This post has already been read 6094 times!
My wife just purchased an iPhone 3G, but she still uses Windows XP (I can’t get her to give up that ThinkPad). I’ve never experienced iTunes/iPhone syncing on Windows so I was curious to see what was going to happen when she plugged it in to her laptop. If she used a Mac I’d have her start to use Address Book and iCal, but what happens with an iPhone user on the PC? I know she really wanted to sync photos, but again, she uses Picassa- there is no iPhoto for XP. It turns out most of her actual PIM data is now on Gmail.
Out of the box, iTunes seems pretty smart. It will sync photos using just the photos it finds in the “My Pictures.” Nice. For Contacts and Calendar, it wants to use Outlook (if you have it installed). It will allow you to choose Gmail for contacts, but not for calendar.
Looking for a solution for the calendar, I came across just the thing. A free service that lets you use the OTA Exchange push syncing, but it links to your Gmail or Plaxo account. The company that is doing this is Nuevasync. The service got some good call-outs over at PainintheTech.