackberry server. Also the Parent notice had been disassociated with the child (repeating entries). I had to delete the entries one by one so that I could recreate the repeating meeting. Before I did that I ran a few tests to confirm that GS was at fault. I created a couple repeating meetings, synced with GS, and sure enough, the entries were corrupted again. I uninstalled the software and haven’t had problems since.

I think Google Sync is a great idea and will be a great tool. It just needs a little more time in development before I try it again.  In the meantime I’ll settle for a Google Gadget embedded as a widget in my 8.0.1 client.