PDAGEEK FEATURES

Pocket PC: Wireless and Beyond

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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