Windows Phone Thoughts: How Does Mobile Favorites Work For You?

Mobile Favorites in the Windows CE/Pocket PC/Windows Mobile world has never worked quite right. Its original intent around 10 years ago was to have Internet Explorer synchronize websites to your device when you docked so you could view them in offline mode. You could set the page depth so you could even click 1-2 levels down. This made sense as virtually no devices back then had any online access unless you had a modem card/attachment for it. The feature never worked right and most people used Avantgo instead, which also never worked quite right, but that is another story. "Sucked less" was my feeling on the matter. :wink:

Now Mobile Favorites is best explained as a list of shortcuts in IE on your desktop in a folder called {drumroll please} Mobile Favorites that get synchronized to your device. In Vista using IE7, there is no offline capability that I can see, which is fine for two reasons. 1) Most devices can go online for themselves and 2) it never worked anyway, which I may have already mentioned.

You'd think this would be simple and useful. It isn't. Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC) on Vista apparently really dislikes Mobile Favorites. Almost every time I sync, it deletes random favorites from my device and PC. It is so irritating that I have copied the \Windows\Favorites folder on my device to my SD card and after every sync, I copy it back from the SD card to my device. Right now, my device has 10 subfolders and 61 shortcuts in Favorites. Mobile Favorites in IE7 on my Vista PC has 10 subfolders and 19 shortcuts. I don't know why. It used to have 61 shortcuts. It will after I sync next time - after most assuredly reducing my device to 19 or fewer shortcuts first. :roll:

I know I am not alone in this either. How about you? Does it work for you at all?