Oh, for a to-do-list that would do it all...

After a dismally unproductive summer I've decided it's time to Get Things Done again. This time I'd really like to be able to do it technologically rather than plain-paper...

My current hardware is a Windows 7 notebook and a Tilt 2 (Windows Mobile 6.5) phone. I'm doing my best to do everything "in the cloud" as I often don't take my computer to the office and want to have an equivalent office there without hassling with sync. Via gmail, google docs, google calendar, google sync, etc. I've got just about everything working as I like it -- including sync'ing to my phone.

The missing piece is my to-do list. And this is not because nothing works, but because I'm fussy and have pretty specific requirements for what I'm looking for.
  1. It must be based "in the cloud" -- I want to sit down at another computer, log on, and see just what I see at home.
  2. It must have off-line access (my ISP is notorious for outages at the most inconvenient moments). This is off-line access from my desktop -- not just on the phone.
  3. It must support (a) projects, (b) contexts, (c) next-action at a minimum as per GTD. This support doesn't have to be pretty, but it has to be easy and quick -- I don't want a lot of hassle when I create a new 2-task project or something.
  4. It must sync with PI on my phone. (PocketInformant is *fantastic* for to-do-list, but it seems nobody else can keep up with it, even in the cloud or on a desktop!) Said sync needs to include projects, contexts, and next-action.
  5. I would really like sub-tasks. PI support hierarchical tasks and I'd really like my final solution to support this on both platforms.
So far I've looked at 2 options:
THE GOOD
  • Great user interface, snappy, looks good
  • Love the smart add capabilities -- in a single line of text you can specify all your due-dates, tags, contexts, priorities -- whether via email or via browser or whatever.
  • Nice implementation of projects, contexts, etc is available via tags and tag-cloud
  • Synchronization is available via MilkSync for the cost of a Pro subscription ($25/year). I bought this and it seems to work well (albeit several weeks when it didn't work and their support apparently forgot I existed despite MULTIPLE emails during that time - they did eventually notice me again and got it working in a couple days.
  • Offline access seems to work very nicely.
THE BAD
  • MilkSync doesn't sync tags to PI categories on my phone. They only sync folders to PI categories. I could create a "smart list" for each of my projects, but I create new projects and finish them up all the time (whenever there's a task involving more than 2-3 actions, right?) and it's just a pain to have to create a new smart list and delete the old one all the time. I want to create a task and assign it a tag with my chosen prefix and have that be my new project...
  • I was dismayed by the slow response when I had difficulties with my sync. In fact, it wasn't until I started writing lengthy explanations of my difficulties (including the fact that support was ignoring me) in their forums that I suddenly had lots of attention from tech support again.
  • Although (thru help of forums) I got projects and contexts and everything working well it is not the same as having native support for these concepts. GTD can be done via RTM, but RTM is not designed for GTD.
  • It appears that RTM is "dead in the water" in terms of ongoing development. They are the "big boys on the block" in terms of popularity, but they seem to be resting on their laurels with little in terms of new functionality and features over the last months and years.

ToodleDo


THE GOOD
  • Although I want a techie solution with my phone I am very aware there are going to be times when I want to take my list on paper. I love the fact that I can print it off on a single sheet and fold it up all cute-like and have a little to-do booklet.
  • Lots of capabilities for search, great project support, context support, folders, etc. Overall it appears to be a much more functional platform.
  • You can get sub-tasks for $15/year. This is *really* nice and a feature I would definitely pay that amount for...but I've got to get over some of the other speed-bumps first.
THE BAD
  • Well, because everybody else says the UI isn't so hot I guess I have to say so too, but quite frankly I couldn't give a rip -- I'm looking for what will help me get my tasks done, not something that will make me say "oooh, isn't that pretty!" :-)
  • Syncing is a problem. WebIS (makers of PI) have promised for more than a year that they are going to make integrated support for syncing WinMo PI and toodledo, but to date that's all it is -- promises. (They have done this for iPhone PI, but not for WinMo PI.) (There were pretty strong indications that it was going to be in 9.1, but 9.1 has come and gone and still no toodledo sync support.) You can sync via NuevaSync for $25/year, but they map phone categories to any ONE of projects, folders, or contexts. I need all 3 of them... (BTW, NuevaSync would also allow me to sync multiple Google Calendars to my phone which would be great and would *almost* be valuable enough for me to pay the annual subscription...).
  • Offline access seems to be requested often in the forums but is yet to be implemented. This is a biggie for me.
It appears that my "sync to PI" is the requirement that just doesn't fly. Nobody is getting enough information back and forth to give me good GTD functionality both in the cloud and on my phone. It appears that wherever I do my organization will be functional and the other side will just be a relatively unorganized list of tasks.

I have voted for the PI<-->ToodleDo sync feature at WebIS, but based on the length of time that has elapsed since they committed to doing it I don't think I should exactly hold my breath...

I've already paid for RTM before discovering the difficulties mentioned above, and I *do* like their UI, so maybe I just stick with them for a few weeks/months and see what happens over at WebIS. The difficulty is that if I did switch over to ToodleDo it would give me that print-out-cute-folded-up-booklet that would probably be *very* practical for me. But that means shelling our $25 to NuevaSync just to get the lame sync that doesn't do what I really need...

Ah, what to do, what to do. It appears there is no application that fully fulfills my requirements...

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