Cloudy, with outbreaks of Spam?

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OK, a big techy-decision here today!

Regular readers will know that I defected recently from Windows Mobile to Android. That encouraged me to move away from Outlook Calendar and Outlook Tasks to manage my day-to-day stuff. That really only left the email function in Outlook as a reason to stay, and I’ve always been a bit nervous about my calendar, tasks, contacts and emails all being locked into one humungous great non-editable file, that’s stored locally on my PC.

After seeing a few friends struggle recently with restoring their life back to normal after a PC crash, it made me think how much of my world is tied up in that one single Outlook file. Yes, I know, I can back it up regularly (and I do!), but increasingly, I was finding myself in need of email-related information stored on the  PC – when I wasn’t anywhere near it! I’d been experimenting with various bits of software over the years to keep it all in sync across multiple PCs, but it was just getting far too complicated for my ageing brain! 🙂

So, in a striking attack of the bleedin’ obvious, I took some steps to manage all my emails – personal and business – from a cloud-based email program. The choice was easy, given that I’m using an Android phone – Gmail!

After an hour-or-so of redirecting of  my various domains and email addresses towards Gmail, I’m now fully up-and-running and I can now get at my emails – personal and business – from any PC, anywhere I’m working. Add to that, Google Calendar and ToodleDo, the rather clever cloud-based task management and my digital life now seems much easier to manage.

Job done!