PocketPCHow2 Log

Saturday, October 13, 2001

See it to believe a Pocket PC synchronizing with a Mac.
posted by Frank McPherson 7:05 PM | link

Here is a nice picture of the mmO2 xpda from the Pocket PC summit.
posted by Frank McPherson 7:04 PM | link

pocketDB-1 for Pocket Databases I had not heard of this database program. Reports are that it runs faster than other database clients because it is written in Visual C rather than VB.
posted by Frank McPherson 6:58 PM | link

Winners - Pocket PC magazine Best Product Awards From the Pocket PC Summit this past week. Congratulations to all of the winners!
posted by Frank McPherson 4:07 PM | link

Hey! There are seventeen people who read this log! Thanks for your support.
posted by Frank McPherson 4:05 PM | link

Tim Warner of PDA Life has found a way to open files across a network using Pocket PC 2002's File Explorer.
posted by Frank McPherson 3:55 PM | link

I have successfully synchronzied my HP 565 using the Symbol Wireless Networker. Alex Kac provided the key piece of information in Brighthand. I had to put in the IP address of my desktop in the WINS field of the network card properties. You may think that is obvious since that is what you have to do with Pocket PC 2000. However, Pocket PC 2002 eliminates the need of setting WINS. In all my other network cards that is the case, but for some reason Symbol has retained that requirement. I am back to suspecting the driver and it not being compliant with the Pocket PC 2002 spec.

The first time I made the setting change it did not work. I then pinged my desktop and synced again and it worked. It has worked ever since, so it looks to be some sort of name resolution problem. Another person on Brighthand said he couldn't get it to work until he used Pocket Hosts. Pocket Hosts is written by fellow MVP Marc Zimmermann, and enables one to create a Pocket PC equivalent to a hosts file, which is used on Windows desktop PCs for NETBIOS name resolution. That same name resolution functionality is available on Pocket PCs, but the information is stored in the registry rather than a separate hosts text file. I downloaded, installed, and configured Pocket Hosts for good measure. My one problem in doing this is that I use DHCP on my home network so the IP address of my desktop may change.

There is one more problem that I am having with the Wireless Networker card. On occasion when I insert the card the HP 565 locks up and blanks out the screen. I am guessing that there is a slight power problem causing this, because when I remove the card the 565 starts to work properly.
posted by Frank McPherson 12:58 PM | link

Insignia Solutions | News & Events Has anyone actually seen or used a Java application on a Pocket PC?
posted by Frank McPherson 9:03 AM | link

Personal Technology -- Personal Technology from The Wall Street Journal I don't think Walt Mossberg ever has anything positive to say about Microsoft products, so his fairly negative review of the new Pocket PC 2002 devices is not a surprise.

The market numbers seem to indicate that more people want Windows-like functionality in their pocket. Walt does not seem to want to acknowledge the fact that more and more people have grown tired of Palm milking the cow and want the improvements provided by Pocket PC 2002.

And guess what? Microsoft really doesn't care about the $200-$300 market. Why? Because there is no profit margin in that market. Witness the fact that while Palm and Hanspring's unit sales are high, their profits are down. It is very clear that Microsoft and its hardware partners are content to sell higher priced, higher margin devices to consumers and companies.

Handspring may be further along in selling an integrated wireless Pocket PC, but I don't think these things are going to catch on as much as everyone seems to think. BTW, the mmO2 integrated Pocket PC 2002 was demonstrated at launch and will sell in Europe by the beginning of next year.
posted by Frank McPherson 8:59 AM | link

Alex Kac sent me an email yesterday saying that the problems he has had with the Symbol Wireless Networker have occurred on Pocket PC 2000 and Pocket PC 2002 devices. That would seem to indicate that it is not a driver problem, but instead some sort of hardware problem. Last night I reset my access point and tried to sync, and now its worse in that it doesn't even connect with my desktop PC.

I got a response to my email to Symbol's tech support, asking me for more contact information and details about the problem.

I also noticed another problem, and this time it is a bug in the Symbol driver. It only supports one DNS ip address. If you go into network properties for the card and enter two addresses the second one will be removed when you insert the card. It appears the driver only has space for one DNS entry.
posted by Frank McPherson 8:47 AM | link

Friday, October 12, 2001

PDAtweaks has some very nice Pocket PC 2002 themes. I particularly like the landscapes.
posted by Frank McPherson 10:59 AM | link

Brighthand Discussion Forums - Symbol Wireless Networker crashes 2 routers This thread discusses problems with the Symbol card. I didn't notice that my AP was hung and needed resetting, but I couldn't sync. Tonight I will reset my AP, make sure the power saving features are off, and try synchronization. I still think the Pocket PC 2002 drivers are the source of the problem.
posted by Frank McPherson 10:42 AM | link

Handspring readies all-in-one wireless gadgets "A move toward wireless could help Handspring over the long term but won't immediately aid the company's bottom line, analysts have said. Devices similar to the Treo, such as Kyocera's Palm OS-based Smartphone, have so far appealed only to a niche market."
posted by Frank McPherson 9:32 AM | link

Thursday, October 11, 2001

I am currently working with various picture viewers for the graphics chapter of the book. I installed Applian's Picture Perfect on a Compaq iPAQ running Pocket PC 2002 and it seems slow. The image viewer program included on the HP Jornada 565 seems to have comparable features, and it is very fast. I am going to install Picture Perfect on the 565 to see if it runs any better on it. So far I am disappointed with the performance.
posted by Frank McPherson 11:51 PM | link

The Symbol Wireless Network CompactFlash wireless LAN card arrived today. I immediately installed the software on my HP 565 to give the card a try. Symbol is currently shipping beta Pocket PC 2002 drivers and I am thinking that they may not be working right. I can connect to the Internet through my home LAN and cable modem, but it doesn't seem to be as fast as the Lucent Orinoco card in a Compaq iPAQ. And I am not able to synchronize with a desktop computer. When I initiate synchronization I can see that it starts, but when it tries to sync the first item it just seems to hang. I am able to synchronize using a Socket Ethernet card, so I know I have the network synchronization part working. I just don't seem to be getting the performance I would be expecting, and I am thinking the driver is the problem. I've sent an email to Symbol tech support and we'll see what they have to say.

I will say that this is one small card. The product packaging that Symbol ships these in is nothing more than a paper CD case, with the part where a CD would go replaced by a foam cutout to hold the card. This is going to be a very nice card to have, provided that we get synchronization working.
posted by Frank McPherson 11:47 PM | link

Pocket PC Summit - The Only One That Matters The first trade show dedicated to the Pocket PC is going on right now. I wish I was there, but I used up all of my vacation time this year doing things like going to Disney World to celebrate my fifth wedding anniversary. I hope the Summit is successful enough become an annual event and take place next year.
posted by Frank McPherson 9:51 AM | link

pocketnow.com - Article - Pocket PC 2002 UK Launch Adam Field provides a great report on the UK Pocket PC launch, and he includes information about some of new products that he saw.
posted by Frank McPherson 9:46 AM | link

pocketnow.com - Article - Pocket PC 2002 UK Launch "From an Enterprise point of view, the HP will have a lot of fans. While it may not have as many expansion slots as other models, it has native support for another HP Product, TopTools. HP TopTools is a component of Hewlett Packard's award winning Enterprise Management suite, OpenView. Basically, this allows you to define a standard Jornada 56x build and automatically reinstall that build on any device in which you detect a change - i.e. a user has deleted their Acrobat Reader."

HP TopTools is a hardware management tool that provides inventory, fault, asset, performance, and security management for HP devices. The HP Jornada PC companion agent is a fully DMI-compliant software application that resides on a user's desktop or laptop computer. You connect the PC companion to the desktop or laptop via an RS-232-cable. The Jornada PC companion agent software will gather DMI information about the device forwarding it to Toptools.


posted by Frank McPherson 9:36 AM | link

Wednesday, October 10, 2001

InternetNews - ISP News -- MobileStar Down But Starbucks Still Committed This article says that StarBucks will look for other ways to keep the wlan live in their stores.
posted by Frank McPherson 10:48 PM | link

MobileStar lays off staff, seeks sale - Tech News - CNET.com This is bad news. Glenn Fleishman is trying to confirm what this means. I just tried to access my account information and it won't log me in. I signed up for this service when I was in Seattle last month, and had fun using it in Starbucks.
posted by Frank McPherson 6:46 PM | link

Pocket CoPilot Navman Upgrade This sounds appealing. Basically this is an iPAQ GPS Expansion pack that has a built-in CompactFlash slot, and bundled with the Travroute Co-Pilot software. All for $249. I think I might prefer the Pretec CompactFlash GPS to use in any Pocket PC.
posted by Frank McPherson 6:43 PM | link

The mmO2 xpda will start selling in Germany early 2002.
posted by Frank McPherson 1:32 PM | link

Tuesday, October 09, 2001

BitBank Software's has officially released the program formerly known as BBView as PQView.
posted by Frank McPherson 6:09 PM | link

If you are having problems with a Casio Pocket PC, check the downloads on this page to see if they might fix the problem.
posted by Frank McPherson 5:38 PM | link

PDA Buzz is reporting that Toshiba will not be selling their new Genio e570 Pocket PC to consumers. I am very disappointed to hear this news, but I believe it will change in the future. My guess is that Toshiba has concerns about meeting consumer demand so they will restrict things to more lucrative corporate sales. However, the flaw that I see in that plan is that corporate sales in themselves will not be enough. Compaq's success is a combination of corporate and consumer sales, with consumer sales being the iniator to corporate sales. If consumers can't get their hands on the devices how do they think companies are going to be able to sell them? My expectation is that Toshiba will start selling Genios to consumers early next year.
posted by Frank McPherson 12:44 PM | link

Monday, October 08, 2001

pocketPCpassion - review - Pocket PC 2002 Tips
Dale has written up a very nice tips page. If you have a new Pocket PC 2002 device I recommend checking this page out.
posted by Frank McPherson 7:51 PM | link

I like the Jornada's screen but I wish it was as large as the iPAQ's. One of the things that I felt is an advantage of Pocket PCs over Palm OS devices is that they have (or had) larger screens. Of the new Pocket PCs only the iPAQ and NEC have a larger 3.8" diagonal screen. On the other hand, I really like the HP's navigational button. I find it very comfortable reading AvantGo content pressing the navigational button in one hand. I really wish Microsoft would find a way to enable the left and right parts of the navigational button correspond to back and forward in Internet Explorer.
posted by Frank McPherson 7:46 PM | link

Last night I loaded Pocket Informant verison 2.5.12 on my HP Jornada 565. The program works, but there seems to be a problem with programming parts of Pocket Information to hardware buttons. When I program the Calendar button to PIAgenda and then press that button to power up the Pocket PC, I either get a continual hour glass or it just locks. I see the same thing with other parts of Pocket Informant. I haven't tried to install Pocket Informant on my upgraded iPAQ to see if it is a problem with Pocket PC 2002 or the HP.
posted by Frank McPherson 7:43 PM | link

Sunday, October 07, 2001

Xerox Can Continue Grafitti Suit During mobius one of the Microsoft product managers was asked whether they were concerned about Palm sueing them over the Block Recognizer, aka Grafitti. The answer given by the product managers is that they have licensed the technology for some time and that their only restriction is that they could not call it Grafitti. In light of this wired article, I am wondering who Microsoft has that license with, Xerox? Palm?
posted by Frank McPherson 8:18 PM | link