Apparently there is some controversy about Pocket Mascot. UENO Tomohiro wrote a program called Minute Mascot has been available for free, along with source code, since February 9, 2001. Mr. Tomohiro claims that starting on July 29, 2001 Mr. Janusz Gerszberg started approaching him about selling Minute Mascot as shareware. Tomohiro stated several times that he was not interested in making money for his program, then on August 25, 2001 he found out about Pocket Mascot. Tomohiro claims that Gerszberg pirated his program and demands that Gerszberg return all money paid to him for the program. Tomohiro has sent a complain to Handango, who said they will investigate the matter.
posted by Frank McPherson 7:46 PM |
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I just got back a little while ago from the first meeting of the Southeast Michigan Pocket PC Users Group. (SMUG). It was nice to finally get the user group off the ground after talking about it for some time in Brighthand. Ten people showed up for the meeting at Shields in Southfield, Michigan. We decided to meet bi-monthly and our next meeting will be on Saturday, November 17 at 4 PM. This time we will meet at Ashley's in Ann Arbor. If in the future we have presentations that require something formal like an overhead projector we will seek out a location better suited for such a thing. During this first meeting I spent some time talking about Pocket PC 2002 and gave everyone a chance to try it out on an iPAQ. We also spent some time talking about when we first started using handheld devices. If you live in the Southeast Michigan area and are interested in attending future meetings go to the web site linked above and register. Thanks to Ellen Craw of Ilium Software for putting together the web page and handling the Pocket PC t-shirts, and thanks to Ilium Software for hosting the page.
posted by Frank McPherson 7:28 PM |
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PDAsync Product Overview LapLink has released a new synchronization product that syncs a variety of handhelds, including Pocket PCs and Palm OS devices, with a variety of desktop PIM applications. If you want to sync Lotus Notes, Lotus Organizer, Act!, NetManage Ecco Pro, GoldMine, or Palm Desktop with your Pocket PC, this may be worth checking. You can downloaded it for $49 or buy it on CD for $59. The product overview does not provide information that many ask about ActiveSync, such as, does it support synchronization of Outlook subfolders, and does it support Exchange public folder sync. Since Exchange is not mentioned, I suspect it does not support public folder sync.
posted by Frank McPherson 1:27 PM |
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HP’s Jornada 565/568 can connect wirelessly Gary Krakow digs the new HP Jornadas and the Symbol wireless networker card. I have had a brief chance to see the new Jornada in person, and I was surprised by its weight, it is very lite. Having had a HP 540 since it was first released I had grown accustomed to its extra heft, and expected that when I picked up the 565.
There is not much to dislike about these new Jornadas expect the price. I remember back when Palm and Handspring first started dropping the prices of their devices, and a Compaq spokesperson was quoted as saying they had no demand problems for the iPAQ, even with price increases. It appears that what I feared then is happening, the price point for new Pocket PCs is rising from $500 to $600. That is not good. I don't know about you, but I want the prices to come down.
IMHO, there is little reason for HP to introduce this new Jornada at $600 other than the desire to increase margins. Casio has been selling devices with 16 bit color screens for around $500 all along, so the screen is not an excuse. The 206 Mhz StrongArm processor and 32 MB of RAM have been in the iPAQ since the beginning, and before bundling iPAQs sold right at $499. Pocket PC 2002 has some great new features, but I don't believe they are worth $100 more than current Pocket PCs, and I am positive that Microsoft has not increased the cost of Pocket PC 2002 to $100.
Of course, HP has shown this behavior in the past. Noone has been able to provide me with a reasonable explaination for why the HP Jornada 720 Handheld PC was priced at $899. Incredibly too high when full fledged notebook computers can be bought at $1000. Still, everyone I talk to tells me that HP is making money off their handhelds.
But here is the problem. The differentiators between brands of Pocket PC 2002 devices are small. They have similar sizes, the same processors, the same screens, the same amounts of memory, and the same software. What will be different are the size and number of slots. So when everything is the same, what has to be different to be an incentive to pick one brand over another?
Brand recognition helps, but I think the big selling point is price. Note to Pocket PC manufacturers: everything being equal, the one with the lowest price is going to sell the most devices. That's not rocket science, and advice that I hope Toshiba, Casio, Compaq and NEC heed.
posted by Frank McPherson 12:48 PM |
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ZDNet: eWEEK: Lotus Notes supports iPaq "By the end of this year, Lotus Notes users will be able to gain access to their e-mail, calendar information and address books from Compaq Computer Corp.'s iPaq mobile computing devices, which runs on Microsoft Corp.'s Pocket PC operating system." There has been some speculation that with the proposed merger of Compaq and HP that this development would be stopped. I am glad to hear that is not the case.
posted by Frank McPherson 12:06 PM |
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If you have been like me, struggling for understanding amongst all the chaos, feeling rather insignificant and perhaps even selfish, Eric Levine has written a thoughtful article you might want to read.
posted by Frank McPherson 9:46 PM |
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