[HD2 Windows Mobile 6.5 Themes and Apps] omneity:
Well to answer my own thread, I took the plunge and bought this software. I can now understand why they no longer offer a trial version...

Initially I had problems installing this software on my Windows 7 desktop PC with the installer saying I didn't have the Adobe Flash player installed. I did have the latest Player version and this was confirmed to be working via Adobe's online diagnostics. I got around this problem by downloading & installing the latest Beta of the Flash Player. Now any software that is reliant upon third-party plugins such as Adobe Player worry me, but I had already paid for the software licence and the specifications of the software looked very promising.

So on to actually running up the software...

Next worry - it's a Java app. and from experience I know that any Java app that has to make calls to hardware as this software will need to do, is likely to to have issues with access permissions and operating system-level security software. That said, the software ran up fine and apart from a couple of rendering issues with the screen dialogues text (I've set my system to a slightly lager font than default) all seemed to be good to go. So, now to set-up my first sync profile...

Well you can't set up a profile unless you register an online account with the developer. Why? If I setup a profile to synchronise my data then I'd like that profile to be retained on my computer not on some third party's server. Why do they need to retain control over what I choose to synchronise? Anyway, an account was setup and a basic sync profile was established between my computer and a USB2 external hard disk. So I start the profile with just a few meg of basic file types to transfer (xls, doc & jpg), it appears to start OK but then it slows but the computer hard disk light is going full blast and the whole computer grinds to a near halt (Quad Core CPU with 4GB RAM). I manage to get Windows task manager up after much wait and sure enough the CPU is running at 100%. I manage to force a shut-down via task manager and the system shuts down.

OK, let's restart check the event logs and see what might have gone wrong. No chance! My once reliable system now Blue Screens with "IRQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL". Nothing I could do could get it past this point and Windows 7 repair declares there are problems with the file system which after 10 minutes or so appear to have been fixed by chqdsk. Nothing would make the computer boot again, last know good, safe mode, Windows repair... nothing. The system would blue screen no matter what.

Eventually the only option left was to do a full system restore to before Syncables was installed. After a further chkdsk the system reboots and all is again well. I run hard disk and hardware diagnostics to make sure the system is healthy and not suffering from a failing hard disk, system bus error or faulty RAM modules - all test 100%

In fairness to Syncables they did offer to do remote support, but I declined and said I needed a robust system and had no confidence in the Syncables after it all but trashed my whole system. Thankfully they did agree to a full refund.

It's probably unfair to judge this software based upon my experience alone, but it does make you wonder why they no longer offer a trial version for download.

On paper this software looks to be an excellent all-round synchronisation solution, but sadly an implementation based upon Java & Adobe Flash Player is unlikely to ever be as robust as a system-level coded solution.