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PCPocket.com –> Pocket PCs
PDAntic.com –> Palm OS devices
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Next Week Should Be Fun For Pocket PC Users!
This upcoming week should be great for Pocket PC users, as Pocket PC 2002 will be formally introduced on Thursday October 4, and we’ll actually start to see shipments of the new Jornada 560 series Pocket PCs. I always peruse the tech toy ads on Sundays, and it was fun to notice that the only Pocket PCs in site were a Jornada 548 and an iPaq (both heavily discounted) in one ad - everything else was a Palm, Handspring or Sony Palm device. It should be a LOT different next weekend, when I would expect to see some very large ads touting Pocket PC 2002 and the new devices.
Losing Value
Some things tend to lose value VERY quickly in the tech world, but it perplexes me when you see something drop to “almost worthless” very quickly - especially when the item is relatively new and has a lot of functionality. My case in point is the Socket LP-E Low Power Ethernet CF card. I got one of these from Microsoft last year and had thoroughly intended on using it at work, but found out that our DHCP servers wouldn’t provide it with an IP address thus making it worthless unless I hard-coded an address. That doesn’t work for the function I wanted, which was to be able to take the device anywhere, jack it in, run some IP tools and do some troubleshooting. So I decided to try to sell the card (available for about $109 at most outlets) on eBay. Imagine my shock when I started looking around at what people were selling these things for! I think $20 was the most anyone got for the LP-E, and I saw one go for $9.99! Arggghhh… At that rate, it will be better for me just to hold onto the damned thing or throw it in as an “extra” when I get my Jornada 568 and sell the iPaq.
Microdrive Packs A Gigapunch
One of my co-workers has been working on a fun project where he’s trying to make Pocket PCs the standard device for executives at our company. He has used an iPaq with a Sierra Aircard wireless modem, added a Targus Stowaway keyboard to make data input easier, and this week he had a 1GB IBM Microdrive to play with. He was using it with the PCMCIA sleeve for the iPaq, but I wanted to try it in my CF sleeve so we took it out of the adapter and popped it in. Since I recently updated the ROM in my iPaq, it immediately recognized the drive and it was fun to go to the memory control panel and see that I had well over 1000 MB of free space available! I’m an opera buff, and that figure astounded me because it meant that I could probably put the entire Wagner “Ring Cycle” of operas in WMA format on my Pocket PC. The price on these is down into the $350 range now, which is a hell of a bargain. The only negative I could see with the Microdrive is that it doesn’t have a “lip” on the top of the card so it is very hard to pull it out of a CF slot. This should be a standard fixture on every CF card!
5893403
A Short Review of Adobe Acrobat Reader for Pocket PC (beta)
After trying another company’s feeble attempt at creating a PDF file reader for the Pocket PC platform, I was extremely excited to hear about Adobe’s introduction of a beta of the Acrobat Reader for Pocket PC. In short, this is a great reader application if you don’t have graphics, if the file has been “tagged” and if you have a StrongARM processor, but it lacks power and functionality in other respects.
Loading the beta is a piece of cake - you just drop your Pocket PC into your docking cradle and then double-click the desktop installer application. Within a few minutes the software is loaded on your Pocket PC with an icon in the Programs folder. The first time you start up you’ll be asked to agree with a standard license agreement, and then you’re into a file explorer lookin’ for PDFs! When you want to read a PDF file on your Pocket PC, all you need to do is drag it over from your PC to the My Documents folder on your Pocket PC and it is converted for readability on the Pocket PC. This took very little time - my test document was 383 pages long, and it took a little over 2 minutes to convert.
Once the PDF file was moved to my iPaq, I found it in the “Explorer” in Adobe Acrobat Reader and tapped once on it to open it. The document opened immediately, and I was able to see one of the shortcomings of this Reader — if something is in the file as a graphic, it is rescaled to the size of the screen and rendered virtually unreadable. There is no way to zoom in on graphics - although you CAN “zoom” or enlarge text elsewhere in the document. What this meant is that a number of pages in my document that were full-page graphics files of a table were impossible to read, while the accompanying text in the document was very easy to read. So, if you have a document that is tagged text, you’re in good shape. If you have a pile of graphics included in the document that span full pages on a PC, you’re out of luck.
Speed-wise, this was a very responsive program - even with a number of other Pocket PC apps opened, it was still fast. I was also able to do a search on text - to get to a unique word on page 41 of a 383 page document, it took about 1.5 minutes to find the first occurrence. Not bad, but a straight text file is much smaller (this file blew up from about 1.5 MB on my PC to about 2.5 MB on the Pocket PC) and can be searched MUCH quicker.
All in all, it’s a nice try, but I think Microsoft Reader works much better for documents with a mixture of text and graphics. It’s also built in and doesn’t take up 4.5MB like the Adobe Acrobat Reader does… Frankly, I think this would be much better on a device with a full letter-size screen like one of Microsoft’s upcoming Tablet PCs - but those will run Windows XP and you’ll be able to use the regular Adobe Acrobat Reader anyway.
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The Way To “b” Wireless
There’s been a lot of hype and fluff over the last couple of years about wireless networking. I’ve tried two wireless solutions — the Palm VII and the Palm Vx with Omnisky — and found both of them to be lacking, although the Omnisky solution wasn’t bad. These are “go anywhere” solutions that work only in major cities (kind of a contradiction in terms…) and provide e-mail and web clipping services using a very slow (usually 19.2KBPS or less) CDPD connection. If you want to do REAL web browsing to any site, forget it. The response is too slow and if you’re moving in a car or train, chances are you’ll lose signal somewhere and really slow down the connection.
I think I’ve found a much better solution for wireless, although I can’t use it more than 100 or so feet away from my house. I installed a 802.11b wireless network using 3Com parts earlier this year, and was pleased to find that it works very well at up to 11 MBPS. Recently, a friend of mine let me borrow a Symbol “Wireless Networker CF Card” that he was testing - this is a Type I/II CF card that works with any 802.11b network. It worked very well - I simply plugged the card into my iPaq CF sleeve, loaded some drivers onto the iPaq, and the next thing I knew it was talking to my LAN! What was really cool was walking around the house (and outside!) checking my e-mail, surfing the web, pulling down AvantGo content and doing Instant Messaging with my wife. When I get a device that runs Pocket PC 2002, I intend to try it again since both Pocket Outlook and Pocket IE have been improved. When the Wireless Networker CF Cards actually go on sale, I intend to buy one despite the somewhat steep price of $179.95.
As for “go anywhere” wireless? Well, I still want to try one of the always-on Palm i705 devices if they ever make it to market, but what I’m really waiting for are the 3rd generation wireless systems that will give us really fast Internet access.
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T-minus 2 Weeks And Counting…
In about two weeks, we should start seeing some of the HP Jornada 565/568 devices showing up in stores! I was talking to a co-worker the other day and he’s still thinking about holding out for the Toshiba Genio, but I honestly think I will go for a Jornada 568. I am very impressed with HP technology as you well know, and every time I’ve ever had to use or support Toshiba devices they’ve been nothing but a hassle. I know the Jornada will only have a Type 1 CF slot and no SD card, but I figure that the 64MB of RAM on the 568 will more than make up for the lack of a dedicated memory slot.
There have been several false starts dealing with pre-ordering of the Jornada 568. First, there was a rumor that there was an Amazon pre-order page. Wrong. Then someone sent me an e-mail saying that you could pre-order from CompUSA. Wrong. Finally someone let me know that I could pre-order one from PDAMart. Wrong. I get the funny feeling that you’re not going to see any pre-orders, so HP and the various online vendors can avoid the backlog of orders that the iPaq had last year.
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Monkey Spankers, Unite!
Does the vibrating alarm from your Palm m500 in the front pocket of your Dockers give you the urge to slap the salami? Feed that urge with all sorts of pocket pornography for the Palm! First, you can read assorted whackoff stories in various genres (I won’t go there…) by subscribing for only $5.95 a month to Palmstories.com. If the written word doesn’t get you off, there’s always the much more hardcore Palmotica.com, which features XXX stories, videos, and pictures to display on your Palm while you’re workin’ with your palm. Of course, they charge a bit more for the latter service - a full $23.95 per month. Amazing how technology always seems to drop to the lowest common denominator, isn’t it? Frankly, I think ANY “pocket porn” would be better on a Pocket PC, since you could get full color MPEGs and stereo sound… 
5847081
Ordered the iPaq Pocket PC 2002 Upgrade
Yep, the upgrade CD-ROM for the iPaq to bring it to full Pocket PC 2002 capabilities is now available. The upgrade costs $29.95, but after you add in local and state sales taxes plus shipping, it comes out to more around $42! You can order your copy by going to:
https://www.compaqordercenter.com/ipaq2002upgrade/
Don’t expect to see the CD-ROM in the mail until sometime in the middle of October…
Stupid PDA Product Of The Week
Hey, it’s only been out for two days, but I still think it is worthless - the Palm m125. Big freakin’ deal. It’s an m105 with an SD slot. This $249 wonder really provides no new functionality, and I would be willing to be that there aren’t that many people who would be able to fill up a monochrome device like this with huge files that would even require expansion cards. You can get the details about this new product at:
http://www.palm.com/products/palmm125/
Instead of coming out with worthless products like this, Palm should be pulling out the stops to get the i705 to market. On the contrary, Palm announced this week that they’re delaying the release of the i705 due to troubles with FCC certification.
Palm is also expected to come out with a Bluetooth-enabled m500 series device soon. This could be a good candidate for a future “Stupid PDA Product Of The Week”, since Palm seems to be about the only company really backing Bluetooth at this point. What good will it do to have a device that can talk wirelessly to other devices if there are NO other devices?
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An Easy Fix…But Why Doesn’t Compaq Tell People About It?
As you’re all aware, I have had a Compaq iPaq for over a year and it’s a love-hate relationship with this thing. Back in April or so, I had hit the iPaq with the 1.69 ROM upgrade which seemed to fix some problems. However, there were other problems that seemed to show up about that time. One that was REALLY annyoing was that sound recording, one of the big features of Pocket PCs, was totally hosed. Whenever I would try to record any sound I would just get a loud buzzing noise that would get louder.
The first time this happened I thought it was due to the location where I was recording - I was in a cavernous banquet hall trying to record as my wife received an award for a publication she wrote. The next time it happened was the next time I tried to record anything, last Thursday. One of my co-workers is considering buying a Pocket PC or Palm, and I was doing my best to persuade him to either go with a Pocket PC or to buy one of the high-end Sony Palm devices. I thought he’d like to experience the sound recording feature for himself, so I punched the side button and spoke into the microphone. The result was more of the loud buzzing I had heard previously (you can tell I don’t use the recording feature a whole hell of a lot!).
I tried changing some settings, then gave up and went to the Compaq support site to see if I could find anything on this annoying problem. Nothing…. However, today I thought that I’d give the device one more try before I called Compaq to get it repaired. I got onto the Downloads and Drivers portion of the Compaq support site, and downloaded the 1.77 ROM upgrade. After installing it successfully, I noticed that the recording function now works perfectly. It would sure be nice if support websites really provided help with problems!
5705988
Handspring’s Dumb Move
Why is Handspring coming out with two new monochrome devices ranging from $199 - $299 in price (on 9/17)? This seems to be an ill-advised move, since more and more people are moving to color screens. It would make more sense to try to come out with a color screen device in that “midrange” price point, than to come out with two more boring monochrome devices. In addition, Palm will be shipping the m125 (another monochrome device) by the end of the month. It will cost $225 and will feature 8MB and an SD slot. Whooopeee! This is not something I’m going to run out and purchase. More power to Sony, with their move to higher priced but much more functional color devices!!!
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Quiet
It’s been so quiet lately without all of those airplanes flying around… I think we all are so used to that background noise that the lack of it has been very disconcerting. This afternoon I actually saw and heard a few passenger aircraft cruising around, and it was very noticeable. Strange…
It’s also been very quiet on the PDA scene. NO press releases have come out for any new products since Tuesday, which is unprecedented in this business. I mean, I usually get at least five or six press releases a day for some software or hardware product that someone is claiming to be THE killer app for PDAs, and nothing has come out lately. I still think that Palm is about to do something, as the Palm Developer Hardware Discount Program web page is still offline (since last Friday?). It now shows that it will be back online on “Tuesday, September 13″…do you think they meant Thursday?
Speaking of quiet, I need to rant about assholes who insist on bringing their cellphones into concerts or movies without turning them off or putting them in vibrate mode. Last night, my wife and I attended a wonderful concert with cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. In the midst of a Brahms Symphony, some idiot’s phone could be heard blasting out the “Nokia Song”. This happened not once, but twice! Frankly, if I was running a theater company, orchestra, opera, or movie house, I’d make an announcement at the beginning of each event asking people to turn off their phones or put them on vibrate, or risk getting thrown out with no refund if the phone rings during the event. Of course, since it always seems to be the default ring tone that is playing, I suppose we’re dealing with folks who have no clue on how to put their phones on vibrate mode!
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OK, I’m Pissed Now
Note: If you’re expecting some rant on Pocket PCs or Palms, please close this page now. I’m going to talk about the World Trade Center and Pentagon getting trashed today…
I am pissed. Not only in the emotional sense, but in the “British” sense as well (I’m quite drunk now, thank you!). After trying to avoid watching the TV coverage of today’s events, my wife and I went to a local sports bar, got plastered, and watched the continuing coverage of today’s debacle. Third World Countries 1, US 0. Stay tuned for more coverage on ESPN.
This has nothing to do with Pocket PCs or Palms. Frankly, at this point in time they seem rather irrelevant.
I am, by heart, a pacifist. My father was in the Korean War as an Army radio operator and pretty much told me throughout my life that war was something I wanted to stay away from. I think that if I had ever gotten close to being drafted during the Vietnam War (and I was one of the lucky ones who never even had to do a Selective Service registration) my Dad would have sent me to Canada. I have been a vegetarian for 14 years, so I don’t even like killing animals. I’m anti-hunting - it’s cruelty to animals in the worst sense, when it’s being done by people who don’t need to kill animals to support themselves, only being done for “sport”. One of the most tragic events of my life is when my cat died back in 1994 of stomach cancer. I avoid stepping on insects if I possibly can, and I save spiders from their demise when the cats decide to go after them. I hated the Gulf War (and still DO!) - it was simply a way for the Bush family to make sure that their oil revenues continued to roll in.
Right now, however, at this moment, I would support having our government and the rest of the civilized world community using whatever means necessary to destroy the sons of bitches who caused today’s actions in New York and Washington. Nuke Afghanistan and turn it into a fuckin’ pile of radioactive rubble? Fine with me! Let the Israelis wipe out the PLO? Go ahead, thank you! Libya is a nice little pile of green radioactive glass? Too bad! I am personally sick and tired of having these people not “play by the rules”. We’ve been too nice for too long, always going through the diplomatic means and making sure that the rest of the world isn’t going to be upset by what we do. Fuck that. Hell, we’ve been pouring taxpayer’s money into the damned Defense Department since the beginning of World War II - let’s have a nice tax rebate in 2001 and blow the living shit out of a few third world countries.
This entire situation has hit a little too close to home. I have many fond memories of a trip last year to New York - one day my wife and I went to the “Windows on the World’ and had a veggie burger, took lots of pictures of the beautiful view from 110 stories up, and otherwise had a nice time. Now that memory is forever gone. Vanished. Completely obliterated. Because some religious fanatic from some Islamic country decided that he had a hardon for the US for some stupid fucking reason. We have NO idea how many people have died as a result of this action, but as far as I’m concerned they can take out a couple of third-world countries with nukes today or tomorrow and I’ll smile ‘n grin. Sending Afghanistan back to the Stone Age would probably make the Russians happy as well (since that debacle was partially to blame for the fall of the Communist government), so maybe we can have them provide a few megatons to brighten the day.
When I saw the CNN footage of some Palestinian bitch dancing in the streets because of the AGONY and HORROR that had occurred in New York and Washington today (not to mention in the rest of this country), I got pissed. Little Palestinian Arabs jumping up and down at the candy being thrown to them by their parent in celebration of death and destruction in MY country? I have been somewhat neutral towards the Palestinians in the last few years, thinking that they deserve their homeland as much as the Israelis do. But if they’re going to support something that kills my countrymen and seeks to destroy the heart of MY nation, as far as I’m concerned they’ve lost every bit of credibility that they ever had. Fuck ‘em.
These assholes should heed the word of Japanese Admiral Yamamoto, when he heard of the results of the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 - “I fear that we may have awakened a sleeping tiger…”.
OK, enough drunken pontification. But I am REALLY pissed and I hope that something is done SOON.
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Day of Infamy II
Well, I’m at home at 11:41 AM today. I can’t describe the stunned feeling that has hit me due to the tragic events of today. It certainly puts the “Palm vs. Pocket PC” battle into proper perspective - an argument about a luxury, when we should really be paying attention to the people and things that matter in our lives.
My employer sent everyone home, more out of concern for the employees than out of concern about our security. Everyone was acting stunned and not a whole hell of a lot of work was getting accomplished. Several of my co-workers were actually physically sick as the news got worse; one colleague was on a plane to Minneapolis when they were told to land immediately at Rapid City SD - she’s now on a bus heading back to Denver.
The world isn’t going to be the same after this.
5603418
One Of My Stupid Non-PDA Products Of The Week Gets Yanked!
On August 18th I thoroughly trashed the Sony eMarker, only to find out today that Sony dumped the devices and the service last week! If you were one of the fools who spent $20 - $30 on one of these, Sony will be glad to give you a $25 refund! They’re probably hoping you spend it on another Sony product that will hopefully have more functionality than this piece of shit did! Way to go, Sony, for realizing what a dog you had in the eMarker and for giving it a quick burial. eMarker.com will be closing down permanently on 9/30/01!
Speaking of which, I’m finding it very depressing that nobody has come out with a stupid PDA product in a week or so. Whimper….
5603187
No i700 Yet, But Soon?
I’m speculating here, but I find it really interesting that the Palm OS developer hardware pricing page has been down for two days for “updates” and will be back up tomorrow. Could the i700 be making a debut tomorrow? In the past, two signs that new hardware is about to come out are that the developer hardware program page is down for updates and that the day it is going to come back up is a Tuesday. Go figure. I may be blowing Palm-green smoke out of my ass, but I do think it merits multiple visits to the Palm website tomorrow morning!
iPaq Upgrade Is Gonna Cost You
Yet another reason for me to tank the iPaq and buy a Jornada 568 - the upgrade for my iPaq H3650 is going to set me back $29.95 and will probably take until mid-October to happen. Grrrrr…
Why Pocket PCs Will Kick Palm Butt In Enterprises
One thing that those of us who are IT professionals love to see is a device that makes it easy for someone to communicate with Enterprise systems - not the computer on the USS Enterprise, mind you, but the big honkin’ networks and mainframes that infest your typical Fortune 500 company. During all of my days using Palm devices, I still haven’t seen an easy and secure way for someone to either dial into or wirelessly attach to an enterprise network and grab e-mail from a Microsoft Exchange server. You can use some cheesy and very non-secure methods, like some that actually require you to keep your office PC up and running and then use either a set of Outlook “rules” or a small app to forward all messages to a specific address. Security types and e-mail wonks vomit profusely when they hear about this type of blatant hit on their e-mail systems.
It is, however, very easy to set up a secure and direct link from a Pocket PC to an Exchange Server. It’s all very secure, using a dial-in to a RAS server or other similar system, authentication into an NT domain, and then an IMAP connection to the Exchange Server. You can also send messages both ways (the Palm would end up sending e-mail from an address outside of your company - gah!), and the new Pocket PC 2002 is going to spruce things up even more! You’ll be able to use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection for an ultra-secure pipe to your network over the internet, then use the enhanced Pocket Outlook 2002 client. It will even download a lot of your Outlook folders, spell check your e-mails, and let you send someone an alternate meeting time for Outlook meeting notices that are conflicting with your busy schedule.
This kind of stuff really gets IT types excited. Until Palm can come up with a real way of handling this, the Pocket PCs are going to continue to eat away at the Palm market…
5576824
Why I’ll Be Selling My iPaq
As soon as I have my hot little hands on an HP Jornada 568, I will be putting an ad out on eBay for my iPaq. I have a ton of iPaq-owning friends who think I’m nuts to say that, but I have a few reasons for doing it.
First, I’ve been less than thrilled with Compaq’s followup on getting expansion sleeves to market. Remember when we first started seeing all of the hype for the iPaq in early 2000? We were supposed to see (among other things) sleeves with built-in GPS receivers, sleeves that turned the iPaq into a cell phone, wireless data sleeves, even various “fashion sleeves” to protect the iPaq. Well, at the end of about 18 months you can get a CF sleeve, a PCMCIA sleeve and a dual-PCMCIA sleeve. Compaq seems to be saying “why should we come out with specialty sleeves when you can buy one of these and then plug in a card that will perform a certain function”. Well, I’m sorry but I’d much rather have something that is designed for a special function that I can just slip onto my iPaq, rather than have to hope that a 3rd-party CF or PCMCIA card is going to work with my sleeve and/or iPaq.
In the same amount of time, HP has quietly come out with a digital camera that plugs into the Jornada, a wireless data “clip on” for Omnisky service, and a number of colorful fashion covers. Too bad the 548 was too damned slow with such a crappy screen or I’d still be using it. HP was also first to market with a foldable keyboard for the Pocket PC, followed many months later by Compaq.
One other thing - why the hell would anyone want one of those dual-PCMCIA expansion packs? Have you seen how friggin’ large they are? They turn the iPaq into a whale! It looks like it’s about three to four times thicker with the dual-PCMCIA pack! I’ve heard people say that they don’t like the fact that the Jornada 568 will only have a CF Type 1 slot - as far as I’m concerned, that’s fine because those are the only cards I have (a 56K modem, Ethernet card, and various memory cards).
My second big reason has to do with my inherent dislike of Compaq and my admiration for all things HP. In my real job as an IT professional, I’ve had the opportunity to deploy literally tens of thousands of PCs over the years. HP machines are generally well built, well designed and tend to be very durable. Compaq machines are the polar opposite - they’re usually heavy, designed by sadists, and fall apart on a whim. When the HP Jornada 548 came out, do you remember anyone griping about dust behind the screen, little doors that wouldn’t stay shut, or styluses that would pop out? Nope - the Jornada is a VERY well built little device, just like most HP computers, printers, and scanners. Now that there is essentially no difference between the inner workings of an iPaq and a Jornada 568, I’ll gladly move back to HP quality.
Finally, I like the fact that the Jornada 568 will be designed from the start to take advantage of Pocket PC 2002, while the iPaq will be running a ROM upgrade version of the new OS. Does anyone remember what happened earlier this year with the iPaq ROM upgrade that went awry? They put it out on the Compaq website, then yanked it when a number of people ended up killing their iPaqs during the upgrade. That was for a minor patch to the existing OS - can you imagine what problems might arise with a full OS upgrade? Bleahhhh.
I will be sure to let everyone know when my iPaq shows up on eBay so you can all bid on it!
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Joy of Tech!
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MacLevelTen
