My family is increasingly getting entrenched in the Apple ecosystem, but for now we're still all using Windows laptops. Between the three of us, we each have an iPhone, my wife has an iPad 2, and there are three 2nd gen Apple TV's in the house.
I'm still mulling over how best to setup my (and my family's) devices in terms of iCloud and syncing Calendar, Contacts, etc. For now, I've created a new @me.com iCloud account for each of us, but have enabled only the FindMyPhone feature. My wife and I had been each using a Google Gmail account for the purpose of syncing personal Calendar and Contacts to Google's cloud, but I'd like to ditch my connection to Google. The two of us have Hotmail accounts and we use Windows Live Mail (the replacement for Outlook Express) on our laptops. It looks like Hotmail support has improved (possibly as of iOS4, but I must have missed it), as it looks like we can now sync Calendar, Contacts, and Reminders via that account.
I'd rather do that via iCloud, and iCloud can also sync Notes, but unless we want to go through the hassle of configuring the full-blown Outlook 2007/2010 app, we can't manage Contacts, Calendars, etc. on iCloud via Windows Live Mail.
We can manage these things via the iCloud website, but since we still read/compose email primarily via Windows Live Mail, it would obviously be nice to be able to manage all of the Contacts, Calendars, etc. via that, so I guess I'm leaning towards using Hotmail to sync all of those things, instead of iCloud, and maybe using iCloud just to sync Notes and other iOS-specific things (e.g., Photo Stream).
I'm curious what others in a similar position are doing.
I'm still mulling over how best to setup my (and my family's) devices in terms of iCloud and syncing Calendar, Contacts, etc. For now, I've created a new @me.com iCloud account for each of us, but have enabled only the FindMyPhone feature. My wife and I had been each using a Google Gmail account for the purpose of syncing personal Calendar and Contacts to Google's cloud, but I'd like to ditch my connection to Google. The two of us have Hotmail accounts and we use Windows Live Mail (the replacement for Outlook Express) on our laptops. It looks like Hotmail support has improved (possibly as of iOS4, but I must have missed it), as it looks like we can now sync Calendar, Contacts, and Reminders via that account.
I'd rather do that via iCloud, and iCloud can also sync Notes, but unless we want to go through the hassle of configuring the full-blown Outlook 2007/2010 app, we can't manage Contacts, Calendars, etc. on iCloud via Windows Live Mail.
We can manage these things via the iCloud website, but since we still read/compose email primarily via Windows Live Mail, it would obviously be nice to be able to manage all of the Contacts, Calendars, etc. via that, so I guess I'm leaning towards using Hotmail to sync all of those things, instead of iCloud, and maybe using iCloud just to sync Notes and other iOS-specific things (e.g., Photo Stream).
I'm curious what others in a similar position are doing.
