TechProsaic

Just a quick response to this article from the Windows Mobile Team Blog about why they took Wifi sync capability out of Windows Mobile 5 & ActiveSync 4:

Here is the way I see it:

Microsoft announced their so-called security initiative a year or three ago, and right afterwards, disabled wifi sync. You might recall, this was where they had press releases talking about how they were changing the way they were coding, tools, performance goals, etc all to revolve around security (because they were getting ripped about the lack thereof).

I have no evidence to prove this, but I think what happened was that some supervisor looked into what it would take to really secure wifi sync and after having a good look at the code decided it would be a huge job to redo some endemic design flaws. Supervisor said to his boss something like “it’ll take 3,000 man-hours to do it right”. The reply was something like, “uhh, let’s just disable it. I’ll have Marketing spin some reasons and tie it into our new security initiative”. I’m sure that the decision was intended to be revisited later, but as their enterprise customers (who have a large influence on future roadmap decisions) all were using Exchange so wifi sync wasn’t on their radar. Add to the fact that “everyone knows” that WEP can be broken as easily as an egg and that WPA/WPA2 wasn’t popular yet (not to mention not included in Windows Mobile!) and that basically explains it.

I really thought they would fix this with WMDC but here we are with Beta 2 and I don’t see wifi sync.

For the record, I just did a new Vista beta 2 build, plugged in my Sprint PPC-6700 via USB and…nada. Way to go Microsoft! WMDC is a chip off the old Activesync block!

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Here are some links and pics. I’ll write some opinions later.

* msmobiles.com - CeBIT 2006 coverage: first hand report from Microsoft press conference
* “Smart Caddie” with a VIA chip inside rather than Intel.

* More details on the TabletKiosk V-700 UMPC (good link with specs and pics)
* Official MS Press release & mini-interview
* Flash demo of Windows Launcher
* Ultra Mobile PC Display Emulator Beta - test your application on a UMPC screen format
* MSDN Dev center for UMPC

Obviously I think this is pretty significant or I wouldn’t bother with this article. I’ll tell you why when I have more time.

Quick specs:

* it runs win32 code, not Windows Mobile
* 2.5 hr+ battery life (which is way too short)
* 800×480 is a common resolution
* screen no larger than 7 inches
* tablet style input
* will work with USB or bluetooth keyboards
* wifi (duh)

Psi should be the first Jabber client to run on it. (update: here’s Psi running in the UMPC demo)

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Opera for Windows Mobile Pocket PC

Hmm. Not sure if I should be impressed or what.

Let me tell you the backstory. I use Pocket IE for browsing because, well, because it’s about the only thing out there. It does an OK job of rendering large pages on the small screen, but its tabless and otherwise featureless.

First thing I did on Opera 5 was to go to Google. Duh. On PIE, presumably because of the user agent string it sends, Google switches me straight over to their mobile page, which is google.com/xhtml. Weird URL, but anyway. On Opera instead I got the big page. So I type this URL in manually and splat.

Now to try Minimo again…maybe its gotten better since December.

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Just real quick, no time to write this up properly:

PSP Sony PlayStation Portable - News and Homebrew Updated 24/7: iRiver to Rain on PSP’s Parade?

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Through a confluence of events I am lucky to have lots of toys lately. The first event is a tragedy with a happy ending. As some of my readers may know, I’m into PDAs and up until recently was really excited about getting an HP iPAQ hw6515 PDA/phone to replace my aging h4155 PDA.

Well the other day my wife was using my PDA for something and she laid it on the stairs to my sons’ bunk bed. Little precarious wooden step about five feet from the floor. You know where this is going… I knocked into it and down it went. It’s survived falls like this before, but what happened is that it hit one of the lower steps and another wooden stool nearby. Solid wood is harder than carpet, and the LCD cracked.

Bad news, that’s $160 to replace. Good news, I just sold it on eBay for $77 as-is. Better news, we decided I would get my Xmas present a bit early. After much much much deliberation, I decided not to go for the HP due to a few serious drawbacks it has. I started shopping around for other devices and settled on the Sprint PPC-6700.

Cool stuff. Windows Mobile 5, funky slide-out keyboard, decent amount of RAM. And of course the big thing my last PDA didn’t have–a phone. So far I find it a little harder to use as a phone than your basic mobile phone, but not that big of a deal. Main drawback is that without a hardware phone keypad I can’t dial numbers by touch anymore. Might look into voice dialing software to help with that. PDA-wise it is around the same speed as my previous one (~400mhz), but with a newer OS and other cool softwary stuff.

Incidentally, the best site I have found so far for the Sprint is pdaPhoneHome.com. They have really great forums.

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I am in a bit of a quandry. Waaaay back in March of this year I learned about the upcoming HP hw6500 series Windows Mobile PDA / GSM phone combo. With the builtin GPS its a really killer combo. But for some reasons unknown, HP has not released the unit back in March, or April, back when I was originally expecting it. They finally did release it in Europe and elsewhere, but it’s still not available in the US six months later.

Now the critics are panning the unit since it doesn’t have Windows Mobile 2005 but instead the older 2003 SE version. HP has since confirmed (*whew* I can finally admit that I knew this weeks ago but couldn’t say anything) that there will be no upgrade path for this unit. :s

So. I’ve heard it will be out soon (really), but I don’t know if I still want it! The GPS is the only compelling reason to get it IMHO. Everything else that you can do with it, you can do with the upcoming Palm Treo 700w. Plus as we all know, Palm has made several very successful converged PDA/phone units now. Frankly, their track record is better. (Can you say HP 6300?)

So where does this leave me? The new Treo is supposed to be out “early 2006″. The hw6500 will be out in the US “soon”. (before xmas, ok?)

I think now it comes down to price. We don’t know what Cingular will be charging yet with a service discount. My current mobile contract ends 12/6, so I’ll be ready.

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Ipaq HQ is a great website that I have frequented over the past year or so, but I’d never contributed to their forums before. However, I did sign up for an account at some point. Well, Chris the admin sent an email out to all members of the forum announcing some changes to the site, as well as an invitation for new staff moderators and reviewers. I applied and was accepted!

So now I guess I have to post in their (guess I can say “our” now) forums.

So go visit ipaqHQ for PDA news. Maybe you’ll see me there.

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PC Magazine reviews the US hw6515 @ Dave’s iPAQ

“The hw6515 does its best work as an e-mail device”

Good stuff.

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One can hope anyway…

msmobiles.com - iPAQ 6510 (without camera) and iPAQ 6515 (with camera) Pocket PC phones go on sale at Cingular USA very soon

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I was starting to get worried there…

Ipaq HQ Forums - HW6515 NEWSFLASH : It’s pretty nice….

More impressions on the hw6515: Very Nice!

CNET Asia

And for the moment, you can actually buy one for import to the US! I think Expansys will get sued to stop that though, because this already happened in the EU and HP won that case.

It’s $705 though. Yikes.

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