Dave Beauvais’ Web Site

Back in June when the iPhone was released I wrote an annoyed post saying “it’s a phone.” Well last night I got to use one for a little while and I have to say I was pretty impressed. While the network speed is not the EvDO I’ve gotten used to with my Verizon XV6700, the Web browsing experience was rather impressive. Navigating the applications on the device was also very pleasant and far more intuitive than most Windows Mobile devices which have small controls designed for use with a stylus, not fingers. And did I mention the display was amazing?

Release a 3G-capable version with native Exchange ActiveSync support, and I’d probably buy one. I’ve got to give Apple a lot of credit. I find their elitist attitude as a company very annoying and at times insulting — especially their advertising — but they do make some damn impressive hardware. The iPhone brings some powerful and innovative technology into the hands of regular consumers in the form of a device which is easy to use, intuitive to interact with, and — dare I say — fun. That is something that Microsoft and Palm really haven’t been able to do with most of their devices. Seeing and using an iPhone really illustrated to me just how clunky Windows Mobile is. There is hope of improvements with upcoming Windows Mobile releases, but in the regular consumer market, it may be too late to get the ball back from Apple. Even long-time Windows Mobile enthusiasts are considering a move toward other solutions involving the iPhone.

Back in February I posted about a problem I was having with my XV6700 which was preventing me from dismissing most reminders. In March I found a solution to the problem which did not require hard resetting the device. I used the device for all of March and April and never had a single problem so I feel comfortable posting about it here as a possible solution for others having the same problem.

The solution I found was to disable automatic time synchronization with the cellular network. Apparently every time the PDA is powered up it syncs the time with the network and that process causes an occasional hiccup if a reminder is what woke up the device rather than the user pressing the power button. Disabling the time sync feature has completely eliminated the problem I was having where I could not dismiss reminders and the reminder sound continued to play over and over until I soft reset.

Here is how to disable the time sync feature:

Tap Start, Settings, and tap the “Phone” icon on the Personal tab.

Tap the Services tab and scroll down in the list to “Time Synchronization.” Select that item then tap the “Get Settings…” button.

Uncheck the box labeled “Time synchronize with mobile network automatically.” Note that you can always come back to this dialog any time and manually sync by tapping the “Update Now” button.

After doing this, my reminder problems disappeared completely and my XV6700 has been problem-free for over two months! I don’t know if a similar fix is available for other models. Please report back if you have any luck with models other than the XV6700.

After getting to Bowling Green, Ohio for the the conference I mentioned in Thursday’s rant, I found out that I was only about ten minutes away from a good friend of mine. As I had never been to Bowling Green before, I used my XV6700 and Bluetooth GPS receiver with Mapopolis to guide me and track mileage for reimbursement next week. On the way up, I listened to some Fair Game podcasts in Windows Media Player on the PDA via an FM transmitter on my car’s stereo, while Mapopolis and the GPS guided me safely to the hotel with accurate directions. As I drove, someone called me, Media Player paused itself, and I answered the call on my Bluetooth headset with the press of its button. When done, the call ended, and Media Player resumed right where it left off.

After I got some time away from the conference at the end of the day Thursday, I arranged to visit my friend and his family at their house. As I’d never been there before I was not familiar with the area, he gave me directions, but I decided that I wanted a little technological backup. I fired up Microsoft’s Live Search on the phone, told it to use the GPS, and asked it to generate directions to his house from the current GPS position. It worked perfectly, downloading map data as I drove via the EvDO connection and updating the display with the next turn as I approached it. While it doesn’t do text-to-speech, spoken directions, rerouting in the case of a missed turn, or many other driver-friendly things that Mapopolis does, it definitely shows where navigation technology might be headed in the near future. As wireless data becomes more ubiquitous, things like this will become much more useful and common. I look forward to devices having built-in GPS receivers so the need for a separate receiver is a thing of the past.

I went to his house again after the conference ended on Friday afternoon, this time giving Google Maps for Windows Mobile a try. I found it to be much more clumsy than Live Search; it lacks the finger-friendly features of Live Search which make it simple to locate things with a minimum of typing. The GPS position indicator is small, hard to see, doesn’t indicate the direction of travel, and I found that it often didn’t center on my location automatically after switching from map, to directions, and back again. I do like the large finger-friendly zoom in/out buttons on-screen, which seem easier to use than Live Search’s method of zooming.

The one thing I did notice is that Google often has more current, and much higher resolution satellite imagery than Live does, but Live Search wins in just about every other way in my book. Neither one is a full replacement for dedicated navigation software — yet — but I do see myself using Live Search more than Mapopolis in the future.

Hmm, somehow this became a product mini-review… The point of this post is that my trip was a technological success. My gadgets all just worked with the exception of my laptop and the hotel’s Internet access which never worked. Except for when I was on my friend’s wireless network, the laptop never got used and in retrospect, I could have just left it at home and not had to tote it around the conference. I was able to keep up on e-mail, listen to some fun podcasts, read my RSS feeds via Google Reader, and was able to find new places and meet up with friends because of my PDA, a reliable phone network, and mobile technology that did what it was supposed to do. I was very impressed!

So it’s almost 21:00 EDT on Wednesday night and I haven’t had any of my Exchange data available for five days. At this point, after reading comments and posts in a couple forums following this ridiculous outage, I’m not sure I’ll be staying with them as a customer. “Absurd” does not even begin to describe this fiasco and I’ve had just about enough.

The latest e-mail:

Thank you for using 4smartPhone and for your continued patience.

You are receiving this email because your mailbox is in the last remaining database store to recover (we have completed 3 out of 4 total) and that process has started.

Because of the nature of the outage on one server which required us to go back to an earlier backup, we have used a “dialtone” restore technique which allows to restore email flow quickly, while we are restoring the rest of your mailbox (including contacts, calendar, tasks, and old email folders) over a longer period of time. Nothing has been lost, and it will all be merged back into your mailbox, however as we have hundreds of large mailboxes to restore, we estimate that this process will take up to another 48 hours to complete.

When approaching the end of the process, you will receive another notification/update email just before we make your entire old mailbox available, process that will be followed by the automatic merge of everything you changed since last Saturday.

Once again, we appologize [sic] for the inconvenience that this is causing.

Best regards

The 4SmartPhone “Recovery” Team

So I might be waiting two more days? That would be one entire week with no or very crippled service. I find it oddly amusing that they put the word “recovery” in quotes. I am trying to be patient and understanding, but I can’t help but think that if a major system I am responsible for was down or users’ data was unavailable for almost a week my continued employment would be in jeopardy. I realize that large amounts of data require significant time to copy, especially from backup media, but a week?!

It seems only fair that since I bitched about 4SmartPhone’s Exchange server being down that I should post that it’s back up. Mostly. The server is back, new mail is being delivered, but nobody has any of their old content; no e-mails, no calendar, no tasks, no rules… nothing except any new messages that arrived after the server came back up. They say they’ll be restoring everything from backup over the next day or two. It’ll be interesting to see whether my PDA, which has data from before the crash “just works” or if I’ll end up with hundreds of duplicated appointments and contacts after the mailbox is restored from backup.

I want to thank the techs and server admins who must have had a really crappy weekend. I know this kind of thing sucks and it’s what all of us in IT dread the most. (Even more than meetings with our pointy-haired boss.) Thanks for your hard work!

So I’m happy the service is back, but I stand by my original complaint: they should have at least updated their Web site to let their customers know what was going on. Since they weren’t responding to e-mails or phone calls, they should have communicated something via their Web site. The free month of service is certainly appreciated, however, and I’m excited to see they are going to be moving to Exchange 2007. I hope this will be the last major unplanned service outage.

Here is the e-mail that was waiting for me when I logged in:

Dear 4SmartPhone Customer,

Over the past two days we have experienced a rather serious crash on one of our Exchange Servers.

We are very sorry for any inconvenience this problem has caused you, but we are pleased to report that we have fixed the problem and taken all steps to ensure it will not happen again. Here are some things you will notice in the next few days:

1. Although it is now possible to connect to your mailbox again, it will only contain your new emails.
2. You can now send and receive emails.
3. Within the next few days, we will bring all original emails back on the Server.
4. Pro & Enterprise Clients can use their local copy in Offline Mode, and you must switch to connected mode to send & receive email. We will send a link to help you understand in a following email.
5. In addition, we are taking the following steps concerning the current Exchange 2003 servers: 4SmartPhone is rolling out more reliable Exchange 2007 on a brand new architecture; The fact that Exchange 2007 is more robust and combined with the new architecture, any failure are less likely, simpler and faster to recover from should we have to.

4SmartPhone sincerely appreciates your business. To demontrate [sic] our appreciation, your patronage, patience and trust in our service, we would like to extend a free month’s service to you. We will automatically add the free month onto your contract. If you have any additional questions, please email us at support@4smartphone.net ,

Thank you.

4SmartPhone IT staff.

All I can say is that I must have done something to offend the technology gods. As I type this on my PDA, my broadband service is out and my hosted Exchange service from 4SmartPhone has been unavailable for one full day. I first noticed that last night when I tried to sync two new appointments from my PDA and got the oh-so-cryptic ActiveSync “Support code: 0×85010014″. So since it was raining, I decided to pop in the first of my Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 6 DVDs and discovered that my DVD player is dying.

WOW, my broadband ISP, can’t get anyone here until next Tuesday, but when I told them my neighbor, who has home phone and Internet service through them, is also down and has no usable phone, they said if she calls, they can get someone out today. I just got a call from her and someone should be to her house within the hour. It’s interesting that a tech is available on short notice when phone service is involved, but they can’t come out for three days for plain old Internet service, even though it comes in on the same cable, through the same modem, and is handled by the same techs. This has been a recurring problem for over a year. They come out, “fix” something, it works for a month or so, then goes out again. The last major outage lasted about four days and got us a ten dollar service credit each month for a year. The next outage will result in switching providers to Time Warner RoadRunner… which may not be any better, but at least it’ll be different.

Okay, thumbs are tired now.

Update: Service was restored at about 21:00 EDT Saturday night after being out for approximately six to seven hours. We got a call from WOW this morning asking if everything was okay. They explained that there was an outage in the area and that it had been fixed. Thanks, WOW, for the follow-up call, but you’ve got to do something to fix this for good. These monthly outages are just unacceptable.

Update: I posted a solution to this problem that I discovered. Let me know if it fixes your problem.

I’ll start by saying that this isn’t the reminder problem that many Windows Mobile users are used to hearing about. (You know, the one where your reminders never fire at all and you miss your appointments?) The problem I am writing about today is irritating on the other end of that scale: my reminders do go off, but I can’t see what they are and have no way to dismiss them. I first noticed this about two months ago, and it was very rare; maybe once per week. Now, it’s happening almost every time a reminder goes off and it’s driving me insane.

If I’m looking at my XV6700 when the reminder fires, I can see that the “toast” — the little notification window that slides up from the bottom of the screen — appears for about one second, then disappears. The reminder bell icon in the title/navigation bar at the top of the screen also disappears. The reminder sound, however, continues to repeat and there’s no way to make it go away other than to soft reset the device. Switching from portrait to landscape mode does not help, either.

I did find reference to another person having the exact same problem. Suggestions were to use MemMaid to clean up bogus or duplicate entires in the notification queue, or to hard reset the device. I don’t have any orphaned or other invalid notifications in the queue, and I am really not thrilled about the idea of having to hard reset my otherwise rock-solid device just to fix this infuriating problem. I started Outlook 2003 on the desktop with the “/cleanreminders” switch to rebuild the reminders, made sure it was synced up with my Exchange account, and then synced the PDA. None of that helped.

I don’t understand why reminders continue to be such a problem for Windows Mobile devices. This is such a basic thing that even $15 electronic organizers get right — reliably — and I just can’t comprehend how devices this advanced can get so very wrong.

I’ll post again if I find a solution to this which doesn’t involve a hard reset, but it’s looking like that’s what I’ll be doing this weekend. I’m in a position to make device recommendations to users and problems like this make it extremely difficult to recommend Windows Mobile devices. Imagine having to tell your boss that the reason he missed his meeting with his boss is because his handheld can’t show reminders reliably.

In a move that surprised the heck out of me, HP has announced they will actually offer an upgrade to Windows Mobile 5.0 for a few of their current Pocket PC models — including my hx4700! Given the track record they’ve had with upgrades for previous iPAQs, part of me will still believe this when I see it, but I’m thrilled to see this announcement! And Dell is offering the same upgrade to their X50 series Axims, which is nice since that’s what we use in the office. Thanks HP and Dell!

Update: According to HP, due to “third-party driver delays,” the Windows Mobile 5 upgrade for the hx4700 series has been delayed until the first quarter of 2006. Raise your hand if you’re surprised by this. I could probably count the number of hands raised right now and never leave the single digits…

I stopped by the Astraware site today when I read about their new RPG game and noticed that a new version of Bejeweled was released today. The game play itself is unchanged, but this new version supports VGA Pocket PCs running Windows Mobile 2003 SE! It’s nice to see a VGA-compatible game released — even if it’s an older game — and I hope this is the start of a new trend. The pixel-doubling required to make non-VGA applications stretch to fit a 480×640 screen does not make for smooth, crisp images.

This release does have an occasional, but very annoying delay on both my iPAQ hx4700 and the Dell X50v I use at work. The sound of the gems swapping plays, but the actual on-screen animation doesn’t happen until almost a full second later. The game will be completely smooth for another 10–15 seconds, then there will be the delay again. It’s just often enough to be annoying, but not so bad that I want to stop playing this highly addictive game.

Great work, Astraware!

I would like to ask that all Pocket PC users take a moment to silently grieve for the mortally wounded Toshiba e405 pictured below, killed in the line of duty. While diligently standing watch in its kiosk in a Columbus, Ohio Micro Center store, serving to advertise the capabilities of its brothers and sisters to passing customers, it was struck down in a brutal attack by an unknown assailant. Unable to flee from the attack due to its restraints, the valiant device was subjected to multiple forms of torture as its kiosk mates looked on in helpless agony. The touch screen was deeply gouged repeatedly by a sharp, possibly metal object, and its buttons were damaged by being pressed with far more force than they were intended to withstand. Ultimately, the mostly defenseless e405 was unable to hold out any longer, and powered down one last time.

Terrified by the horrible acts of terror they had just witnessed, the other devices in the kiosk were found to be suffering from multiple forms of shock and mental stress. One iPAQ was found to be stuck in a soft reset loop, while a second iPAQ, a tiny h1945, was suffering from complete memory loss, its settings and demo software lost as a result of an apparent self-inflicted hard reset. It’s possible it had attempted to purge its memory of the horrific events it has recently witnessed.

Fear not, poor Pocket PCs, for your legacy shall live on in the minds and pockets of users such as us who faithfully care for our own Pocket PCs and mourn over the conditions you are forced to live in. Many of us also take it upon ourselves to keep you and those like you in proper working order — despite neglect by those who are supposed to oversee you — by performing healing soft resets, cleaning you of useless data entered by uncaring consumers, and occasionally beaming you a clean set of themes to make you more attractive to passers by. We salute you.