Comments inline...
On 8 Feb, 18:10, journey <rain...@oasis.com> wrote:
> Windows Mobile 6 for Pocket PCs and Smartphones is going to be
> shipping in Q2 according to many web sites. Here is a good review:
>
It's already been leaked. www.xda-developers.com's forums have many
links of dubious legality where the ROMs can be downloaded for various
WM devices. There's a certain element of risk installing these but
also reasonable documentation. I've not done it yet, but have flashed
WM devices to the "Mr Clean" ROMs for WM5 which are much faster and
debranded...
> http://www.mobile-review.com/pda/art...ssbow-en.shtml
>
Good review - cheers for the link!
> Reading through the reviews, I'm not clear yet as to whether the
> Pocket PC Word and Excel documents use native format. That's
> important to me because I want to be able to edit documents on the PC
> and just drag them to a SD card.
No, it's still pocket word, pocket excel etc. It's pretty good at
converting to and fro on the fly, and can preserve quite complex
formatting. It *doesn't* read Office 2007's XML-based file format
yet, though, which is annoying.
>
> It's interesting -- the handheld PCs of quite a long time ago (e.g.
> Jornada 728) had more robust versions of Word and Excel, and did use
> the native formats. Also, hand written notes in Calendar and Tasks,
> did sync to Outlook and they could be viewed. Now, if you view them,
> they disappear. I guess it's not important to most people.
>
I can view handwritten notes taken on my WM5 device (*not* smartphone
edition - it doesn't do notes) on Outlook on my PC. They embed as
bitmaps, same as voicenotes.
I don't remember the Jornada 728 using native word format - I remember
ours converting to pocket word via activesync?
> Unfortunately, Windows Mobile 6 doesn't allow closing the applications
> -- the system manages that. It's unbelievable that they didn't
> include that functionality, because there are so many utility programs
> that do this and they should have seen that need. Using the utility
> programs can make the Pocket PC less stable.
>
Hmm. I use "magic button" to do exactly this, but WM isn't that bad -
the programs are meant to close themselves when needed. I agree that
a native option for it would be nice, but apps like magic button are
nice and stable and give you the choice: tap and hold the close window
button to kill the app.
There are a vast number of apps to improve the WM5 experience - my
favourite remaps the buttons so (for example) a press-and-hold on left
soft key opens the start menu, and a press-and-hold on right softkey
kill the app. makes it usable one handed...again,
www.xda-
developers.com is *the* resource for this kind of thing and worth
looking at.
> One of my biggest pet peeves about Outlook and Pocket Outlook is that
> it only has 3 levels for priority. The major Pocket Outlook
> replacement programs (Pocket Informant and Agenda Fusion) both have
> Franklin-Covey (e.g. A1...) priorities for tasks. Obviously, it's a
> feature many people would like to have. Outlook's predecessor,
> Schedule Plus, had 10 priority levels.
>
This is a little annoying. I assign tasks to projects and it doesn't
do these, either. Suspect not that much of an issue for most users,
but generally the synch is so good to outlook i'd like to see it do
this, too...
> For now, my trusty Treo 680 works for appointments, but my now over-40
> year eyes can't see the task information very well.
>
WM5 and 6 lets you set the text size, if it helps? Took me a while to
find the option, but it's there under settings.
> Palm better come out with a new OS and new handhelds (in addition to
> Treos)... the handwriting's on the wall that unless they do, their
> sales are going to suffer as the Windows Mobile platform gets more
> market share (yes -- Palm does offer Windows Mobile too, but if they
> end up competing in that area and ignoring the Palm OS, they will lose
> because of the stiff competition)..
Agreed. I love the (palm) treos and it's a real shame to see them
continually overtaken by handsets from HTC and the like running WM.
The goodwill of the palm community won't last forever - look at the
debacle around wireless cards in the treos, for example - the user
community had to write the driver! the palm OS needs a ground-up
rewrite for stability though - this has been demoed but when it'll
arrive is anyone's guess. They're now toting the linux-based ALPS
platform for it...time will tell but it's not looking good.
Ric
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