Category Archives: Microsoft

Apple/Mac, Computers/Technology, PocketPC, Psion, Symbian

Stephen Fry – Devices and Desires

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I blogged a couple of years ago about an article about Stephen Fry that appeared in Mac Format and about his addiction to the Mac platform stretching back twenty years.

Recently Stephen has started a blog and the topic of his first posting – Devices and Desires – which discusses another technological addiction, mobile devices and Smartphones. Not surprisingly he has an iPhone, but this looks at the competition, most of which he has tried.

Style wise this is a bit different from your usual technical article – very Stephen Fry (so it does have a couple of more adult comments) – but it is a great read, and pretty funny in places. Incidentally as an example of the quirkiness, the title of the article is taken from the General Confession in the Book of Common Prayer (“I have followed too much the devices and desires of my own heartâ€?)- not a common point of reference for a computer article, but somewhat appropriate!

Looking at his history, it seems he is a Psion 3 fan whereas I only came in when the Psion 5 was launched. He’s tried Palm devices, but is very frustrated with the way they seem to regularly try to commit corporate suicide. He is particularly damning about the Palm Foleo, a mobile device even he did not want.

As an aside he also mentioned Markspace Missing Sync as a good way to synchronise a PocketPC with a Mac – not surprisingly after my nightmare with the product I can’t agree. Despite it’s numerous updates over recent months, I’m still not sure I actually trust it not to scramble my diary!

According to the article, he has tried a number of Symbian smartphones, and has some harsh words for Sony Ericsson:

What a crushing, lowering, fury-inducing disappointment. Just how dumb are the software engineers, designers and marketeers at Sony E?

On the other hand, he seems to quite like the latest Nokia offerings.

Moving on to the iPhone, he has many of the same criticisms as other techies and industry commentators – but again like quite a few in the US he is using the phone anyway.

What is quite impressive is that for a blog with only one article, Stephen Fry has so far had 140 comments – hopefully that will persuade him to write more as I for one will certainly be reading.

Calendar/Contact Syncing, Computers/Technology, PocketPC

Thank Heavens for Sprite Backup

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This morning I had one of those real sinking feeling moments. I got to work, pulled out my Dell Axim PDA and plugged it into it’s cradle hooked up to my PC and rather than the usual screen was greeted with a big error message stating that there was memory corruption and asking me to press one of the buttons to continue. Pressing this caused the PDA to reboot, and then go through the first start-up screen calibration routine before dumping me at an empty today screen.

Now this isn’t the first time this has happened. The first time I had to reinstall all my applications, fix all the configuration – basically it was a long job. After that experience I looked around and bought a copy of Sprite Backup a bit of software that does a significantly better job of backing up a Pocket PC device than the included option. Every morning when I plug in my PDA it automatically takes a backup of the contents of the device – this morning I was very grateful that it did.

The only thing I had to install back onto my PDA was the Sprite Backup software, and then I just had to configure that to use the ActiveSync connection to talk to the other part of Sprite Backup on the PC. Then I just had to select my last daily backup and click the start button. Twenty minutes later after replacing all the missing files and putting back on all my settings the PDA rebooted and everything looked as it should. Then you only have to wait a few minutes whilst ActiveSync, which unfortunately decides that all the replaced contacts and calendar entries are new sorts itself out (just a question of letting it replace the data – the stuff in Outlook is probably more up to date than the backup anyway), and then everything is back to normal.

Seriously, if you’re running a Pocket PC PDA, something like Sprite Backup is an absolute life saver. True if you’re syncing your calendar and contacts to a desktop your information is relatively safe, but even then it still does take a lot longer to rebuild if you have to manually reinstall all your applications – Sprite Backup does the lot. The backup each morning is a bit annoying at times, but I’ll happily take that instead of the frustration when invariably the Pocket PC crashes.

Apple/Mac, Calendar/Contact Syncing, Computers/Technology, PocketPC, Web/Internet

iPod Touch – A MacOS X Based PDA?

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Yesterday I had a slightly strange experience -after being decidedly unenthusiastic at recent Apple Keynotes, I found myself getting decidedly excited at the new range of iPod’s that Steve Jobs announced yesterday – even finding the whole Starbucks thing exciting (until I realised that it was US only… 🙁 ).

The revamp of the existing range was pretty impressive, with more video support and a revamped user interface, and increased capacities across the board. The ringtones for the iPhone seemed pretty cool, but of course totally irrelevant for anybody outside the USA. Even if we did have it here, I’m not sure I’d be using it as a phone anyway as I much prefer a separate phone sized and shaped phone and PDA.

However, in the search for the ideal PDA, the iPod Touch did seem to be ticking a lot of boxes.

In simple terms, this device is an iPhone without the phone bit, so it retains the high quality touch screen, and also has the same software for playing songs and videos. This means that unlike any of my other portable devices it should play all my music. It also retains the Wi-Fi, and includes the same version of Safari found on the iPhone so web browsing should be an experience comparable to the N770 rather than being the usual cramped screen mobile experience. We won’t even mention the woeful excuse for a browser on my PocketPC device…

Looking at the icons in the demo the suite includes both the contact and calendar applications from the iPhone – although the big unanswered question is whether these are the full applications or read-only as on the other iPod’s.

The most notable absence is the e-mail application, although you can get around this using webmail applications. The reason for e-mail being missing is obviously to steer carefully around upsetting the phone networks, so in that vein there is no mention of the ability to hook up to a phone with Bluetooth.

So a real possibility as a PDA? I guess the jury is still out – will just have to wait and see, and head down to an Apple Store when they get released next month.

iPod touch originally uploaded by bvalium

Apple/Mac, Computers/Technology, PocketPC

Just to Clarify…

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With regards to the iPhone, exciting release – Yes, interesting product – Yes, big news for the mobile phone world – Yes, possibly purchase for yours truly – No. As to why, it’s too big for a day to day phone. If they did a MacOS X based PDA, then that would be attractive, but I’ve done the smartphone thing before and it doesn’t work for me. Having said that, even if the iPhone is more Newton than iPod I don’t think the competition can afford to wait to find out, so I’m expecting to see a good deal of innovation from them as they try to square up to Apple.

Calendar/Contact Syncing, Computers/Technology, PocketPC

How Difficult Can It Be?

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As you may well know, Office 2007 and Vista will shortly be available to businesses. Thanks to the Microsoft Developers Network, at work we’ve had copies since last week.

Whilst I was away in the USA, two of the other developers on my team parallel installed Office 2007 – although Vista is still limited to non-production machines. Feeling slightly left out, I thought I’d take a look at the new version of Office.

Having said that, I didn’t get far before I hit a snag, my version of ActiveSync. Until now I’ve been quite happily working with version 3.8. Although it was updated to version 4 – indeed I have a copy of version 4 on a machine here, it didn’t give any particular benefit going through the hassle of upgrading. However, looking through the requirements for Office 2007, it needed ActiveSync version 4.

So I went and grabbed the install of the latest version, and set it going. Aside from changing ActiveSync, nothing else was being changed at this point – same version of Outlook on the desktop, same PocketPC with Windows Mobile 2003 SE. The install detected that I was upgrading, no problem I thought…

Seems that it isn’t only MarkSpace that has trouble with synchronising. By the end of the process it had managed to duplicate over 400 entries in my diary, and created a stack of duplicate phone numbers in the contacts. If a system using Microsoft software throughout the process doesn’t work with just upgrading one element, I’m not surprised that third-party solutions struggle. Really, how difficult can it be to get a PDA/Desktop combination that works?

Anyway, based on that experience, plus the somewhat negative feedback from my colleagues about how the new Office interface, whilst being faster with a mouse is a pain to drive with the keyboard, I suspect I’ll be sticking with Office 2003 for the moment, despite some tempting new features. Thankfully using the compatibility tools I can read documents from the new suite as needed.