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PDAGEEK FEATURES
Pocket PC: Wireless
and Beyond
author: Joel Evans
posted: 9/19/2000
A month or so ago we received a very interesting e-mail: Microsoft wanted
to know if we would like to come to Redmond to check out the Pocket PC. What?
We're Palm fans, what was the Evil Empire thinking? Microsoft was inviting 35
Palm enthusiasts and PDA gurus to learn all about its new(ish) platform. Invites
went out to some of the leading Palm and PDA sites on the 'Net, including PalmStation,
PalmGear, PDAGeek, PDA
Buzz, and smaller.com. We don't know
if you visit all these sites on a regular basis, but you should get to know
all of us. To give you an idea of who we are, here's what we thought before
the meeting began
Joel (PDAGeek):
I thought that I was going to be completely underwhelmed. Previously, I had
played with a number of Pocket PCs that were slow to respond and involved far
too many clicks to get things done. In addition, I really didn't believe in
spending a considerable amount of money for the addition of an MP3 player.
Wes (PDA
Buzz): With my previous experience with the Jornada 545 and Compaq
iPAQ, I came into the Pocket PC, Wireless & Beyond conference expecting
to hear much of the same information I had come to learn on my own since April.
Not that this would be bad; it's good to have interesting and useful information
reinforced occasionally. And who knows, maybe I'd learn something new and exciting
while I was there?
Calvin (Calvin's
PGHQ FAQ): I had tried one of the original Windows CE machines,
and I still had a bad taste in my mouth from that experience. I had heard that
the new Pocket PC handhelds had fixed things, but had my doubts. But with Microsoft
paying the bill and promising to impress us, my curiosity was piqued.
Eric (smaller.com):
I had seen some pretty neat stuff from Ethan and Charlie, the CE experts here
at smaller.com, but every time I had picked up one of their CE units I had a
pretty bad user experience. Lately I've been bored with Palm, so I was pretty
open-minded; but MS still had some work to do to convince me it has a worthwhile
product.
Hal (Palmstation):
Admittedly, most of my experience with PocketPC has been with the misused-to-heck
display units on the shelves at electronic stores, so my impression going into
this was that the Pocket PC was completely unintuitive, and more hassle than
it's worth.
Tim (PDA
Life): I was intrigued with the invitation to Seattle to be shown
the Pocket PC. I had seen the WinCE devices in the past but was never formally
shown their abilities. Reading the hardware reviews, I felt that the devices
may have some potential but was still unsure that the software was actually
useable. This was an opportunity for me to see it first hand, from the actual
people who designed the devices.
As you can see, Microsoft had its work cut out for it. Here's how the day went
down.
Getting to know all about you - Wes Salmon
The conference started off with a bang with a keynote presentation
from Microsoft's VP of Mobile Devices Division, Ben Waldman. While much of the
information had the typical marketing spin, there were a few points covered
that gave me some insight on how Microsoft sees the PDA market and how its mobile
vision as a whole shapes up. One of the major criticisms of Microsoft's mobile
strategy in the past was that it just doesn't "get it." You simply
cannot cram a PC operating system onto a handheld device and make it functional.
Seeing Microsoft's strategy up on the big screen (PowerPoint, of course) helped
me realize that finally, after all this time and all the failed devices, Microsoft
finally gets it
almost. Microsoft seems to understand that Windows "everywhere"
does not work, at least not the "Windows" we are used to on our PC.
The Pocket PC and related devices span (or will soon) many form factors and
functions, and at times they won't even share similar looks. This means the
Pocket PC OS on your PDA could look completely different than the Pocket PC
OS on your smart phone yet they will both function, sync, and act very similar.
Personally, I think this is a huge step in Microsoft's evolution in the PDA
and mobile device market; now if only a few of the outstanding OS issues are
resolved, the Pocket PC could really start to put serious pressure on the top
dogs in the PDA space, namely Palm.

HP Jornada
Breaking open the boxes,
and barriers - Calvin Parker
After enjoying a rather nice breakfast buffet in
the building's cafeteria, we all were taken to the room that we'd be spending
the rest of the day in. It was interesting (and somewhat entertaining) to see
the looks on the faces of people as they walked into the room and saw the boxes
for not just the iPAQ, but also an HP Jornada! More oohs and aahhs prevailed
as people realized there was more goodies at each station, in the form of a
bag filled with Compact Flash accessories.
Finally, the folks running the show settled everyone down enough and got things
started.
All of the workstations were obviously brand new, which became evident as we
started installing software. With all of the computers running Windows 2000,
there were some issues with permissions, which after about 20 minutes of chaos
finally were straightened out. I kind of felt sorry for the folks from the mobile
devices group as they were genuinely both sorry for the problems and horror-stricken
that the day kicked off with so many problems.
But once these were behind us, things really kicked into gear. A quick (somewhat
TOO quick) tour of the PIM applications was next. The impression I get is that
they assumed we all knew enough about PIM applications that this was something
that only needed glossing over. However, probably just the opposite was true;
since we do all concentrate on the PIM applications (as do most Palm owners),
it is these applications that would interest us the most.
One of the nice things about the entire day was that at any given point if
you had a question, the Microsoft folks would get you an answer if they couldn't
just answer it right on the spot. Depending on what was going on in the room,
there were always a handful of Microsoft employees in the back of the room available
for questions.
After lunch, we covered the Windows Media Player. Using the latest Windows
Media Player for the desktop, we were all given audio CDs to convert songs and
suck them down to the Pocket PC. Overall, a very easy thing to do, and within
a few minutes I had Fiona Apple crooning to me over the set of headphones plugged
into my HP Jornada. A nice touch: you can select to download the rather large
files directly to a CF card, if installed.

Compaq iPAQ
100 ways to get on the Web - Tim
Warner
It was exciting to see all the options available to make the Pocket
PC into a truly mobile device. The fact that the HP Jornada had a built-in Compact
Flash slot made it convenient to test the possibilities. For the user who doesn't
mind being tethered to a wall there is a 56K CF modem as well as a CF Ethernet
card. These are both relatively small, though the Ethernet card does require
a dongle. Simply inserting the card and plugging it into the LAN offered almost
instant access to the Web via DHCP. Once on the network the Pocket PC has the
ability to access your Active Sync desktop and synchronize your information.
A Compact Flash to digital cell phone adapter is available for most phones.
It uses a card and dongle for a cabled--albeit wireless--connection to the 'Net.
There was mention of wireless Compact Flash modems under development for those
who want truly wireless connections.
Even though the wireless technology for Compact Flash has not been released
yet does not necessarily mean that the Pocket PC was tied to a wall. The iPAQ
has an aftermarket sleeve that will allow you to attach a PC Card to the device.
This allows you to use Compaq's wireless LAN card or Sierra Wireless' CDPD card.
One minor disappointment is that the iPAQ does not sport a Compact Flash slot
(Compact Flash sleeve available for US$39-49).
Pocket Explorer makes surfing actual websites a reality for Pocket PC users.
With the ability to view a site in almost full size (utilizing horizontal scroll
bars) or fitting the page to frame (which reduces the images and wraps the text
to allow for less horizontal scrolling), the Pocket PC can take on almost any
website.

Techtronix Multipoint
Pen/Stylus, 128 MB Kingston CompactFlash card and PCMCIA adapter, Pretec 56K
CompactModem, & Socket Compact Ethernet card
Getting stung by the Microsoft phone - Joel
Evans
Next up was a demonstration of the elusive Stinger phone. For
those of you who don't know, the Stinger is Microsoft's version of a PDA/cellphone
hybrid. It's actually known as a "smart phone" in Microsoft terms.
In the case of the Stinger, Microsoft has spent an enormous amount of time and
effort exploring trends in wireless computing and, most notably, wireless phone
use in the United States, Europe, and Japan.
Instead of working directly with an OEM, Microsoft decided to not only design
an operating system for the phone but to also build the phone itself from scratch.
The main reason for doing this is to see what's really involved and to try to
show OEMs that what Microsoft really wants in the phone is actually possible.

Ian Farrell, who uses the phone on a daily basis, led the Stinger demonstration.
To my surprise, instead of being a clunky, PDQ-ish brick like the previously
released Qualcomm Palm/mobile phone monstrosity, the phone is about the size
of a regular mobile phone and features a decent-sized screen. What sets this
phone apart from other mobiles, though, is its ability to sync directly with
your desktop, store your contacts and e-mails, and send and receive e-mail wirelessly.
Not that excited? Well, it does all of this by using a version of the new Pocket
PC interface with some very nice phone-specific changes! Needless to say, it's
difficult to impress me, but in the case of the Stinger it seems that Microsoft's
research is paying off. The phone is sleek and, while we didn't see an actual
demonstration of a phone call, we witnessed it connecting live to Voicestream
to update an AvantGo site on the fly.
As of this writing, there is no official price available for the Stinger, but
it's nice to see that Microsoft's new Stinger is working on the standard GSM
network in the United States. One more thing: I was also told that Microsoft
has approximately 40 of these prototypes floating around, so I can only assume
the millions of dollars spent on research and development.
Any Questions? - Hal-J
After a busy day of playing with the Pocket PC and getting to
know it a bit better, we came the part that I figured would end up being the
meat of the whole experience: the Q/A session between us and Microsoft. First
was an aborted Q/A session run by two guys whom no one seemed to have any questions
for. The next act was Derek, one of our hosts. He offered a brief recap and
then opened the floor to us--he did his best to answer any questions we had.
This lead into the inevitable questions: What were our opinions? What did we
think?
It seemed that many of us felt the same way: that as much as Microsoft had
improved this latest version of its handheld operating system, it was not quite
there yet. There were still several limitations that we felt made Pocket PC
more difficult to use than its much less feature-rich competitors. Unfortunately,
this dialog, which was very constructive, only lasted for about 20 minutes or
so, but the overall tone was summed up in a single comment by Peter Da Silva:
"We understand this is not rocket science, but we are rocket scientists,
and we can't figure it out."
Too Hungry for Dinner at Eight - Eric
L
After all the chaos and effort of the day, dinner brought us
closer to people working in the Pocket PC Group, giving us a chance to really
talk about issues with them. Dining in the wacky curves of the Experience Music
Project, we chatted up Microsoft folks about the current products and their
plans for the future. Whatever positive or negative experiences we may have
had during the day, night was nothing but goodness. There are two things about
these Microsoft people that really stand out: First, they know their stuff.
They have a grasp of technologies, of the way the world works, and of how they
can use the former to fit into the latter. Second, these guys realize that their
product is not perfect. They know its strength, but they also know its weaknesses
and want to work on those areas. This is a refreshing change from Palm. Most
Palm employees simply cannot imagine the fact that there might be some way to
improve their product (except maybe the Palm VII). They also aren't as up on
the technologies that could or already do interact with their devices.
So what did we learn? Are we all Pocket PC converts? Can money buy you love?
Well we each have a slightly different take on it, but here's what we can all
say: Microsoft knows how to throw its money around. Inviting 35 Palm-loving
loud mouths to see Pocket PC wasn't the worst thing MS could do; why preach
to the converted? Microsoft also knows how to throw it around in research--research
that has taught it that different devices have different OS requirements. Pocket
PC may not be perfect in our Palm-trained eyes, but it is now a force to be
reckoned with.
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