Dolphin

I have followed your advice, but it only resulted in the SynCE-KPM error, I have posted above, and not in an error on the sync-engine console. Nevertheless, I have got it work with a trick, which I found out while playing with the system. Trying KDE, KDE4 and GNOME, I noticed that the partnerships on the device suddenly appeared in the Partnerships Manager tab when I logged out from KDE and logged in into GNOME. So I have found out, that I have to restart KDE after the first connection to the PDA to make the partnerships on the device appear in the SynCE KPM. Logging in into KDE again, I can then see the partnerships on the device and am now able to create a new partnership for KDE. I have also noted, that the PDA was only detected after I had configured one of the network cards and that the SynCE KPM always crashed during the start after I had installed KDE4. In Kontact, there is a charset problem in KAdressbook with the imported data (not in the calendar and the tasks), then the usual timezone problem with import of dates into the calendar and the task reminders have vanished during the import. Well, I shall have a look at Evolution, if its synchronsation is already more mature. Very good was the speed of the synchronisation, which seemed to be much faster than under Windows! All in all, it looks promising despite the teething problems. :)

In most cases, this is true for sure. :) There is only one difference: Mandriva already comes with a phantastic selection of third-party software for you. While I have always needed over 8 hours to set up a fresh Windows installation with all the additional software which I had to collect myself, I am operational with Mandriva within 45 minutes of installation. I find this extremely comfortable time and time again. Everything has its pros and cons, but so everyone can make his own decision. :) If I do not have missed something, you can achieve this by buying the PowerPack this time and upgrade it with the free version in six months, although I believe that this makes only sense with the .0 version and the following .1 version, i.e. 2008 -> 2008 Spring, 2009 -> 2009 Spring.

As you say, you are comparing apples to oranges. You need to look at the value, you get for your money. For example, the Mandriva PowerPack included the licensed LinDVD software, which alone is about 40 EUR worth. And if you choose the PowerPack subscription, you even get two editions for 59 EUR! See the prices in the Mandriva store: Powerpack Subscription (1 year) 59,00-EUR TTC. Mandriva Linux Powerpack 2008 Spring Box version 69,00-EUR TTC. Mandriva Linux Powerpack 2008 Spring Download version 49,00-EUR TTC. Mandriva Linux Powerpack 2008 Spring Slim Pack 2 DVD version 59,00-EUR TTC. -> http://store.mandriva.com/index.php?curren...ucts_sort_order Btw, your comparison is also wrong, because Windows editions have a much longer product lifecycle. I buy every Mandriva edition since Mandriva 9.0. Windows XP was introduced in late 2001. Since then, I have bought 12 PowerPack editions if I have not counted wrong now. So I had much more to pay for Mandriva than for Windows XP which came pre-installed with my notebook, but Mandriva is much more than just an operating system. If you don't want to pay, you can choose Mandriva 2008 Spring free or other distributions like OpenSUSE, Ubuntu or Feodora, although I personally think that Mandriva is superior to all these distributions. Nevertheless, nothing is for free, and someone has to pay for it so that you can have it for free. And if no-one would pay for it, you could not have it for free. Think about it! :)

When I changed from Mandriva 2007.1 to 2008.0 - fresh installation -, I also ran into the problem that my wireless suddenly stopped working although it worked before without problems... If I remember right, the Mandriva 2008 edition was the first one using the linux kernel with the new wireless stack ( http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS8173766270.html ). Users of all linux distributions suddenly had the same problem with certain Intel drivers. I first tried every tip on the Mandriva errata page, but nothing worked. It took me several days to search for a solution of my problem then. I came across tips like: Do not hide the SSID, do not use DHCP. Unfortunately, this didn't work for me. In the end, I had to change my old Netgear router. As soon as I got the new router, with which I could also use WPA, everything worked fine for me. So, to sum this up, try the following: 1. If your router should hide the SSID, change the setting to "broadcasting". 2. If you should receive your IP, DNS etc. from the router by DHCP, change your configuration to a manual configuration. 3. If you should use WEP, try WPA/WPA-2. 4. If this should all fail, consider to change the router. Btw, During my tests, I found out that you can browse the internet noticably faster, if you do not use DHCP. I was surprised, that this setting had such a noticable effect.

I am already trying Mandriva 2008 Spring free today - the Powerpack is already ordered :) - and did the default KDE3 installation first. Then I exactly followed the instruction for installing and configuring the PDA synchronisation: http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2008.1_Synchronization Unfortunately, I got stuck when trying to create a partnership in the mainscreen of the SynCE KDE PDA Manager. Running the synce-kpm on the shell, revealed the following error: GUI :: Creating partnership DS :: Create partnership Error happened during creation of partnership... Error was: org.freedesktop.DBus.Python.AttributeError: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/dbus/service.py", line 696, in _message_cb retval = candidate_method(self, *args, **keywords) File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/synceKPM/dataserver/dataserver.py", line 542, in createPartnership raise e DBusException: org.freedesktop.DBus.Python.AttributeError: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/dbus/service.py", line 696, in _message_cb retval = candidate_method(self, *args, **keywords) File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/SyncEngine/kernel.py", line 689, in CreatePartnership id=self.PshipManager.CreateNewPartnership(name, sync_items).info.id File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/SyncEngine/pshipmgr.py", line 457, in CreateNewPartnership self.engine.rapi_session.SetConfig("Sync.Sources", source) AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'SetConfig' Any idea why this is and how I can solve the problem? Is it a library / packaging problem?