Oh, I thought it was missing a 't'; though I was about to correct you regarding strong verbs...

Just trying to quiet people down.

So I can finally have my last word.

Ah, I see.

No qwerty keyboard. Has to be an E61i or E71.

Though, it'd be better with an OpenSSH client (putty isn't good enough).

And, it'll get worse when Nokia drops the SIP client from its Symbian devices (rather stupid move, if you ask me ... but no one did).

Which N contacts am I to choose? What if the ones I need to contact in that luddite-environment situation aren't among my 10 most used/ 10 most favorite/ etc. contacts? What if 10 isn't enough for me? the beauty of my convergence device is: I don't need to pick my N most favorite, or N most used -- I have access to all of my 100's of contacts all the time, whether I'm connected or not.



And, to get to your qPIM ... in other words, your convergence device model requires that you violate the convergence device concept (keeping it all in one place, accessing it all with one device) in order to avoid edge conditions. That would seem to immediately refute the validity of your convergence device, as it has just stopped being a convergence device.

And, conceptually, when looking past the media involved ... your qPIM process involves "syncing". In this case, syncing to print/paper. You are, once again, violating your own model (you implied syncing can/will/should become a thing of the past, and be un-necessary).

So, a convergence device that requires a companion device ... and involves syncing. Remind me again how your convergence device is _actually_ a convergence device?

Shhhhhhhhhhish !

OH! I thought you were just shishing that other guy. Did you mean everyone?

What's going on here?

Now, you're just being argumentative (as if you haven't been all along ). Why would the contact you need to call in a disconnected environment be one that you don't have on your qPIM? I tried to think of such a situation, but I couldn't come up with one... ie: some obscure business guy called you but didn't leave his number. Ok, so if he's so obscure, why'd he not leave his number? And how did you get the guy's message, if you're disconnected?

And why the heck do you have hundreds of contacts that you might need in a disconnected (ie landline-only) environment? That, in itself, is an extreme edge case. I have lots of e-mail addresses, but they are only useful when writing e-mails, and I can't send e-mails unless I'm online.

Well, technically, your convergence device fails in edge cases too, since, in the edge case you referred to, you have to resort to a land line to make the call. Your device is simply the "second device" holding your address book.

My "second device" is tiny (literally, paper-thin) and only requires very irregular updating (not syncing, see below), perhaps once or twice a year. It never runs out of batteries, can withstand water, and is with you wherever you have your wallet. I have a removable mini-wallet with only two or three cards and $20 in cash; my qPIM fits in there, too. In summary, it's a very elegant hack for the fact that no convergence device works in every situation, and that we don't have an environment that is ready for my ideal convergence device yet.

One last point: I am not saying that your device cannot store a local copy of your online data, only that your local copy is not a master copy. "Sync" involves a complex interaction between two data stores, determining which bits have changed in each data store, figuring out which is the "master" version of the changed data element, and then updating the non-master. This process assumes that there are multiple out-of-sync master versions of the database.

Downloading a read-only copy of the online master to your device is not sync, and is probably a good idea before going to "luddite zones"...