For longer than I can remember, Microsoft ActiveSync has been the de facto method of synchronizing content between a Windows CE/Mobile device and a Windows PC. Think about it – ever since the early days of Pocket PCs until now, we’ve had ActiveSync there providing the synching capabilities that we’ve all grown to love (and hate!). ActiveSync was always an add on to Windows – a piece of software that either came with your portable device or something you downloaded directly from Microsoft.

Well folks, in case you didn’t already know this - be prepared to say goodbye to ActiveSync when Windows Vista comes out at the end of this month. You’ll be saying hello to the new Windows Sync Center and the Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC). Today, I’m going to spend a little bit of time showing you the Sync Center/WMDC combination as well as how to set up a Windows Smartphone with the WMDC.

WMDC wasn’t quite working under RC1

When Microsoft introduced RC1 of Windows Vista, not all of Windows Mobile Device Center wasn’t functioning as of yet. You can set up partnerships with portable devices to synchronize media files, but there was no support for synchronizing contacts or calendar information. Basically drivers for Windows Mobile PDAs and Smartphones weren’t quite there yet – at least not for public usage.

Then back in October, Microsoft released Beta 3 of the Windows Mobile Device Center and PDA synchronization was finally at hand (although some people had already figured out how to enable PDA synchronization earlier – we won’t go into that here).

To get things rolling for yourself, make sure you download beta 3 of the WMDC from Microsoft’s website. You can find information on Beta 3 here. ( of course if you are just going to wait for the final version of Vista, then you won’t need to download anything at all!)

I’m currently running Windows Vista RC2 but you can install Beta 3 on RC2 also (I’m not actually sure that you need to do this for RC2 but it doesn’t hurt to do so. I had already installed Beta 3 on top of RC2 before setting up my WMDC partnerships)

Once the software is installed, all you need to do is connect your Windows Mobile device to your PC to get things rolling along. For this article, I’m going to focus on the Palm Treo 700w for Verizon Wireless which I reviewed many months ago here on MobileWhack.

Setting up the Treo 700w

To set up the Treo 700w to work with Windows Mobile Device Center, I simply connected the 700w to the Windows Vista PC via a USB cable. Once connected, Vista automatically downloaded and installed the appropriate drivers for the device.

Before I go on, I’d like to point out that this is an important feature under Vista. Whenever you connect a new Windows Mobile device or Portable Media Player device to a Windows Vista PC, the OS will automatically try and find the appropriate drivers for your device from Microsoft.  Sync Center comes with basic support for devices but anything else needs to be downloaded by the OS but this happens without the user needing to do anything.

Once the drivers are installed, you’ll see the following splash screen from Windows Mobile Device Center:

WMDC will indicate that your device is now connected and you’re ready to actually set up the device.

Partnerships

Those of you familiar with ActiveSync will be familiar with the concept of partnerships. Windows Mobile devices can have up to two partnerships with different systems. I typically have a partnership for my home PC and my work PC. This allows me to update contacts and calendaring information between my two systems without having to enter information twice.

My Palm Treo 700w already had two partnerships set up so I had to delete one via WMDC. Here’s what that looks like:

If you’re going to delete an existing partnership on your Windows Mobile device, be prepared to wait a bit. For whatever reason, the partnership deletion took well over 2-3 minutes to perform on my system. I actually thought the software hung but everything was responsive again after a few minutes.

Note to Microsoft – can you please provide some sort of visual cue telling the user that the partnership is being deleted.. or perhaps give some sort of progress on the deletion? Thanks!

Ok.. moving on now.

Once I’ve deleted an existing partnership on the Treo, I can begin setting up my new partnership. WMDC displays the following dialog box asking you what items you’d like to sync up with your PC.

As you can see, Windows Mobile Device Center is very wizard driven – which means it’s ultra easy to use folks. Lots of BIG icons and text (sometimes I wonder if Microsoft thinks I’m blind or something!)

After selecting the items I want to sync, I’ll go ahead and name the Windows Moble device on my PC.

Now I’m ready to set up the partnership…

Once the partnership setup is finished, you’ll see a screen similar to this:

Now this screen is in fact the dialog box for the Windows Mobile Device Center for my device. The left hand side shows the current status of the Windows Mobile device that’s connected to the PC and the right hand side shows different categories which you can navigate through. They are as follows:

• Programs and Services
• Pictures, Music, and Video
• File Mangement
• Mobile Device Settings

It’s important to note that the above screen is specific to the device at hand. When you start up your Windows Vista OS, you will typically see this icon in your task tray which is similar to the old ActiveSync icon.

Doubleclick this icon and you’ll get gain access to the Sync Center which looks as follows:

So what’s the point of Sync Center?

As the name implies, Sync Center is a single location where you can manage all of your Windows Mobile devices – everything from PDAs to Smartphones to MP3 or Media Player devices. Think of Sync Center as the place to go when you want to manage and set up a new partnership with a new portable device on your PC.

With this screen, I can see the current status of all of my Windows Mobile devices (which I only have one connected here). If I doubleclick the “flung’s Treo” icon, I’ll get the Windows Mobile Device Center screen shown earlier which gives me access to setting up software, access to files, and other good stuff on my Treo.

Back to WMDC

Let’s go back to the Windows Mobile Device Center shall we? As I mentioned, there are four sections under the WMDC for a Windows Mobile device. We’ll spend a little bit of time going over each section.

The first section is for “Programs and Services”

From here, you’ll be able to manage your installed applications as well as install additional programs for your Windows Mobile device. You’ll also be able to gain access to updates available from Microsoft.

The second section is for “Pictures, Music and Video”.

This section provides a major improvement to the whole Windows Synchronization process with mobile devices. You can now easily gain access to your multimedia files on your mobile device. From here you can:

• Import pictures/videos from your device

This will start up the import wizard which will automatically import your pictures or videos captured on the device. You can optionally tag your imported multimedia files with a name.

• Set up your pictures/videos import settings

The import settings are unified with the rest of Windows Media import settings. Thus whether you are importing pictures from a digital camera or from a Smartphone, you have similar settings to deal with.

• Add media to your device from the Windows Media Player

If you click on this option, you’ll start up Windows Media Player which will then provide you the capability of syncing selected multimedia files to your Windows Mobile device.

If you take a good look at  the WMP snapshot,  you’ll notice that it says I have a Treo and a Storage card connected to the PC. The storage card in question is actually in my Treo itself - thus WMP gives me access to both the media card AND the internal memory space on the Treo independently.

To sync multimedia files within Windows Media Player – simply select the item you want on your device and then add it to the Sync List. Then you can start the sync process and watch the content move over to your Windows Mobile device.

The third section is for “File Management”.

Clicking on this menu item provides a convenient way to gain access to the directory structure within your Windows Mobile device. You’ll also be able to see any storage cards on your device as a separate drive on the Windows Mobile device.

The final section is entitled “Mobile Device Settings”.

Here you can set up modify your content sync settings, manage partnerships on your Windows Mobile device and change any connection settings.

And that’s that!

There you have it! With Windows Vista, you’ve got a new way of managing Windows Mobile devices via the Sync Center. Every synchronized device can then be managed via the Wndows Mobile Device Center interface which provides a consistent view of your portable devices. When you’re dealing with synchronizing multimedia content to your portable devices, the Windows Mobile Device Center will defer to Windows Media Player. However everything else goes through WMDC and the Windows Sync Center.

Is it perfect? No – not yet. There are people out there who are having problems with WMDC and the Sync Center but it’s definitely a step in the right direction. For my purposes, it works just fine!

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