NuevaSync is a subscription service that was originally developed to help you easily sync your Google mail, calendar, and contacts with your smartphone.
However, thanks to the addition of support for Windows 8, it can be used to sync Google mail and calendar and contacts to Surface Metro apps.
As you probably know, the sync feature between the Windows 8.x Mail & Calendar apps were broken last year when Google stopped supporting Microsoft’s ActiveSync technology leaving most users high and dry, if they wanted to sync their Gmail calendar with the Surface Calendar app.
While there have been several workarounds developed (you can find most of them on this very website) none of them are quite as seamless as most people would like.
Fortunately, the folks at NuevaSync seem to have come up with a service that allows for synchronization between the two once again. Better yet, it doesn’t matter if you’re using a Surface RT/2 or Surface Pro/Pro2 tablet.
Sync Google Calendar with Surface: Try NuevaSync
They offer a free 10 day trial of their product on their website so you can give it a shot to see if you like it or not. If you decide to keep it, pricing starts at $15/year for the Basic subscription and $30/year for the full service that includes push email functionality.
On top of the cost, there are a few gotchas you should be aware of….
- It won’t let you sync your Gmail mail and calendar with Outlook RT. It acts like it will but doesn’t actually sync anything. The NuevaSync support folks confirmed this to be the case. A least for now.
- The instructions for connecting Windows 8 on their site has a small mistake in it if you’re running Windows 8.1. In the section where it tells you to “Choose an Outlook style account” you should choose an Exchange account instead. Aside from that, the instructions seem to work fine on both a Surface Pro and RT/2.
Sync Google Calendar with Surface: Our First Impressions
All in all, during our trial, we were happy with the functionality NuevaSync provided. It did actually allow us to use the Metro Mail, Calendar and Contact apps with a Gmail account. In addition, we found the sync worked in both directions pretty well and didnt take too long to happen.
So, if you’re up for it, go ahead and give it a try. We’re still evaluating it to see if we feel that we can endorse it. If we do, we’ll come up with a set of step-by-step instructions to help you configure it. If we don’t feel it is up to snuff, we’ll let you know why.
Finally, we wanted to give a quick nod to Chris Miller from our Facebook page and thank him for letting us know about this service.
Tim