Address Books - Easily Keeping Them All in Sync

I used to export my address book from home and import it at work so they would both have the same list of contacts. Any time I had a change to a contact, or a new contact, I would email it to myself at home where I kept the "master" address book. Some of those PST files from Outlook were pretty big!

Now, I have been using the free version of Plaxo for about a year. Plaxo keeps my Outlook Address Book at work and the one at home in perfect harmony -- along with a 3rd copy of my contacts that is available online when I login to my Plaxo account from anywhere. They all stay in sync within minutes of each other via the Internet. While I have not installed Plaxo on my wired Palm PDA, it stays sync'd each time I sync it in its cradle.

Plaxo has worked well for me and I have never had my contacts abused by passing through this 3rd-party's hands. They even have a Security Officer whose job is to prevent such occurrences. Not only does Plaxo keep my address book synchronized, it also allows all of my contacts that are on Plaxo to update their own records automatically (with my permission, of course).

Plaxo Premium offers several more services -- including eliminating duplicates and giving you access to your contacts via cellphone text messaging -- for $49.95/year. Here is a comparison chart:

http://www.plaxo.com/

The birthday reminders are another very useful feature. Plaxo finds anyone in your Outlook that has a birthday entered and begins to remind you of those birthdays a week in advance -- and gives you some online options to send a card or gifts.

While I use it only with Outlook, Plaxo works with the address books for these email clients:

• Outlook
• Outlook Express
• Palm
• Yahoo!
• Netscape

-- Patrick B.

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