Sync your cell phone with your computer

Your contacts are the heart and soul of your phone, but sorting and editing them without a QWERTY keyboard can be a pain. But rest easy; Mobile Action's Handset Manager makes this process much easier. First, select the top button in the right-hand column for the Contacts feature. All contacts saved to your phone or SIM card will then automatically download to your PC. You'll notice that only one phone number will show up next to each contact, but you can view all digits (work, home, mobile, and so on) simply by selecting a contact.

You now can edit your contacts or save them to your computer for safekeeping. If you're inputting a new phone number, just remember to leave out any dashes or periods. When you're finished, all you need to do is upload new contacts to the phone, and your contacts list will update instantly. And don't worry about multiple numbers under a single contact; the phone will recognize separate numbers automatically. Our one complaint was that the software needed to download our contacts anew each time we opened it. Granted, this didn't take a lot of time, but it was bothersome nonetheless. You can choose not to download information (you're prompted each time you open the feature), but the contacts previously downloaded to your PC will be read-only.

You also can choose to sync your Outlook contacts and calendar with your cell phone using the SyncManager feature. To begin, right-click the Handset Manager icon on the lower-right corner of your display and select SyncManager. You can then go into the Settings menu to specify which contacts and which calendar events you'd like to sync. Alternatively you can choose to do automatic syncing each time your phone is connected to your PC.