If you’re like me, you are probably maintaining multiple contacts lists. I had my contacts at work which I would synch with my palm. Contacts in my cell phone. My old fashioned address book. Contacts everywhere. I had also noticed that I could sync my contacts with my iPod but the last thing I wanted to do was have another contacts list.

I had been thinking about getting rid of my palm pilot since I was only carrying it for the address book and in case on the off chance I wanted to know what meetings I had the next day. My palm had the more complete address info so when I would travel (and was planning on sending a postcard), it was one more thing to carry. Why not maintain contacts on a piece of equipment that is always with me - either my iPod of my cell phone.

As it turns out, I could set up my cell phone, a Motorola V600, to sync with my contacts on my laptop. And I could set up my iPod to do the same. I can still add or change contacts on my cell but I would maintain a master list of contacts on my Mac and sync to multiple devices. Setting this up with my Mac was a piece of cake.

I ran through the Bluetooth Setup Assistant to pair my cell phone with the laptop. It took about 15 minutes. Most of it spent figuring out how to make my cell phone discoverable and then trying to make sure my Bluetooth was on. Once the two devices were paired, the iSync synchronization menu popped up. I didn’t have to change any of the options because the Mac is so smart so I hit sync and watched all my contacts move from my cell phone into my address book on the Mac. Next came the issue of moving my contacts from my palm to the Mac. The easiest way for me to do this was to Bluetooth the contacts from the palm and import them to the address book. One that was done I re-synced. Result - all contacts up-to-date on the cell. The last part of this is moving the contacts from my paper address book. I am slowly typing my contacts into the Mac, but I’m not in a hurry.

The final piece to this was to sync the contacts to my iPod. Again, could not have been easier. With the iPod connected, go to iTunes and select Preferences. Next select iPod and then Contacts. Check the box to synchronize all contacts and hit okay. Finally, update your iPod and watch all your contacts sync.

The only problem I had in this process involved the photos of my contacts. In the address book, you can put in a photo and with my photo iPod, I expected the photos to appear when I selected a contact. After much research, it appears that there are many of us with this expectation and we are waiting for a software update to enable this feature.

All in all, a very easy experience with the Mac. I feel it is important to note that I did this by myself which means that a regular person can do it. Bill could probably have done it with his eyes closed but he is a computer professional. I was so excited about my success, I set up Bill’s cell phone and his Mac in under ten minutes and that included all the time for his fifty contacts to copy.

It was worth the time to do this. I will sleep easier now that we are both more organized.

Tags: address book, iPod, cell phone, technology