Customer Reviews

DATAPILOT CELL PHONE DATA TRANSFER SUITE - MOTOROLA

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

I purchased this product instead of the Motorola datacable because of the many neat features promised. The software provides a way to save your phone directory to the PC, edit ring tones, among other features.

However, the product is so buggy and poorly realized that it is unfortunately as waste of time and money. I tried installing the product on 2 machines, one with Windows 2k and one with Windows XP, and neither was able to communicate with the phone. In addition I had to download additional drivers and software just to get the program to install.

The instructions to install the drivers are lacking in detail, and fail to deal with the common error messages you may recieve. Lastly, the USB driver is not really USB at all, but emulates a serial port and uses one of the COM port resources.

The program has other quirks, like the inability to save the phone configuration unless the program can communicate with the phone, and some menu items that simply do not work. For example, pressing the "home" menu brought up a message that was simply "()"

Tech support is about on par with most companies these days - which means not very good. Expect to get lots of emails that simply tell you to reinstall the drivers.

All in all, this is a poorly executed product. Save your money and frustration and look elsewhere.

This is one of the worst products I've purchased in a long time. I wasted hours (along with several other engineers in our IT dept) trying to get this to work with my Motorola 720.

We downloaded the latest USB drivers, the latest version of Datapilot, installed it on 4 different machines running three different operating systems (98,2000,XP) but were never able to get it to consistently recognize the phone and sync. The support docs at their site are little to no help. "Download the latest drivers" is about all they recommend.

It seems the USB drivers attempt to emulate a serial port on the PC (I guess so they wouldn't have to actually update the datapilot software????). This is a very flaky solution. The whole purpose, for most people, of buying a USB connected device is to avoid the hassle of working with serial ports. So now, in addition to getting the right USB drivers installed, you have make sure your system has resources available for the emulated serial port. What's the point? I say If your not going to do USB the right way, don't do it at all.

Even when we got the cable working and were able to transfer data to the phone (at the painfully slow 9600kbps that their emulated port defaults to) it only lasted till the next reboot.

All of the conflicts reappeared when the machine came back up and Datapilot could no longer find the phone.

Save your time and money. This is alpha quality code and they should apologize for unleashing it on their customers.

With just a little assistance from the help file and User Guide I was able to identify my phone (Motorola t720,) import my contacts from Outlook 2002 and transfer to my phone. Although seemingly successful, there were limitations. The transfer wiped out the phonebook on my SIM card but it didn't place any contacts there. The help file gives loose instructions to direct a contact from the DataPilot's phonebook manager on the PC to the SIM phonebook. I was unable to get this feature to work; the DataPilot's phonebook manager inevitably converted my changes and placed those contacts in the phone memory. The phonebook in the phone can store multiple numbers for a contact but the software's phonebook manager does not transfer more than one phone number per contact; though it will import up to 6 numbers from Outlook?

The calendar transfer was more successful. I was pleased with that function.

I'll investigate Motorola's pricier option... If they provide the functionality I'm looking for, I'll go for it.

Installed twice from CD, but program is "unable to find" a critical file. On-line troubleshooting guide is a waste of time for this problem. Telephone tech support is only available M-F 8-5, and email support promises a two-day response but so far nothing after seven days. The only function in the program that works is the link to their web site.

I came from a Treo 650 to my E815, and I had a large list of contacts. Needless to say, it would have been a pain to enter these in through the phone. So I picked this up over Motorola Phone Tools because of the installation problems I read about with Motorola Phone Tools.

After installing the software on my PC, I was able to connect my phone successfully. I was then able to import my contacts from the Palm desktop with no issue. I went to transfer them to my phone, and it had to expand contacts with multiple numbers into an individual contact per number. However, this is a limitation of my phone. One thing to be aware of is that the software doesn't do true syncing like Palm software. You can go one way or the other, and the source always overwrites the destination. Still it served my purpose. One other thing that is not obvious: if you create a contact from scratch on your PC, you have to enter the number in the first slot and change it to the appropriate type. If you enter it in slot 2 or beyond, it will not transfer to the phone.

Then came calendar functions. The lack of true syncing is really a pain here. I import from Outlook on a daily basis. However, appointments deleted from Outlook are not deleted from he calendar in data pilot. The workaround for this is to delete the data in data pilot then reimport from scratch. This mimics what data pilot does with the phone. This is klunky, but once you figure it out, it works ok.

The only other feature that is supported on my phone is picture/video transfer from phone to PC. I don't use my camera much, but I took a test picture to see how well it worked. When I tried to tranfer the picture to the PC, data pilot crashed. This is not important to me, but it is worth noting if it is important to you.

I haven't tried to use DUN so I don't know if this works or not. It is not supposed to be supported, but it might work.

Overall it's a pretty average product, but once you know the workarounds/limitations it is functional.

This software got the one star only because I cannot give it a zero.

The main reason I spent $50 on this is for the phonebook transfer between my Outlook and my Motorola T730. I don't care about ringtones or calendar or whatever. I have a laptop and a PDA for that stuff. I want this to make it easier to do what a phone is supposed to do.

The import function is sub-standard in that there was all sorts of mis-read information after I read in my comma-delimited file from Outlook. Then I came to discover that only one phone number per entry is allowed! That, after it supposedly can read in several phone numbers into its database on the PC. That was the show stopper. It goes back to the store tomorrow.

Do NOT waste your time with this software!

I purchased the Datapilot software from Amazon/Global Phone Company for $42 + shipping. My intent was to transfer my Outlook contacts information as well as transfer some ring tones, as advertised by the software manufacturer Susteen, to my new Motorola E815 cell phone. On loading the software onto my PC, and installing the driver as required all was fine. After that it was all downhill. The software imports the Outlook contact list in a spreadshhet type format. If you have more than one phone number for a single contact, you must manually create another entry for that contact, only 1 phone number per contact prior to transferring to the cell phone. If you have two phone lists you want to merge, like a partial contct list on your new cell phone with your contact list from Outlook (in my case about 120 contacts), you will need to purchase the "Corporate Version" of Datapilot. Out of the 5 or 6 advertised functions provided by Datapilot, 3 cannot be used with my Motorola E815. I never succeeded in transferring the Outlook Contact list from my PC to cell phone because it could never locate the cell phone and the transfer always ended in an error - "cannot locate..." I am in process of requesting a refund from Amazon/Global - no response yet. I'll wait a see how reputable they are on this.

Too bad we can't give a negative number of stars.

First, recognize that I am an electronics engineer who works with (and sometimes designs parts of) computers every single day of my life, including using/installing incredibly complicated pieces of software that cost thousands of dollars. I am extremely computer savvy and technically literate. Also, recognize that my computer, my OS, and my phone were supposed to be 100% compatible with the Datapilot software.

That having been said, I've just finished spending approximately 6 hours trying to get the software to work with my phone, as well as rehabilitating my computer from the damaged caused by the attempts at getting Datapilot to work.

I've read every bit of the installation instructions. I've read every potentially related article in their "knowledge base". I've tried everything they recommend as well as everything else I could think of, reinstalling things many times over. I've completely verified, by other means, that everything on my end (computer, phone, USB connection, etc.) works just fine with other applications and when used in any other manner *except* with the Datapilot software. I've verified, time and time again, that the drivers are the correct ones according to their instructions, and that the drivers are being installed properly, and that there is absolutely no problem.

Except that Datapilot absolutely will not recognize my phone, no matter what.

I've never requested a refund on any piece of software before, and I've never posted a software review anywhere before, but this is an outrageously bad piece of software. (Or else their compatibility list is a lie.)

Aside from the software just not working, there are problems with various pieces of documentation conflicting with each other, also.

I've requested a refund (I bought the software directly from Datapilot, not through Amazon). However, in detailed searching of their Knowledge Base, I now find that they say that a refund of something bought via credit card may take up to 2 billing cycles (i.e. up to 2 months) to show back up as a refund, which is ridiculous. They also say that they are going to charge a $9.95 "handling fee" regardless of the reason for the refund. The price of the software alone, in downloaded version not on CD, was $34.95. So they are charging nearly 30% of the purchase price for "handling" of something that is not physical and doesn't require any re-stocking or anything like that. And that refund policy is not posted in the normal website any place where you might possible see it before you buy.

Although I've never requested a software refund before, and only once or twice in my life requested a refund on other types of products, at this point I'm prepared to take them to court and spend even more money just for the satisfaction of getting that extra $9.95 back. I've never been more livid about a purchase in my life.

If I don't hear back from them right away and get a full refund very quickly, I'm definitely reporting them to the Better Business Bureau in any case.

The bottom line is that it's a great idea. And you may get lucky (like one or two of the people here)and have it work for you. But for most people it's a complete waste of time and money.

This product worked better than expected, though I bought it with low expectations. I was weary of purchasing it after reading all the bad review; however, it got better reviews than the software sold by Motorola at a higher cost. First off, I bought this software to merge an old T720 phonebook with a V557 to transfer the numbers to another V557. There were no issues at all, and it saved so much time and money. When I received the package, I feared installing the software, yet, when I did, it accounted for everything (e.g. - digital signature questions). Next, I hooked up the phone, and the application auto-detected it. Then, I downloaded the address book and saved it. I hooked the next phone up, auto-detect it, and merge the address book with the previous. It was very intuitive, though the direction explained everything. The user guide was larger than needed, but their covered it all. After completing my new phonebook transfer, I moved on to the other applications included. The image editor is cool, the calendar is nice, and the ring tone composer has already saved me over $40. The product was only $35, so it has already paid for itself. I feel this product is a solid 4 out of 5, but for meeting and exceeding expectations, I give it a 5 out of 5.

Version 5.3.0 comes up with an error of: "You have to have an adminstratitor account to run DataPilot"

I have two accounts on my computer both of which are adminstrator.

Both accounts give the same error when clicking on the Data Pilot icon after install. I uninstalled and reinstalled and received the same error. Install seems to work except for the run error.

No responce from Susteen error ticket.

The software box and cables are nice, but the bottom line is the package has no support and does not work at least with my system.

I have never seen this error from any other program and have used this system for lots of programs.