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Hi,

This is as such not a bug report more like a usability improvement suggestion report.

If this is not the appriopriate way of getting my message through, please forward to Product Development (and put me in copy please).

I switched over yesterday from MfE to RoadSync, based on some review. I was using MfE since it came out. It did have it’s good and bad points.

I must say initially I switched over to RoadSync because of the zoom text support and the (proclaimed) AP group support. Both are not exactly as I was hoping they would be. I didn’t do the trial, maybe I should have done that first. But anyway I bought the product because I believe sustained product improvement needs funding and input from it’s paying customers.

Anyway, now I’m on RoadSync and I think there could be improvements made to lots of areas to make it (a lot) better.

1. Access Point Groups are not working/supported as envisioned. There’s no switching between Wifi and 3G the moment I leave the home premises. It doesn’t even try to connect to anything else. I did verbose logging and even then I can’t see what RoadSync is trying to connect to, apart from the previously connected WiFi network. Why not loop over the list op access points in sequence, existing in the group, once a network connect failure has happened. Look at Fring, which has a very good Access Manager. It would be great to have that functionality (or a similar, via the build-in AP Group definition, working solution).

2. In case point 1 can’t be resolved because ‘too hard’ or ‘too much work’, can one have in the main Email list screen an option to reset the access point ? Or directly allow to select a new AP without the strange 2 step process ? Why does one first need to reset and then change ? If one resets the AP, then one normally also knows what the next one should be. Now it’s hidden several menus deep in the sync application.

3. Can you provide a “sync now” button in the main application screen, not just separately in the Sync program ? I hate switching over to that one just for executing a manual sync. I feel the main program should be the only one, not needing the Sync program every time one does something else than simply reading a mail.

4. Can the zoom function be extended to the mail overview/list screen ? That way more info could be fitted on one screen.

5. Once opening an email, it would be handy to have ‘fast navigation keys’, such as gmail, to scroll down/up line by line (sort of scroll lock function), independently of the cursor position. Now if you want to read the text on the bottom of an email, off-screen, you have to move the cursor several lines down before you can even start looking at the following lines. Also 2 extra shortcut keys for “next” and “previous” mail would be handy, saving time to browse mails. Working together with point 6. if invoked in that mode. Nice universal solution might be the keys ‘2′ and ‘8′ for scroll up and down, ‘4′ and ‘6′ for prev. and next mail.

6. on the main screen, an option to “scan unread mail” would be very handy to allow easily cross-folder new mail reading.

7. the mail reader doesn’t allow clicking of URLs to directly open a web browser. If you implement that maybe in a next version, please allow the selection of an alternative web browser such as Opera lite, not just default to the built in browser.

8. maybe provide an personalization option to allow NOT to ask for confirmation of deletion of mails/items. I personally receive lots of mails, it takes time to scan through all of them and if I press delete, I want to delete them, not to be asked again if I’m sure. Maybe people like the confirmation message, so to make it configurable would make sense.

9. a configurable option to have a ‘new mail arrived’ pop-up, allowing you to go straight to the new mail(s) would be handy as well. It save the time and the keyclicks drill to wherever the new and or unread mails are.

All of these things are only to make the application better and more usable. Ideally would be a more Blackberry type of experience but I think it will take some more releases of either competing product (RoadSync, MfE) to get close to that.

But RoadSync surely has the potential. It’s a paying product, I hope product development listens to it’s customers to improve the product and bring it to an entirely different level. People will be happy to pay a honest price for it.

Kind regards,

Geert Steyaert
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1) Sync issues - about half the time, the auto sync (once an hour) does not work. I have to manually do this at least twice a day

2) Access point issues - even though it says it is trying to sync, it does not open the GPRS or Wifi connection at all and just sits there. The only way to fix this is to reset the connection altogether at the config menu.

3) On OS9.2, the annoying thing is that the Roadsync is always resident in memory (making this spinning circle thingy that is very annoying on the icon or folder that it is situated. I wish they can hide the app so this does not happen.

Otherwise, I am loving the N95. I look after the SOE’s for my company and includes the Phone and PDAs as well. Its because of this reason (M4E not working on it) that I have to announce that N95 is not supported phone from us. If only Nokia stopped putting in “E” series filters into the M4E (eg 1.5) and continued to allow “N” to function, then it would be fantastic.

True, it syncs subfolders, but for me as a Outlook PowerUser I have loads of subfolders & sub-subfolders all which have mail put in them by the server via rules. RoadSync does the job (I dont run push-email per se cause I really dont need it to run every second) so I sync every 15 mins on days and every hour on nights.

I discovered rather quickly that my rules weren’t working so I had make them “client only” because RoadSync wouldn’t show me which subfolders hade unread mail in them. I told this to Dataviz who actually listened (as much as to tell me to tell the developers).

I’m satisfied with RoadSync as it is. Some features requires Exchange 2007 which is a drawback - but it is the same on WM5/6-devices so.. HTML-mails, flagging of mail (to be synched to your server) is only supported by Ex. 2007.

Since my company runs Exc 2003 I have to wait. Nokia and/or Datavis will never be the same as running ActiveSync on a WM-device so deal with it. or get at WM-device I have a swedish HTC Hermes (TyTN) for sale