Which ecosystem do you guys use?

[Hyunato]

Hello,

I was wondering which ecosystem people used that run WP as their daily driver.
I use W10 on my desktop and prefer OneDrive to Google Drive, I also use OneNote a lot for school. So when I bought a Lumia 735 I thought I would dive completely into the Windows ecosystem with outlook, calendar, onenote, onedrive ect.

I immediately started running into issues though when I wanted to copy my google contacts to outlook, it's a very simple matter of exporting and importing but outlook only wants to recognize a few of my contacts and displays letter like "?" in code. I had to add my gmail account in the end just to get my contacts. At the moment my office 365 account with 1TB cloud storage is also connected to my gmail address.

I now get the feeling I don't have to switch over at all, that everything will work absolutely fine with gmail + office 365. A question I do have is can I add my gmail address as a Microsoft account when I setup the phone?

What are your thoughts? Which ecosystem or mix of systems do you use? I'm not that experienced with WP. Thanks in advance.

 

[Satyendra Nair]

No, you cannot use gmail to set up your Windows phone at this moment.

I have majorly only used Windows. Hell, even my first smartphone was a handed down Lumia 710. The android devices I used (a Karbonn, Samsung and Micromax phone) were mainly only when my windows phone was out for repair thanks to the ultra rough handling I met out to my phones.

About MS's services, it was damn easy for me to switch from google, given that when I used google I was too young to have any need for cloud storage, and last time I checked, their document editing apps were lacklustre.
I had also tried really hard to switch to the Linux OSes once and found the need to use the terminal exhausting.

For me, it's windows, windows and windows for the foreseeable future. I am really satisfied with the service, support and nothing major about it bothers me. Google/Apple could provide me with more features(they really do), but having briefly used them, I know that I can have all I want on Windows and don't feel the need to be 'latest' just for the sake of it.

 

[elindalyne]

Er? You can totally import your contacts over from Gmail... Same with your calendars and whatnot.

 

[Satyendra Nair]

Er? You can totally import your contacts over from Gmail... Same with your calendars and whatnot.

I guess she wants to know whether she can do it when she's *setting up* the phone, i.e probably when you first boot it up

 

[Hyunato]

Er? You can totally import your contacts over from Gmail... Same with your calendars and whatnot.

I know that it's possible, but after I tried importing my contacts, Outlook only recognized a few people and said something like "found 2 contacts".
One of my contacts is called No?lle and it also didn't want to display that name correctly because of the "?"

My point is I ran into issues when trying to use Microsoft services exclusively. I ended up having to add my google account for my contacts.
Outlook gives me very clear instructions how to export from google and import to outlook but it didn't work at all for me.

 

[xandros9]

Er? You can totally import your contacts over from Gmail... Same with your calendars and whatnot.

OP tried that and it didn't work out quite so well.

Personally, Microsoft services are the backbone of my tech. After closing my Google account and my high school email no longer being a thing, I now have just two accounts: My personal Outlook.com MS account to handle my PIM and email and such and my school's Office 365 thing for office and school email things.

On the device end, its more varied since MS stuff hooks into most modern things. A mix is fine.

I did get by just fine with Outlook for calendar, contacts and Gmail for email a couple years ago.

 

[elindalyne]

On the phone just add a gmail account to the phone... The contacts/email/calendar should port over automatically.