Did you know that you can transfer Contacts information between your Pocket PC and a Palm handheld computer or Psion? With Peacemaker, you can! This is great for business people who interact with the public and need to communicate with Palm or Psion users.

What You Need
Any Palm or Psion handheld computer with infrared support. Peacemaker download from Conduits.

What's Hot

Peacemaker allows you to exchange business cards or contacts with Palm or Psion users at meetings or social events. It integrates seamlessly into the user interface of the Contacts application. You do not need to install any software on the Palm or Psion PDA.

Gotchas

You can only communicate with Palm or Psion handheld computers that have infrared support. Early Palm handheld computers do not have infrared support. Hold Your Pocket PC and the Palm or Psion handheld computer approximately 12 inches or less apart.

Languages Supported

English

Where to Buy

Peacemaker is free. You can download it from Conduits.

Using Peacemaker

I was surprised at how easy it was to use Peacemaker to send and receive contacts between my Pocket PC and a Palm IIIx. All I had to do was launch Contacts on the Pocket PC; click and hold the contact that I wanted to send; then make sure that the Contacts application was running on the Palm.

Peacemaker then gave me a screen where I could click a button to send the contacts when I was ready. Then I lined up the infrared ports and selected the option Beam selected.

Figure 1: Sending a contact to a Palm handheld computer.

I was pleasantly surprised that you could swap business cards using Peacemaker. Just select the option to swap business cards, and Peacemaker will bring up the option to select your contact from the Contacts application. Then you are all set to click Send business card to send your contact information to the Palm.

One nice feature that Peacemaker has is that you control exactly when you send information. By default your Pocket PC will not send any information unless you select a contact and choose to send it to another user.

Conclusion

Overall this is an application I have been waiting for! Clearly, this will enhance my ability to interact with Palm or Psion users, in situations where I used to have to enter the information by hand. I believe this is a must-have application for business users, especially salespeople who interact with other users on a daily basis.

*The views expressed in the above article are provided by an independent third party and do not reflect any official view or endorsement by Microsoft.