1. Is Your Cell Phone Data Everywhere You Need It? Is It Backed Up?

It seems almost incredible today that you got a mobile phone just to be able to call somebody while you were out - do you remember those times? If you consider all the additional features of a cell phone today, making a call really seems like a side dish on the menu. Mobile phones have become the center of communication, which is why you should start thinking about synchronizing cell phone and PC data.

In addition to the small dimensions of today's cell phones, high-resolution displays have reached unprecedented quality. Smartphones thus are considered the communication equivalent of PDAs from a functional perspective. Microsoft's Windows Mobile provides a solid software basis and a variety of other operating systems such as Series 60 are becoming more suitable for office needs on cell phones.

Additional features such as email and chat clients, MP3 audio, digital cameras with additional video recording or mobile TV address your entertainment desires. Decreasing costs for Flash memory cards add to the fun.

With all of these capabilities, many people do not keep their cell phone and computer contacts, tasks and files in sync. This means they cannot use some of their data on either device. Also, as with their computers, many people do not backup their cell phone data. Imagine what might happen to your phone book, tasks, calendar entries, photos or songs if your phone fails or gets stolen!

So, data exchange and synchronization with a PC is very important.

Cell phone owners can chose from cable, IR (infrared) and Bluetooth to connect to a PC. Although cell phones often have proprietary interfaces, we see two trends: IR is disappearing and there is a strong move toward USB.

If your cell phone supports Bluetooth you should try Windows Bluetooth support to transfer data from or to your mobile phone. Windows Bluetooth functionality is not new, having been released to users with the rollout of Windows XP Service Pack 2. Chances are very high that your Bluetooth-enabled cell phone will connect successfully.