As an aside, I’m really liking the Treo Pro a lot. The BlackJack II is a great phone, but I didn’t realize how much I’d miss the touchscreen. The Treo Pro is great on many levels: very thin, hardware keyboard, and touchscreen. And the Opera Mobile 9.5 beta, which didn’t work on Windows Mobile Standard, actually makes Web browsing enjoyable again. I do wish mobile device companies would back off the current trend of making everything glossy, though. Not only is this thing (and the BlackJack II, for that matter) a fingerprint magnet, it feels as if it’s going to slip out of my hands. I may get an Invisible Shield for the back just to make it less slippery in my hand. I can’t see using that with a stylus, though, given the tacky, slightly rubbery feel.

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.

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 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!

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.

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.

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…

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!

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.

Introduction

The default home page on all Pocket PCs is pretty lame. You can go to the built-in AvantGo client and to three or four other pre-defined locations, and that’s about it. Having an assortment of locations quickly available without having to use the Favorites dialog is important to me, so I set out to create a new Start Page for my Pocket PC that was both attractive and functional.

The screenshots below show the results of my work. There is a brief description of each tab next to its screenshot and a more in-depth description of the project starts on page two. Page three contains the Theme Gallery and page 4 shows the Revision History.

Let me begin by answering what has become the most frequently-asked question since I first released this last year: No, this version of the Pocket Internet Explorer Start Page does not work with the version of Internet Explorer included with Pocket PC 2002 devices. It requires a device running Windows Mobile 2003 for Pocket PC due to the page’s use of cascading style sheets. I state this in the very first paragraph of the documentation included in the download and I will be modifying some of the text throughout this site in order to make this fact more clear. At this time, I am not sure how the recently-announced Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition will affect the Start Page. Since that release contains a new version of Pocket IE with another new rendering engine, I’ll need someone to try it out since HP won’t release an upgrade for my “old” h5455.

Where to Download

To download the Start Page package, simply click here to download a zipped version. I also ask that you please take the time to completely read the documentation included in the zip file before asking questions. I tried to be very thorough when writing that and expect it will address most questions you may have. If you have questions that are not answered, feel free to post a comment here.

Description of the Tabs

This is the main page of my Start Page. It contains the link buttons for the Pocket PC and related sites I visit most often on my Pocket PC. (The linked pages are the mobile versions of each site which display well on the Pocket PC’s small screen.) The buttons are in no particular order, though Pocket PC Thoughts is the site I visit most often.

This is page two of my Start Page, which contains links to news and information sites, as well as travel and financial sections. There is plenty of room to customize this one to your liking.

This is my search page, which currently has only Google. The search form produces results from the Palm version of Google, which is optimized for mobile devices./>

With the increasing number of personal “blogs” that are becoming mobile-friendly, I added this tab to my Start Page. I link to my own site as a quick way of testing updates, etc. The downloadable package does not include most of the sites shown here because I doubt most people would visit the same blogs I do. Feel free to customize to your heart’s content!

This page is mostly to provide quick links to various network devices on my (and friends’) networks. The links go to the Web-based config pages of the various devices. This isn’t always easy to use on a Pocket PC, but has come in handy on more than one occasion. Again, the downloadable package does not include all of these links, and the ones that are included contain sample URLs only. There is also a group of mobile-friendly online shopping locations, as well as a FedEx link for tracking shipments.

Continue to page two for a detailed description of the Start Page project.