Is there an equivalent to the Windows Phone for my Windows PC

Note to moderators and trigger-happy community members: This answer is full of links and brief instructions because of the sheer volume of requested information. I've spent a considerable time searching & consolidating it. If I were to include all of the instructions in plain text, it would've been an enormously long & less coherent response.

First off, Windows Phone (and any other mobile OS) does all of the features you mentioned through a number of plugins and the whole environment has been designed for that use. Thus, it's not easy to replicate the behavior on desktops. Most (not everything) of what you want can be done in Outlook with a few plugins.

Email consolidation requires Google IMAP and Outlook Hotmail Connector (it will take care of Live email, calendar, and contacts). Facebook Inbox can't be synced with any email client. There's one Twitter plugin for Outlook and a few desktop clients (pick whatever you like).

Outlook 2010 is the only version of Outlook so far that allows conversation threading.

Contacts

You can't sync contacts from Google, Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn with Outlook. However, you can import some of them manually: GMail, LinkedIn, Facebook contacts can be exported only via Yahoo (everything else is shady or dead). Once you have all of the exported contacts, you'll need to import them into Outlook and manage duplicates. After that you'll need to install either Xobni or Gist, which will pull photos and recent updates from all the connected services.

Calendars

Google Calendar can be synced with Outlook with the dedicated utility.

Outlook (or any other calendar) can only subscribe to Facebook calendars. Here's how to do it in Outlook 2010 and here's how to do it in Outlook 2007.

You can get Facebook events calendar feed by going to Facebook Events, clicking export at the bottom of the page, and copying the link in the dialogue. You can get Facebook birthday calendar feed by going to Facebook birthdays, clicking export at the bottom of the page, and copying the link in the dialogue.

If anything is missing, ask away in the comments, I'll clarify there or edit the answer.

dnbrv

Posted 2011-12-31T00:39:46.913

Reputation: 867

thank you for this answer. I am already using IMAP and Live Connector to get my emails together, but the main issue that is causing most of my issues is the contats syncing. But I'll have a look at those two you have suggested. Same goes for the Calendar – topherg – 2011-12-31T03:03:23.247

Have you tried the rest of the setup? – dnbrv – 2012-01-03T15:31:36.250

yes, I have tried the calendar setup, but I need to keep downloading the calendars from facebook to keep everything updated. The contacts for facebook works, but its irritating to keep updating them when I add new friends, or they update their contact information. – topherg – 2012-01-03T16:02:39.127

Can you list all of the features that you need (what info to pull & where to display it)? I've got a few apps in mind but they are slightly different, so details are needed. – dnbrv – 2011-12-31T00:47:19.267

@dnbrv righto, they're up. What apps were you thinking of? – topherg – 2011-12-31T01:04:00.100

You would think Outlook, but Outlook's UI is long in the tooth. – surfasb – 2011-12-31T01:25:18.387

@surfasb i've tried lots of things in outlook, but its such a pain, and still misses lots of the functionality. sadly another missed step from microsoft – topherg – 2011-12-31T01:27:53.860

Is there an equivalent to the Windows Phone for my Windows PC

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