I still get a chuckle out of the name Windows Mobile Device – isn’t the acronym for that WMD? Sometimes I think my mobile device is closely related to a weapon of mass destruction. Oh that’s right -- after that guffaw, Microsoft renamed the product Microsoft Mobile Device.
Some background here. I had one of the early Compaq Pocket PCs, and bulky as is was, I really liked it. It had 128MB of RAM, I could edit documents and spreadsheets, I could copy and paste, it synchronized with my computer and was much easier to carry around than a laptop … I had my contacts and my entire calendar on it. It was a great PDA.
Of course, my PDA wasn’t a phone – that was a separate device. And it didn’t do networking well – the original PocketPCs used something called a “sleeve” where you could slide in functionality as you needed it – a network card or a modem, for instance.
Of course, as time went on, its lack of functionality and ultimately lack of compatibility with the newer versions of ActiveSync became the death toll for my Compaq PDA. When the United States adapted extended daylight savings time in 2007, my PocketPC didn’t know how to adjust, and it couldn’t use a version of ActivesSync that would tell it what to do. Resetting my calendar back and forth between the “new” and “old” daylight saving times was a bit tedious.
So, I got an early birthday present last December, a brand new Smartphone running Windows Mobile 6.0. My particular flavor is a T-Mobile Wing, which actually is a HTC Herald / P4350.
The Wing has a smaller footprint than the Compaq, has all the features of a PDA and a phone, what more could I ask? Actually, quite a bit more. (Click on page 2, below, for my wish list.)
Kerrie Meyler, a Microsoft MOM MVP, is an independent consultant and trainer with more than 15 years of Information Technology experience. A previous senior technology specialist at Microsoft, she focused on infrastructure and management solutions, presenting at numerous product launches. More recently, she presented on Operations Manager 2007 and gave several podcasts at TechEd 2007.
Kerrie has worked with Microsoft Learning to develop Microsoft Official Curriculum (MOC) for several courses, including the Implementing Microsoft Operations Manager 2000 course, and did the beta teach for that course.
Kerrie is the lead author of Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Unleashed and Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed
Check out an excerpt from System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed, Chapter 3: Looking Inside OpsMgr.
The opinions expressed in this Weblog are those of the writer and may not represent the opinions of Network World.
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What are you running?
Kerrie,
I'm a VERY heavy user of my Windows mobile device. I check and respond to 30-50 emails per day, write or edit proposals in both Word and Excel, use the device as a wireless modem, an SSH terminal, and of course a phone everyday. My memory usage rarely goes above 10MB. In fact, my current usage is at 7.02MB. I have the Samsung i760 which comes with a bit more memory, 60MB and 55MB respectively but I haven't see a need for more of either. I keep my contacts in local memory and everything else on a 2GB microSD card.
I'm wondering if you just need to spend a little more time with the device to get to know its quirks. The memory issue, if you really do need more, is a hardware issue, not directly related to it being a Windows Mobile Device. Hard to blame MSFT for a choice made by HTC. The hardware vendor could have included 3x as much memory, but they didn't but you knew that when you got the phone.
The only real complaint I have with mine is its inability to read Office 2007 formatted documents. It's a significant issue as more and more folks move to Office 2007, but enough folks are still on 2003 that my request for a resend in a 2003 format doesn't seem out of place.
What am I running?
As I said in my post, Not much. I don't use the media player, I don't use Internet Explorer. I use the phone of course, contacts, calendar, send and receive email. I've also used the phone as a wireless modem and like the way that works.
I've done a little research and there appear to be known problems, including memory leaks. I recently rebooted my Wing and it got into an infinite loop of rebooting and never getting past that - another problem people have experienced. At this point my memory had mysteriously gone down to .20 MB available, and all that had happened in the interim was funning ActiveSynch and charging my phone. :(
I did a hard reset amd started all over again. I now have 21.78MB available storage, 10.24MB program memory. This for some reason is more than I have had since the first time I put my PIM file on my Wing last year. ... if there really is a memory leak, the amount of storage memory should lessen over time, so I'll keep an eye on it. It has frozen once or twice already, even with the extra memory, but so far is is more reliable than previously.
And no actually I didn't know the hardware vendor could have included 3x as much memory. I checked all the devices available from T-Mobile before buying the phone, and the Wing seemed to be the best available - Windows Mobile 6 instead of 5, nice keypad/slider etc,
Kerrie Meyler
RMA
It sounds to me like you might have a lemon. You shouldn't have any of those issues. My Audiovox XV6600, on WM 5, I had to reboot daily due to freezes and memory leaks but my i760 (WM 6, and recently upgraded to WM6.1) has been completely trouble-free. I reboot it about once a week just on general principle but it rarely "needs" it.
I have a few friends with the Wing. I know one is on her third one (RMA replacements) but I ask around to see if anyone else is having similiar issues.
iPhone 3G users aren't getting speed they are shown
Apple's commercial about 3G grossly overstates the speed of using an iPhone on a 3G network. False or misleading advertising?
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/31436
Mitchell Ashley
Converging Network, LLC
Personal blog: http://theconvergingnetwork.com
Personal podcast: http://www.clickcaster.com/ss
WinMob ain't essential
Of course, you don't have to use WinMob in order to edit MS-Office files. I use a Nokia E65, which is a Symbian Series 60 smartphone, and there's third-party apps for this to edit Word, Excel and Powerpoint - plus of course there's several ways to get push email on it.
It has the advantage from my perspective that it's designed as a clever phone, not as an attempt to squash a desktop user interface into a very small device. It's certainly a lot more portable than anything PDA-derived - and I say that as a long-term Palm user who's now a smartphone convert! It's pretty darn stable, too.
For simply reading documents or writing short messages, I use the phone's keypad, but for anything longer I've a folding Bluetooth keyboard.
In short, Microsoft is not the answer to everything in IT... (-:
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