I was just looking at the Best Buy circular for tomorrow, and the front page is featuring a sale of all their PDAs that are in store. There are no details on how much, and the sale is limited to what the store has. If you are in the market for a Pocket PC tomorrow might be a good day to head to your local Best Buy and see what they have.
posted by Frank McPherson 1:47 PM |
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PDABuzz.com is reporting good news for Compaq in Europe. Compaq iPAQ sales are surging in Europe, and accounted for 30.2% of PDA sales in the second quarter. Palm's sales were 32.3% Obviously the European market is much smaller than the US market, but good news none-the-less. On the same page PDA Buzz also reports that Omnisky is laying of 100 people and closing their European offices. If memory serves me right Omnisky had announced less than six months ago a greater presence in Europe. Omnisky's second quarter estimates are for a loss of $27 to $29 million. When you combine this news with Metricom's you see a dismal picture for wireless data. I use Omnisky with my HP Jornada 540, but I think their price for Compaq iPAQ access at $59 per month, compared to $39 of the Jornada, is ridiculous. They are discourging the greatest section of the Pocket PC market from using their service. If I decide to set up wireless access for my iPAQ I'll go with Compaq's iPAQnet service at $39 per month.
posted by Frank McPherson 10:46 AM |
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This morning I see that the Pocket PC Team to fight cancer is ranked #56 in CPU time and #58 in results returned. The 158 members that make up the team are ranked #77. Our efforts are part of the Intel-United Devices Cancer Research Project. Basically, we volunteer spare PC processing time to help process molecular research being done by the Department of Chemistry at the University of Oxford. Chances are your life has been touched by cancer, whether it be a friend or a loved one who either has fought back this disease, or lost. Once cancer touches your life it never really goes away. The only way this disease will be completely defeated is through research, research that costs money and takes a tremendous amount of human and computational effort. If you have a personal computer that spends the majority of it's time doing nothing (which accounts for just about all of us) you can help. All you do is download a program to your PC that performs the calculations. It downloads data from the United Devices server, cranks away on that data, and then returns the result. I've been running this software for several months on a PC here in the Cave, both at 100% and only as a screen saver, and have not encountered any problems. It is very easy to participate, please consider signing up today. Thanks to Jason Dunn of Pocket PC Thoughts for the idea and rallying this causing amongst the Pocket PC community.
posted by Frank McPherson 10:27 AM |
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Pocket PC Thoughts has a link to an article about extracting SMTP addresses from an Exchange GAL. This might be useful to Pocket PC users who want to pull addresses out of the GAL and put them on their Pocket PC. I have another method for doing this, not described there. At work I connect to an Exchange Server using Outlook 2000. Rather than have a Personal Address Book (PAB) I installed the Outlook Address Book service. (In Outlook clicke Tools, Services) Then I designated my main contacts folder as the Outlook Address Book.
With that set up I can easily add items from the GAL to my Outlook Contacts folder. I open an address from the GAL and then click the add to Personal Address Book button. That copies the address to my Contacts folder.
If you open the address in Contacts it appears that it will resolve to an X.400 address, which is not what you want on your Pocket PC. Fortunately, this is where ActiveSync does its job. During the next synchronization the address moves down to my Pocket PC and during that process the address is converted so that what is on my Pocket PC is the SMTP address.
posted by Frank McPherson 3:50 PM |
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Palm to create OS subsidiary - Tech News - CNET.com How exciting. Not!
posted by Frank McPherson 3:26 PM |
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Well, here is an interesting marketing ploy. Word has come out that there will be a new version of the Pocket PC software released later this year, code named Merlin. Obviously, this news is a problem to the OEMs because people will stop buying current Pocket PCs in anticipation of the new units. What does Compaq do? They point out that they sell the only Pocket PC that can be upgraded to Merlin in a bid to convince everyone that there is no need to stop buying iPAQs and wait until this fall. Not a bad move on their part, in effect taking advantage of the decision to use flash ROM over a year ago. Now the question is, will it work? (And my guess Compaq's announcement is targetted more at corporations than consumers.)
With this piece of information rumors of an imminent announcement from HP about a new Pocket PC makes a little more sense. Here is my theory. With news about Merlin now leaking there is a chance HP Jornada sales will drop even more. Unlike Compaq they can't say the Jornada is upgradable. So, they'll announce a new Jornada now that can be upgrade just like the iPAQ. If my theory is right this news from Compaq will put pressure on HP, so if there is going to be an announcement I would anticipate this in the next couple of weeks. Perhaps the only reason why they didn't announce at PC Expo is they didn't have enough product in channel? One supporting piece of evidence is the price drops on the HP Jornada 547/548.
Which leaves us to wonder about Casio...
posted by Frank McPherson 9:25 PM |
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I must have missed the memo. My other web log, Notes From The Cave is up, but I cannot edit it because it is being migrated to another server.
posted by Frank McPherson 11:09 AM |
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Pocket PC Thoughts links to this CNET.com article about the Palm emulator for Pocket PCs that George Andre is developing. Those who frequent Brighthand will know that talk of this first started in Brightspot. I found this article funny because it comes across to me as a reporter trying to make a story out of nothing. He goes to the extent of getting quotes from marketing people at Palm and Microsoft, as well as IDC analyst Kevin Burden. I can almost hear Burden saying to himself, "Why the heck are you wasting my time with this crap?" when he is quoted as saying "I think it's for enthusiasts. I don't think there is a really wide market for this." Another slow day at CNET?
posted by Frank McPherson 10:24 PM |
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Marlof pointed out to me that the HP Jornada 547 is not exactly the same as the 548 because it is only bundled with a serial ActiveSync cable rather than a USB cradle. However, the actual device itself is the same and does support USB. You will find a comparison of the 540s here. Thanks for the link Marlof!
posted by Frank McPherson 9:20 PM |
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Linux Journal: "I'm torn about how to summarize this review. On one hand the VR3 is a poorly supported product, with slow performance, poor applications, a marginal display and short battery life. On the other hand it's the most portable computer you can find that runs Linux. The source and tools are there to modify and reload the entire OS. No other handheld allows anywhere near this level of control over the platform." Hmmm... one can put Linux on a Compaq iPAQ, and then put Windows CE back.
posted by Frank McPherson 11:28 AM |
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A hot topic for Pocket PC owners is Global Positioning Systems for Pocket PCs. I've been pulling together information that I am finding and throwing it up on this web page.
posted by Frank McPherson 11:07 AM |
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Just checking Dell's web site this morning, and I see they are selling the HP Jornada 547 for $385.95. This is the same thing as the 548 just numbered differently to reflect online sales. I think a 32 MB Pocket PC at less than $400 is a good deal.
posted by Frank McPherson 9:08 AM |
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Marlof did a little more searching using Google and found the newsgroup post confirming that the pushpin problem is fixed in Pocket Streets 2002.
According to the Microsoft Pocket Streets web site Streets & Trips 2002 is due August 2001. That's a couple of weeks from now. AutoRoute 2002 is due a month after.
posted by Frank McPherson 10:54 PM |
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ORiNOCO - Client software ORiNOCO Rel 7.1 for Windows CE 3.0 / Pocket PC - Summer 2001 release. A new Orinoco client has been released for Handheld and Pocket PCs. The driver now automatically updates the firmware on the wireless card when the card is inserted. The client manager now inlcudes the 'Remote Link Test' and 'Site Monitor' functions. The control panel applet now has more profiles and the IP address is automatically updated if DHCP is used.
posted by Frank McPherson 10:45 AM |
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UPS to deploy Bluetooth, wireless LAN network | Computerworld News & Features Story The fact that this article was about Bluetooth first caught my eye, but then I read that included in this roll out are Motorola terminals running Windows CE. Apparently UPS is standardizing on Windows CE as the operating system for their handhelds. My personal experience with Bluetooth has been less than spectacular.
posted by Frank McPherson 10:34 AM |
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PDABuzz.com - Tuesday, July 24 2001 "According to an earlier article on DPReview, these drives could sell for as cheap as $250" Wes is buzzing about the Ridata CompactsStore, which is a Type II CompactFlash drive with capacities over 1 GB. The price is nearly half that of an IBM microdrive.
posted by Frank McPherson 10:27 AM |
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Marlof sent me an e-mail saying that he read in the newsgroups that Pocket Streets 2002 is included with MapPoint 2002, and that it might not have the pushpin problem. So, now I need to track down PS 2002, which if Microsoft is consistent will not support PS 2001 maps or pushpins. One would think that after iterating through this loop for the third time Microsoft would have found a way to make new versions of Pocket Streets capable of reading prior version files, or just quit changing the file format every blasted time. I see that Streets & Trips 2002 is due in August. BTW, I didn't realize that Pocket Streets has its own Microsoft web site. Not that it is incredibly useful.
posted by Frank McPherson 10:18 AM |
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Pocket Streets trully does suck. Does anyone know if the pushpin exporting problem from Streets and Trips 2001 also exists with AutoRoute 2001 and MapPoint 2001?
posted by Frank McPherson 11:29 PM |
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This might be of interest to all those non-artistically challenged folks out there. Dan Bjorkegren's Pocket Animator enables you to create Macromedia Flash content on your Pocket PC. I found the information on flashenabled.com.
posted by Frank McPherson 12:48 PM |
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Apparently Microsoft is going to be a part owner of Sendo by making an investment in the company for an undisclosed amount. Microsoft's Phil Holden is quoted as saying the investment will give Microsoft more control over the development of Stinger phones, and bring them to market faster. Analysts quoted in the article play this announcement down, noting that Sendo is very small and has no market share in the United States. They say that for Stinger to be successful Motorola, Nokia, and Ericsson need to be on board. Probably, but the Sendo phone is down right sexy and I would love to have one. BTW, this action may be due to some of the lessons Microsoft learned with Windows CE.
posted by Frank McPherson 11:14 AM |
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WTF? Its 10 PM Sunday here, not 5 AM Monday.
posted by Frank McPherson 5:09 AM |
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It's dark. About an hour ago the power went out, right while was doing some writing for the book. Good thing I have a UPS connected to my main PC. So to pass some time I'm surfing the web using my Novatel wireless modem and my HP 540. I hope the power comes on soon. Its in the mid 80's outside with 65% humidity and its starting to get warm in here.
posted by Frank McPherson 5:05 AM |
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Guess who is going to get thrusted into the Microsoft/Open Source debate? Why our friend, Windows CE! Microsoft has released the source code, though ironically it's not for the version Microsoft is currently working on. I am sure the Shared Source license will be under a lot of scrutiny.
posted by Frank McPherson 2:22 PM |
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Last night I was at one of my favorite toy stores where I ran into a gentleman looking at various handheld devices. At the moment he was looking at the Compaq iPAQ, so I struck up a conversation. He asked me what I use my Pocket PC for. A very good question that in hindsight I don't think I answered very well. I wish I could have given an answer like Todd's recent column at Pocket PC.com. (BTW, he didn't decide to by anything, but he did buy copies of Pocket PC Magazine and Pen Computing.)
Todd's column was caused by a rather nasty fact of life today, being let go from a job. RIF (Reduction In Force) is an acronym known all to well by those who work in corporate America. Since Todd has been a long time Windows CE and Pocket PC user, it was very natural for him to use his Pocket PC to organize all the details of this life altering event. You can read the details in the column. I think the column is great, and I would like to see more of these first-person type.
posted by Frank McPherson 12:47 PM |
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