Synchronize Outlook 2007 with Google Calendar, using default notification setup in GCal for new events?

Question

I've tried several products for synchronizing my Exchange-based Outlook 2007 account calendar with Google Calendar:

• SyncMyCal
• OggSync
• KiGoo
• Google Calendar Sync

Unfortunately, they're all rather flawed.

What I have done is to configure Google Calendar to apply an SMS notification by default to new events. This works if I'm adding the event through the website, but the synchronization tools doesn't seem to handle this aspect.

Does anyone know of a tool that will:

• Synchronize automatically and unobtrusively (I don't want a in-your-face dialog box with a progress bar, tray icon or Outlook toolbar/notification icon is fine)
• Synchronizes events, respecting (or allowing me to configure) the default setting for notifications (basically I need that SMS setting, whether the tool applies that for me through configuration, or it respects the calendar defaults doesn't really matter)

The tool does not have to be free.

Why the above listed tools doesn't work for me:

SyncMyCal

Crashes a lot, like 4 out of 5 times the progress bar gets stuck when talking to the website, no synchronization occurs, and I have to restart Outlook to get the "Synchronize now" button operational again.

However, it does respect, somewhat, the settings. If in Outlook I specify a notification at the same time as the event, it gets added with my SMS setting, only 5 minutes before the event instead of exactly at the event. I could live with this, if it wasn't for the crashes. Additionally it has one of those big in-your-face dialogs that shows synchronization progress, I'll have to ask the authors if this disappears if I purchase the license.

OggSync

The "BETA" in their product tag for 4.20 (the one that presumably supports Outlook 2007) is really correct, since the product doesn't show up anywhere on my computer except for in the uninstallation window on Windows. It does not add any toolbar in Outlook as it should.

KiGoo

Adds its own calendars inside Outlook. Probably works good in that respect, but I need a product that synchronizes my existing calendar.

Google Calendar Sync

Does not respect default notification settings on the calendar in Google Calendar, it always adds an web popup notification only for the events.

Answer 1

You're probably not going to like my answer, but if you want interoperability, you shouldn't use Microsoft technologies... Do you have to use Outlook?

If you can change, I'd suggest thunderbird with the lightning extension. It works beautifully with google calendar, using the standard ICAL protocol.