ViewSonic The New PocketPC Kid On The Block / Fujitsu Pocket Loox 600 On The Way!
CNET announced that ViewSonic, primarily known for their line of LCD and traditional monitors, has become the latest licensee of Microsoft’s Pocket PC OS and will soon be shipping a low-cost Pocket PC 2002 device. The V35 will be announced on November 1st at a price of $299, complete with a 300 MHz XScale CPU, 32MB of RAM, and an SD slot. The screen will be color (not sure of bit depth) and 3.5″ diagonal in size. This will be a very lightweight Pocket PC as well, tipping the scales at just 4.9 ounces. It’s fascinating to see that a company like ViewSonic that has thrived on the production and sale of peripherals for PCs is now getting into the ultimate portable peripheral market. I found it funny that they’re using their trademark birds on the case (see photo at left)! It’s also interesting that the company is looking at the low end of the Pocket PC market. Their traditional CRTs have always been near the low end of that market, but they appeared to be moving into the higher end of the LCD market. Perhaps they’ve realized that they can “bottom fish” and still make a heck of a profit on electronic devices.
With this announcement, ViewSonic becomes the 29th licensee of the Pocket PC operating system. It makes me wonder if Microsoft is looking at having some of these manufacturers build devices along the lines of Microsoft’s mobile operating systems. In other words, perhaps ViewSonic will not only have a Pocket PC 2002 device on the market this fall, but maybe they’ll also come out with a Tablet PC powered by the special version of Windows XP that will support these larger pen-based devices. If Microsoft could get each manufacturer to come out with a Pocket PC, a Tablet PC and a SmartPhone, they’d have the PDA / SmartPhone market all wrapped up in short order!
We had heard that Fujitsu would be coming out with a Pocket PC 2002 device later this year; it now appears that their 6.2 ounce entry will be available on November 18th. The Pocket Loox 600 (see photo at left) will feature the 400 MHz XScale CPU, 64 MB of RAM, SD and CF slots, and built-in Bluetooth. There’s no price set at this date, but my guess is that it will be in the $500 - $600 range to compete with the Toshiba e740.I really like the sleek, curvy lines of the Pocket Loox 600 - it’s easy on the eyes as opposed to the e740 with its boxy style. I’d be willing to wager that both Fujitsu and ViewSonic will be adding some custom software to their Pocket PC 2002 devices to set them apart from the crowd. With this many similar devices hitting the market at the same time, there will need to be some differentiation to draw customers. Since the hardware is relatively the same across the board, that leaves software bundling as the predominant way to create that product differentiation.
Along with the “traditional” Pocket PC licensees and the addition of companies like Asus, Fujitsu and ViewSonic, it’s apparent that Microsoft is making a serious stab at making the Pocket PC the predominant PDA as soon as possible! We expect some other Pocket PC manufacturers to announce new models just in time for the holidays, and we’re also expecting to see the new PalmOS 5.0 devices coming out this fall/winter. This could be the heated battle that everyone has been expecting for some time, with the PalmOS devices (behind market leaders Palm, Handspring and Sony) pitted against the huge number of fast, powerful Pocket PCs (from HP/Compaq, Casio, Toshiba, Fujitsu, ViewSonic, Asus, etc…).
Some Personal Thoughts On Improvements To Future PDAs/SmartPhones
With all of the difficulties I’ve been having with PDAs lately, I started doing some thinking about what I’d like to see in future mobile devices. Some of these comments are probably influenced by the news about General Magic, while others are definitely flavored by the fact that a lot of wireless PDAs and smartphones are starting to hit the market. Regardless, I hope that the manufacturers are really starting to do some thinking about going beyond just a standard “calendar/contact/notes” type paradigm and into something extremely useful…
My wife is a professional who uses PCs at home and at work, but she?s reluctant to get on the PDA bandwagon. Many of her comments are very valid! For example, ?if I?m going to use the PDA as an organizer, a ?DayTimer? is just as useful and less expensive.? You can use it to track upcoming and past meetings, keep a list of all of your contacts, and definitely handwrite notes. When I mention that you can use many of the current PDAs to play MP3 or WMA files, she points out the fact that I own a separate iPod to play music on (it would cost me much more to buy SD or CF storage cards or MicroDrives to get the capacity of an iPod than it would to just buy the iPod outright!).
1) Since many new devices are cell phone / PDAs and have some sort of way of inputting sound (either a speakerphone connection or a hands-free headset), why not start using speech recognition for text input? The upcoming (November 7) Tablet PCs will use speech recognition as one method of issuing commands and dictating documents, and that same function should be scalable to pocket-sized devices.
2) All PDA/phones should have a built-in color digital camera and the ability to e-mail photos or even short movies to remote recipients. The Sony CLIE NR-70V is a good example of a PDA with a built-in digicam; why not add wireless capabilities? Note that some of the new Sony/Ericsson cell phones have optional cameras as well as Internet browsing capabilities, so they’re probably closer to this dream than any other manufacturer.
3) Better battery life. I like my Toshiba e740 with its built-in WiFi, but I don?t like the fact that if I?m using that wireless capability, chances are very good that within an hour or so I?ll get the first warning that my battery needs to be charged. Larger battery packs are not the answer ? the last thing I want is to be carrying a brick around just to be able to get decent battery life. My cell phone is a good example of a device that gets great battery life. I can charge it quickly, have it turned on for days and send/receive phone calls, and not have to charge it up every day. My Palm i705, when it?s working properly, is another device that proves that wireless doesn?t necessarily chew up batteries. I often go 4 ? 5 days between charges on the i705, and that?s when it is in standby mode picking up pushed e-mail. It bothers me that I constantly feel like I have to be monitoring the battery life of all of my digital devices?
4) More ease of use. Let?s face it, neither the Pocket PC OS nor the Palm OS are perfect, and alternatives such as Symbian?s OS are good but still have some quirks. With the power and memory of today?s PDAs, it?s surprising that someone hasn?t decided to come out with a Magic Cap-like OS that is entirely graphic in nature. Some parts of the existing operating systems / GUIs are just plain annoying to use. For example, trying to get my Toshiba to work surf the Internet wirelessly not only required me to set up a network connection (is it Work or The Internet? You decide!) but also try to nudge the wireless utility to figure out what wireless LAN it was on. It?s bad enough if you?re working on one WLAN, but if you try roaming between WLANs like I do, you feel like you?re spending half your time configuring the Pocket PC. Palm?s OS could use a complete rewrite ? it?s stupid that I have to go to a menu to delete an application or get info about it. Why not use the Pocket PC ?tap and hold? gesture, which provides a small pop-up that lists actions that can take place on an icon like delete, properties, copy, etc? I?ll be curious to see if Microsoft?s SmartPhone 2002 design standard is closer to the ideal UI, since it supposedly allows you to do most of your work with one hand. Of course, text input could be a pain without a touch-sensitive screen?
5) Different form factors. This is kind of getting back to my point that if you make a small enough Tablet PC, the concept of a Pocket PC becomes redundant. After viewing several training presentations that show the input capabilities of Tablet PCs through digital ink, on-screen keyboard, handwriting recognition and speech recognition, it appears to me that the concept is very valid for mobile users. The OQO Tablet PC (or Ultrapersonal Computer, as they like to call it), is just slightly larger than most Pocket PCs but has all of the power of most laptop / Tablet PCs. Right now I have a desktop PC at home, a laptop PC at work, and carry several PDAs. If I had a very small Tablet PC that could fit in my pocket and would easily connect to networks, monitors and peripherals on either end of my commute, what the heck would I ever need a PDA for? Even an 8.5? x 11? Tablet PC, if it was light and thin enough, wouldn?t be a burden to carry all the time.
6) Built-in high capacity hard drives. An iPod can be purchased with a tiny 20GB hard disk drive built into it, and it still gets up to 10 hours of battery life. Rather than force me to go out and buy a handful of 1GB MicroDrives at $300 each ($6000 to get the same capacity as a 20GB iPod!) or a pile of 1 GB CF cards at $700 each ($14,000 to get the same capacity as a 20GB iPod), why not make the device slightly larger and stick a huge hard drive in it?
7) Completely hands-off synchronization of data. Doesn?t it sometimes drive you nuts that you actually have to ?participate? in synching your data? In other words, you take your Palm device and connect it to your PC/Mac, then have to press a button to get the synch going. Pocket PCs get rid of the need to push a button, but you still have to put the device in a dock to get ActiveSync to do its thing. Even if you use an infrared link to connect your Pocket PC to a laptop PC, you have to go into the Pocket PC?s ActiveSync application and tell it that you?re using IR! Why can?t these devices all just have Bluetooth or 802.11b, become aware of each other when they?re in the vicinity of each other, then synch. Why even have to synch? Why not have full-time updating of your contacts, calendar, inbox, etc? through a GPRS link (that?s what Microsoft would like to do with the SmartPhone 2002 devices)? You?d have one location for all of your information, and your wireless PDA, Tablet PC, home and work computers would all ?synch? to that location.
These are just a handful of ideas, but I?m sure my readers have more ideas that they?d like to add. Please feel free to discuss this topic in the PDAntic.com Discussion Forums! If you haven?t yet registered to take part in the Forums, remember that it is free of charge and we will NEVER use your registration information or sell it to anyone. We?d really like to see more people taking advantage of the Discussion Forums, so sign up today!
The Palm i705 Saga Continues…
Like the proverbial Energizer bunny, my problems with Palm i705s keep going and going and going…
Last Friday, you probably read the note about the device locking up. I called Palm, they said they’d send yet another replacement. Great. On Saturday, on a complete whim, I picked up the i705 and it worked. Go figure. Sure enough, I called Palm Tech Support AGAIN and told them to cancel the replacement. No such luck, they couldn’t do that, although the device wouldn’t ship until Monday.
On Tuesday, the latest replacement showed up (by the way, this one had smudges on the screen and part of the code number on the back missing - obviously a reconditioned unit). Knowing that I would need to call Palm and request a new activation code, I waited until this morning, got the code, and then patiently waited until I got home (where the wireless signal is nice and strong) to activate the device. This is a simple process - you open the “Activate” application, enter in a 5-digit code, then watch as the i705 downloads some information for the device and the e-mail application. When I tried tonight, it appeared that the device already thought it was part way through the activation process, as it wouldn’t let me enter the code. And since I couldn’t enter the code, it failed to activate the device. Once again, I get to wait another day and call Palm Tech Support again. And if they have to send me yet another replacement, I’m going to yell loudly!
In other news, Palm refuses to listen to my comments that there is something wrong with the data network in downtown Denver. One tech rep even told me to take my problem to Cingular, since Palm doesn’t run the network. It’s obvious that my e-mailed comments about the data network weren’t even read, since the idiot who responded to my query said that they’re still “trying to expand the Cingular network into different parts of the country”. If he had actually taken the time to read the note, he/she would have noticed that I said I have had 6 months of great service in the downtown area, and that just recently the service went to hell… On top of that, I was told that my history of wireless usage would not justify a refund for the lack of service I’ve had over the last month. Excuuuuse me, but I’m sure if they took the time to really look at my usage history, it was pretty damned high until these problems started and is now hovering near zero.
This experience has really soured me on Palm. I’d sell the i705 if I could ever get one that worked or could be activated. I know I’ll take a beating on eBay - a quick price survey showed most of the i705s were selling for less than $200. I think if anyone at Palm wants to know why their stock is selling for 81 cents a share, I think all they need to do is look at their lack of knowledgeable support personnel, their refusal to listen to power users, and their confusion about how their wireless network works to understand. I can’t believe that Palm really thinks they’re going to be a big player with the upcoming Tungsten wireless device and supporting infrastructure when they can’t even get the existing systems to work. At this point I’m ready to take my chances with something like a Handspring Treo 300 or a T-Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition, or even go way out on a limb and get something like the T-Mobile Sidekick (AKA Danger Hiptop).
Press Release: Add Even More Fun to Your Today Screen with New ThemeDream 2.0
ThemeDream 2.0, the cool way to rotate and organize Today Screen themes, is now shipping with a cool new Theme Thumbnail viewing mechanism.
Along with the advanced rotation and theme management features in the software, this new version lets you view thumbnails of each theme in 2×2, 3×3 or 4×4 views. This is a great way to find and organize your themes, and it looks cool too. Try ThemeDream 2.0 FREE today from www.applian.com.
Press Release: Hexacto Releases The Emperor’s Mah Jongg for Pocket PC
Hexacto, a leading developer and publisher of handheld games, unveiled today the newest title in its great line-up of board games: The Emperor?s Mahjong. Hexacto?s edition of the popular ancient game features amazing graphics and a unique storyline based on traditional Chinese mythology. The game is now available for Pocket PC, but will later be released for PC, Palm, Smartphone and other mobile platforms.
The Emperor?s Mahjong for Pocket PC is available now for $19.95 on Hexacto’s website and at on-line retailers, such as Handango and PocketGear.
As part of the launch, Microsoft, Handango and Hexacto have teamed up to hold the ?Become An Emperor Contest?. A draw will be conducted amongst players that have made it to the rank of Emperor and synchronized their scores on Hexacto?s website by October 15th, 2002. The winner will get a brand new Compaq iPAQ device with all of Hexacto?s games!
Game Description
Mahjong is a puzzle game of Chinese origin dating to over two thousand years which has gained enormous popularity to become one of the world?s most popular board games. The objective is simple, but so captivating ? you must match sets of tiles together to clear them from the board and then move on to the next level. Simple, intuitive gameplay and stunning graphics make The Emperor?s Mahjong game a must for new and experienced players of this captivating game!
In The Emperor?s Mahjong, the Emperor challenges you to the ultimate quest for wisdom. You will need to master spheres of knowledge and collect five gems for safe passage to the final challenge: the meeting of the twelve Emperors. Capturing the crucial and final sixth gem, will make you Emperor of China!
The Emperor?s Mahjong will feature 72 different layouts categorized in six themes. Players can also create and save their own layouts by way of the Layout Editor. Three game modes will be available. Traditional Shanghai is the most common game mode, just click on tiles by pairs to remove them from the board. The Traditional Shanghai (2 players) mode is a turn-based cooperative match until the timer determines a winner after the board is cleared. And finally, there?s the Emperor?s Challenge where players will try to reach the rank of Emperor by clearing all 72 levels and accumulating Wisdoms.
The Emperor?s Mahjong features an authentic traditional atmosphere, with rich colors and ambient music that will literally transport you to ancient China ? Have fun, but be wise!
Game features:
? 72 different layouts grouped in 6 different themes: Horoscope, Natural Elements, Crafts, Scenery, Martial Arts and Emperors
? 3 game modes (Single Player Shanghai, Two Player Shanghai, and Emperor?s Challenge)
? 3 difficulty levels (Easy, Normal, Challenging)
? Create and save your own layouts in the Layout Editor
? 6 different background tunes with two variations each
? Integrated re-closable tray interface with ?Next Move Hints?, ?Undos? and ?Reshuffles?
? User Profile System
? Cool graphics and animated tile effects
? Online ranking system with Hexacto Scorecast Technology.
Y.A.S.P.
In case you’re wondering about that four letter acronym, it means “Yet Another Strip Poker”. I don’t know why these games are so fascinating to PDA owners, but another software developer has announced the availability of a strip poker game for Pocket PC. Here’s the scoop:
It has been some time since we released our Poker titles ‘Tropical Nights’, ‘Vegas Nights’, ‘Black Jack’ and ‘PocketPoker’. Both video poker titles have recently been nominated for the prestigious PocketPC Awards, which will be presented at the October 21-24 Pocket PC Summit at the Renaissance Hotel in Hollywood, California.
Today, we are very proud to announce our third poker title, Strip Poker. This game gets the most out of your PocketPC, with excellent hi-res and fullscreen graphics, strong gameplay, cool sounds and off course…nice opponents 
This co-production between Captain Mobile and Overloaded.com is priced only $7.95, including one opponent, Britney. Other beautiful opponents can be obtained right from the application for $4.95 each.
Like all our products, Strip Poker is available for PC and all PocketPC processors.
For more information on this release and other products, point your browser to www.pocket-games.com.
More Palms Coming To Market. Yippeeeee!
As pissed off as I am with Palm right now, I’m not sure I ought to be touting their handhelds, but I will anyway.
Three new Palm devices are expected to come to market in October. The first will be a device called the Palm Tungsten T (see picture at left). This device is the long-rumored “Oslo” device, which features a sliding screen that covers/uncovers the Graffiti area AND PalmOS 5.0. It also has a super-bright color screen, a TI OMAP processor running at 175 MHz (this is an ARM-compatible CPU), 16MB of RAM, built-in Bluetooth, multimedia support and a headphone jack! Finally, music from a Palm device that sounds better than a few beeps and squawks coming out of the speaker! It’s not a surprise; allegedly this device is designed by Sony, the folks who seem to have the most originality in the Palm OS market right now. No idea of what the price will be like for the Tungsten T, but my guess is about $250 - $300.
The next device is planned to be a smartphone called the Palm Tungsten W. It will look surprisingly like a Handspring Treo, run on GPRS networks, and have a 320 x 320 color screen. The Tungsten W not only has a small keyboard, but is the first Palm device to have a directional pad (joypad) in the center. The D-pad will allow users to navigate around the launcher. The Tungsten W will NOT be a PalmOS 5.0 device, rather it will be running the same version of PalmOS (4.1) that the i705 and other current models do. The “W” has a 33 MHz Dragonball CPU and 16 MB of RAM. Sorry, but no pictures were available of this device. Also note that the word from Palm is that voice will be a secondary feature of this device - the primary use of GPRS wireless will be to provide fast wireless data transfer. That’s assuming that it works, unlike my i705 (sorry, I just couldn’t resist the dig!).
Finally, Palm will continue to scrape the bottom of the market with a new device called “Zire”. It will have no SD/MMC slot, no cradle (just a USB cable), a monochrome screen, and a measly 2MB of RAM. It wll also have the lowest price of any Palm device, probably coming in at around $100. Rumor has it that Palm wants to start selling these as commodity items through retailers like Walmart, Target, K-Mart, etc… They’re expecting that people will buy the Zire device, then upgrade to something with a bit more power with a year to 18 months. Once again, this is NOT a PalmOS 5.0 device - it too will run PalmOS 4.1. Expect to see the Zire device (the first of a family of Zire PDAs from Palm) on October 7th. There’s been no word when the other two models will ship, other than they’re expected to see light in October as well.
Dead i705
My fun with my Palm i705 and Palm’s rather pathetic excuse for tech support continues…
Today I pulled the i705 out of my bag to update something, and it was locked up. Totally. A reset didn’t work. A double-reset didn’t work. And when I finally got to the point that I felt like doing a hard reset, that didn’t work either. The damned thing’s digitizer seems to be bad. The clueless tech support guy today didn’t seem to want to listen when I told him that I had reset it several times; I had to go through the motions with this guy before he believed me. To top it off, they had no record of the e-mail support call I sent them the other day, so that tells me that they must just take e-mail requests for support and chuck ‘em right into the crapper. Nice.
On the plus side, I’m supposed to get yet another i705 on Monday. On the negative side, I’ve now been without decent service on my i705 for about a month. I’ve asked Palm to reimburse me for the lack of wireless service; it remains to be seen whether or not that will actually happen.
And we’re surprised that Palm’s stock is floating around the NASDAQ delisting level right now - a whopping 73 cents a share today????
Asus Zayo A600 Pocket PC
MobilePlanet announced that they will be carrying the new Asus Zayo A600 Pocket PC line. This consists of two models, the “regular” A600 and the A600 Executive Edition. The A600 is thin (.5 inch), light (4.9 ounces) and sports a bright screen and 400 MHz XScale processor. It comes with a USB cradle, 64MB of RAM, and an SD slot for expansion. Pricing for this model is $499.95. For $100 more, you can get the Executive Edition, which adds a CompactFlash jacket with integrated battery, a CF to PC card adapter, and a desk stand. These prices do NOT include a special $50 manufacturer rebate! Asus advertises 16 hour battery life, but I’d take that with a very large grain of salt.
The picture to the left shows the Executive Edition device all dressed up in its CF jacket. This looks like it could be a very nice, compact competitor to the Toshiba e310, but they’re going to need to drop their prices to make it into the US market. After all, who the heck has ever heard of Asus? People are more likely to spend more to get a brand name (i.e., Compaq, HP, Toshiba, Casio) than save some money and get a product from a relatively unknown manufacturer.
Discuss The New Asus Zayo A600 Pocket PC in the PDAntic.com Discussion Forums!
i705 Woes Apparently Not A Hardware Problem
After all of the “hell” I went through with the Palm i705, it appears that it IS a problem with the downtown Denver wireless network and NOT a problem with the i705 itself. The device works great at my house, but it fails to work properly in downtown Denver. This means I’ll probably have to call Palm once more and tell them to get on Cingular to fix the problems. Hopefullly that doesn’t mean that I’ll be spending another 4 - 5 hours on the phone with their clueless tech reps. I think I’ll handle this one through e-mail…
Another One Bites The Dust
I noticed a short article on CNET today that brought back some memories…
General Magic, the folks who were responsible for bringing the world the Magic Cap OS for PDAs, has officially gone out of business. Back in the late 90’s, General Magic made a big splash by having a really cool OS (entirely graphical in nature) and touting “Intelligent Agents”. The Intelligent Agents were the most advanced part of the entire General Magic plan. You could use them for shopping, travel, and other work. For example, if I wanted to get some airline tickets I could “tell” the agent what I wanted in terms of price, time and date, airline, and other variables, and then it would go out onto the Web and deliver this information to various airlines. They’d respond to the agent with pricing information, and then the agent would come back to me with a proposal that I could accept or reject.
Well, it was a great idea, but it was way too ambitious for this small company. They did a good job with the Sony MagicLink device and the Motorola Envoy, the latter being a wireless PDA that was also way ahead of its time. I owned one for a while; the monthly charges for wireless were ridiculous (about $150 for negligible use!) and that kept sales of the Envoy down in the four-digit range. At one point I heard a rumor that only about a thousand of the boxes were actually purchased!
The OS was wonderful, although it could be slow. Memory was at a premium on these devices; 2MB was the maximum available, and you were constantly running out of space. Everything was graphic. You went from “room to room” to get to different functions, and the Internet was seen as a street with various buildings on it. You could tap on a building to access an internet service, tap a calculator sitting on a desk to get to a calculator, tap an inbox on that same desk to see your e-mail, etc…
Our friends at both Microsoft and Palm could seriously learn some lessons in easy user interfaces from the people at General Magic. Their interface was truly intuitive, although some people thought it was almost childish. It was certainly fun!
PCPocket.com and PDAntic.com Have Merged!
If you’re a longtime PCPocket.com user, you probably got a shock today when you tried to navigate to the site and found that you were redirected to PDAntic.com. Don’t worry - you’ll have access to all of the same features and the many archive files on PCPocket.com on this site.
Our reason to do this is that web hosting isn’t cheap, and it just made a lot of sense to take the two sites and merge them into one big site. Within the next few months, we’ll be shutting down PCPocket.com for good. You’ll still be able to read all about the latest in Pocket PCs and Palm OS devices, as well as other gadgets and tools, here on PDAntic.com!
All Is Right In The PDA World…For Now…
As of today, all of my PDAs seem to be working well for the first time in almost a month. The first and most annoying problem was getting the Palm i705 fixed. I finally got them to send me another i705, which was mailed to the incorrect address and took 2 days longer to get here than expected… When I finally received it last Thursday, I had to charge it up so I wasn’t able to immediately activate the new device. Following the instructions that came with the “new” i705 (it’s probably actually a reconditioned or repaired unit), I then went to their activation website to get the new activation code. No luck - Palm had just changed their process for reactivating an i705 that had been returned, so I was told to call in 24 hours. Since I was going to be busy over the weekend, that meant my next opportunity would be Monday.
Soooo, I anxiously awaited the lunch hour at work so I could finally activate this damned thing. I called, got the activation code, and the i705 refused to connect. Grrrrr. I even took a walk around downtown Denver just to see if I could get a signal strong enough that the device would connect - no luck. I decided to wait until I got home to try again, and that was successful. I now have a Palm i705 that is ready to roll again, finally.
The Toshiba didn’t do its “lock up and require a hard reset” trick this weekend, so I think I have that problem licked. I’m curious as to what caused the problem, as I’ve never seen a Pocket PC do that before. One thing I may try doing (since this happened during synchronization) is downloading and installing the newly updated version of ActiveSync 3.5. It’s available from Microsoft now and apparently fixes some bugs, as well as add a few features that will be primarily used in enterprises.
New Pocket PC Product Releases
We’ve received a few new product press releases over the last few days, so here’s a list of what’s new!
First, AIM Productions has announced availability for their latest game, “Odyssey: Battle For The Universe”. This classic style space shooter game is available for ARM-based Pocket PC 2000/2002 devices (MIPS coming soon) either directly from AIM Productions or through Handango or PocketGear for $14.99 (also ?14.99).
Next, we received the following press release from SoftWinter about their Sentry 2020/CE v2.3 security software for Pocket PCs:
September 9, 2002: SoftWinter (http://www.softwinter.com) today announced release of Sentry 2020/CE version 2.3 for Pocket PC and Handheld PC devices. In doing so, SoftWinter not only introduces a high level of security to the fastest-growing handheld platform, it also allows SoftWinter to offer consumers the broadest line of handheld security products available.
SoftWinter Sentry 2020 for Pocket PC is an enterprise security tool utilizing transparent encryption to protect important information stored on Pocket PC devices. It provides the most comprehensive system of security with flexible options for protection alternatives, and it offers a transparent user interface. The user can choose which files he or she wishes to encrypt, as well as which algorithm is used. Files are transparently encrypted and decrypted on the fly allowing highest level of security without further user interaction.
The Pocket PC version of Sentry 2020 will continue SoftWinter’s mission of bringing better security to handheld devices, considered the least secured computer platform in most enterprises. The features that make PDAs so useful, such as their portability and ready access to critical data, also make them highly susceptible to loss and theft. In fact, Gartner Group estimates more than 250,000 cell phones and PDAs will be lost at airports alone this year. What’s more, the actual cost of hardware replacement is negligible compared to the potential liability for compromised sensitive data.
Sentry 2020 for Pocket PC is almost completely transparent to the user. Through the use of decryption-on-demand and a host of usability features such as auto-dismount with an optional grace period, PDA users can continue to benefit from the speed and convenience of their devices while the enterprise is assured of maximal data security.
Sentry 2020 for Pocket PC is designed to work on all Windows CE platforms: HPC, HPC Pro, HPC 2000, Palm size PC, Pocket PC and Pocket PC 2002. It will be priced
at US$49.95. 30 days free evaluation is available at http://www.softwinter.com/download.html . Ordering information is available by contacting sales@softwinter.com or from http://www.softwinter.com.
Finally, the folks at Hexacto have released “Baseball Addict for Pocket PC”, a baseball simulation game for Pocket PCs. From the press release:
Imagine a crowded stadium with thousands of fans whistling and screaming as your star player slams it far in the outfield. Baseball Addict, the new and highly anticipated title from Hexacto, combines stunning graphics, realistic sound effects, intuitive controls and unlimited gameplay to reproduce the atmosphere, strategy and excitement that made baseball one of America?s favorite sports.
Baseball Addict for Pocket PC is available for $29.95 on Hexacto’s website and through best on-line retailers, such as Handango and PocketGear. Baseball Addict will also be released for Palm OS and for Microsoft Smartphone in 2002.
How Technology Helped Out: A View From A Year Later
Like most Americans, I was pretty upset by the events of September 11th, 2001. The day before, I was blissfully unaware that our world was going to change, writing up notes on PCPocket.com about the expected release of the new HP Jornada 560 series. At my job on 9/10/01, I was making last-minute preparations to take a group of contractors from Minnesota who were working on a big IT project for me out to a pizza place in the mountains the night of 9/11.
My first inkling that something had gone terribly wrong came by way of technology the next morning when my Motorola 2-way pager suddenly buzzed. I read the note from one of my local team members, which read “A plane ran into the world trade center. Looks bad.” I quickly pulled up CNN.com (which later became so overloaded with hits that it temporarily shut down) and saw the first picture of the smoke coming from the north tower. Of course, at that time nobody knew that it was an airliner that had been steered into the building, and there was still speculation about it being a small plane.
Moments later, the pager went off again. The message was from the same worker, who said “Another plane just crashed into the second tower. My god I think we’re under attack”. That got me off of my seat, and when I tried CNN.com again it was down. I turned on the radio and heard the first confused reports of what was going on. I tried calling my wife to see what she had heard, and the wirelines were down, so I grabbed my cell phone and called her - that went through, and we chatted for a few minutes.
Work was confusing that morning. Between glimpses of the horrible TV coverage of the towers collapsing and further pages from my co-worker stating that two more planes had gone down, I tried to help an IT trainer set up some laptops for a Windows 2000 training class that never happened. Finally, our company and our client decided to evacuate our building since we had no way of knowing if further terrorist activity was going to strike our offices in Denver. On the way home from work, I kept in touch with my wife via the cell phone and sent a note to all of the contractors on my 2-way pager telling them to go home. I spent the rest of the day moving listening to the radio and hitting the websites of the major news sources (most of whom were back online, sending out abridged reports to handle the crush of requests).
Since that day a year ago, many stories have come out about the use of personal technology during the events and during the cleanup at the three main attack locations. Cell phones and AirFones were used by the unfortunate people on the four airplanes, in many cases to tell loved ones goodbye. There were stories about people using their Palm VIIs, BlackBerrys and 2-way pagers to tell their relatives goodbye, to call for help, or to let someone know that they were OK. During the initial hectic days at Ground Zero, most of the team used donated BlackBerry devices to communicate as they searched through the rubble.
Technology, especially of the type we’re used to talking about here on PDAntic.com, definitely had its place during the horrible events of a year ago. Perhaps the most important lesson it taught us was to use that technology to its best advantage, keeping us in closer contact with those people we cherish the most.
Do me a favor today - use your cell phone, wireless PDA, 2-way pager, or other favorite tech tool to send a short note to your loved ones or close friends. Let ‘em know that you’re thinking of them today. Let’s keep using our high-tech toys to bring us all closer together.
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Joy of Tech!
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MacLevelTen
