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Filed under: Internet, Windows Mobile, Productivity, Mobile Minute

3 Mobile Web Apps that keep old Pocket PCs relevant

My iPaq might be two and a half years old, but it's got a thumboard and WiFi. While that might not count for much, it's enough to let me rock on with three mobile web apps that have allowed me to stick with Old Faithful instead of springing for a new device.

What are they? Gmail, Google Reader, and Ping.Fm Mobile.

The three things I really want to be able to do with my handheld are check and send email, read my RSS feeds, and update my status on sites like Twitter, Plurk, etc. I am, however, terrible at remembering to keep my iPaq docked and charged, and I'm not good at saving my favorite mobile app installers when I reformat my base PC.

All of which means that I need three simple apps that will run well on a freshly booted, totally naked Pocket PC 2003 install with clunky old Pocket Internet Explorer.

These three have never let me down. They're all formatted nicely for my vertical QVGA screen and stripped of any annoying elements that mess with rendering. What's more, I can follow Brad's advice and have all three open in tabs at the same time.

Gmail is great with a thumboard, and way better than texting from my cell. Reader does an excellent job of reformatting all my feeds so that they're easily readable. Using Ping.Fm means I don't have to worry about whether or not sites like Plurk, Rejaw, or Pownce will function on the iPaq. One simple form updates them all for me. Rad.

These three must haves - along with the basic PIM and media functions that Pocket PC 2003 came with - are enough to keep me productive, even with a handheld that's woefully out of date by today's standards.

Filed under: OS Updates, Windows Mobile, Microsoft

No Windows Mobile 6.1 love for current generation HP iPaq models

winmo61Microsoft may be rolling out an incremental upgrade to its Windows Mobile operating system for PDAs and cellphones, but it's up to device manufacturers and wireless carriers to decide whether to offer Windows Mobile 6.1 to existing customers. And it looks like HP has decided that customers who have already bought current generation iPaq devices can live without the update.

One of the things that has long set mobile operating systems apart from desktop OSes is the fact that users can't just walk into the store, but a software upgrade and apply it themselves. In the olden days, OS upgrades came on ROM chips and you literally had to update a device's hardware in order to update the OS. Now most Windows Mobile devices can be upgraded via a software-only update process. But because the OS is typically customized to run on various devices, it's up to the device makers to decide whether to release an update.

HP apparently has decided to offer Windows Mobile 6.1 on new units, but will not be offering an upgrade option for current iPaq owners. Of course, when hardware makers don't step up, we've often seen that 3rd party developers will come up with their own solutions. Will we eventually see an unofficial upgrade path for iPaq users? Only time will tell.

Filed under: OS Updates, Windows Mobile

Unofficial HP iPAQ hx4700 update

HP hx4700Now that Windows Mobile 6 is shipping, let's take a stroll down memory lane and reminisce about the problems users had upgrading their Windows Mobile 2003SE devices to Windows Mobile 5.0.

Specifically, Dell Axim X50 and HP iPAQ hx4700 users found themselves in a bind. They'd already purchased some of coolest PDAs on the market. They had blazing fast 624MHz processors and high quality VGA screens. But since they didn't use the same type of RAM as newer Windows Mobile 5.0 devices, it turned out that when you tried to "upgrade" either model, you'd wind up with a much slower system.

Late last year, Dell released a fix for the Axim. And while the X50 series still feels more responsive running WM2003SE than WM5.0, the difference is much smaller than it used to be. And you get updated versions of Mobile Office and the ability to run newer third party software.

Unfortunately HP hasn't released an official patch for the hx4700. But it appears some Russian hackers have. Werner Ruotsalainen reports that the unofficial ROM upgrade vastly improves performance on hx4700 PDAs running Windows Mobile 5.0. However, the upgrade does not include support for A2DP Bluetooth audio, so if that's important to you, it might be worth waiting (possibly forever) for an official update from HP.

Filed under: News, Windows Mobile, Office, Microsoft

HP will no longer ship Outlook with Windows Mobile devices

OutlookHewlett Packard has made the puzzling decision to stop bundling Microsoft Outlook with its Ipaq line of Windows Mobile devices starting in April. Customers are instead told that they can purchase Outlook through Microsoft's website.

But here's the thing. A PDA or smartphone is of limited use if you can't synchronize it with your desktop. Try transferring hundreds or thousands of contacts from your old device to your new one without Outlook.

Sure, you could use BirdieSync or Finch Sync to synchronize your PDA with Thunderbird. But after dropping $300 to $600 on a new device from HP, it's a bit baffling that the company would tell you to cough up some more money to make it useful. We can only hope that this doesn't become a trend among PDA manufacturers.

[via Pocket PC Thoughts]

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