I know, soz

the wife’s just got a new iphone4

Issue 1: Wants to synchronise calendar with her work one (her work pc won’t allow direct connection to the phone) and on her (windows) laptop (both outlook)
seems to me it might be easier to use google calendar as a sort of intermediary that all can sync to (work one will do this, I know).
If that’s a sensible approach, will the phone’s own native calendar sync properly to google or will it work better if she puts google calendar on the ‘phone (seems there’s an app for that 🙄 ) ?

Issue two: What’s the best (free/ded cheap) way of doing car satnav with the ‘phone (and how much data will it suck up while driving) ?

Issue 3: What good shit can I put on there for my own amusement (don’t really do games) ?

TIA

I synch direct with work and also separately to my Yahoo account – both over the air.

Just go to settings, mail, add account and give it the works details (probably exchange) – ’tis a doddle.

nah, can’t get onto work email without a one-off PIN that gets sms’ed to you after every login so can only sync (to google) while at work, with the PC switched on (at least I believe so – might it sync automatically when she does the above log-on ?)

Ahh – her IT department have worked hard to defeat the mobile worker in the name of security. Got me beat. Has she tried telling her IT dept what she wants to do and that they need to sort it? If nothing else a good rant at IT cleanses the soul.

NHS IT matey – I doubt anything in the world grinds as slow

(I worked there 5 yrs before they enabled the right button on my mouse)

the iphone works really well with google, i use it to sync and share my calendars on my phone, work pc, laptop and online google account, either all updated automatically or when i choose (good to keep one on manual as a backup). Also use it to manage contacts so all my numbers, email, addresses etc. really very handy.

stato,as i read it there’s a gogole calendar app that you put on the phone in place of the standard one – is that right or do you just use the iphone one and sync as igm says ?

Apart from calendars, the satnav I use is CoPilot Live 8, pretty much the same as the standalone version, costs around £20. Does NOT use any cloud data, all maps are native to the phone. UK Map is damn useful, it costs £4.95 and gives you 1:1million and 1:250k base maps, the same as AA road maps, which I use a fair bit when I know roughly where I’m going, but need confirmation. You can also add free 1:25k and 1:10k maps as downloaded tiles that you select by tapping and dragging, the downloaded tiles are stored on the phone, so the data is always available. Like having an AtoZ of anywhere you want. Footpaths, however, aren’t released by OS yet, so the info comes from Openstreetmap. Superb maps, though.
[edit] here’s screengrabs of the four levels of mapping:
 

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Just use the standard calendar to sync with google- it works really well, you just add a calendar and anything you add on the phone you either select which calendar to use as a master everytime, or select which calendar stuff goes on. You see everything though when browsing the calendar. Works very well!