MobileViews Blog

I started the Windows Mobile Back to Basics blog series a month ago. Its purpose was to highlight the things about Windows Mobile that works. Why? Because it has been seriously outshadowed from a software point of view by both the iPhone and Google Android. And, I think aspects of hardware from Nokia have seriously passed by Windows Mobile (most notably in the area of digital photos and video).

Years ago Microsoft decided to abandon the consumer market leaving hardware manufacturers to try to figure out how to appeal to that group on their own. By focusing specifically on enterprises running Exchange Server, Microsoft also alienated power users not in an enterprise environment with Exchange Server. The comment below was made on the entry I wrote to kick off the Windows Mobile Back to Basics series. Can’t say I disagree with anything Mr. Moore says. I probably wouldn’t even have felt the need to point out Windows Mobile’s hidden strengths if Microsoft had kept developing Windows Mobile past their last significant release: Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition.

After 10 years of development the Windows Mobile platform is still in last place in the smartphone market. It’s behind Nokia, behind iphone, and now google has come out and is kicking Microsoft in the rear. Why? Because Microsoft never set out to make a great phone - they set out to extend the Windows desktop on the phone. Their charter within the company was to sell more exchange seats, not to make a great phone. The browser sucks, but they won’t put Opera on their phones for political reasons. The reality is that the Windows Mobile platform works good with exchange, but nothing else. IMAP support sucks, the browser sucks, the navigation is difficult and battery life is still less than good. Ironically, had the company been broken up years ago by the justice department, I think they may have been able to make a good phone….

Originally posted as a comment by Scott Moore on mediabistro.com: MobileAppsToday using Disqus.

The area I live in lost power last night at 6:30pm. Power wasn’t restored until 3pm this afternoon (21.5 hours later).

My landline stayed up, of course. So, communications was not a huge problem. My neighbor’s cable TV provide voice phone went down right away (also “of course”).

T-Mobile data services stayed up for a little while (under an hour perhaps?) but went down and stayed down until after power was restored. Since all my Windows Mobile smartphones and the Nokia N96 I’m using at the moment are on that service (1 SIM card that moves from device to device), that left the iPhone on AT&T Wireless’ service.

I didn’t have a chance to recharge the iPhone before the power outage started. But, fortunately, I had a pretty good charge. I turned off WiFi (GPS & Bluetooth were already turned off) to conserve the battery’s charge. I only used the iPhone sparingly over the next 21.5 hours often setting it to flight mode to maximize battery life.

More in my MobileAppsToday blog on this topic later.

I was just taking a look at the specs for the Dell Mini 12 netbook and noticed it uses the newer Atom Z530 processor instead of the N270 used in most of the popular netbooks that preceded it. While looking at its specs on Intel’s site…

Intel® Atom™ Processor Z530 (512K Cache, 1.60 GHz, 533 MHz FSB)

…I noticed that the box for the Intel® Virtualization Technology was checked for this processor. The N270 does not support hardware virtualization assist. This might mean that virtualization hypervisors, like Microsoft Virtual PC and VirtualBox, that support hardware virtualization assist may get a performance boost when run on Z530 based netbooks.

If you only have 1GB of RAM, you will need to choose Guest OS platforms carefully. But, you should be able to run lightweight OSes like Puppy Linux, Xubuntu, Windows 98SE, and Windows 2000 easily in Guest OS with 256MB RAM allocated to it.

I’m planning to buy a new netbook for Windows 7 Beta testing. So, I’m definitely going to look for netbooks with the Z530 processor now.

I bought…

Batman: The Dark Knight (Two-Disc Special Edition + Digital Copy) (2008)

…the other day. The 2nd disc contains a digital copy suitable for use with mobile devices. I went through the activation process using iTunes on a Mac.

The activation process was painless. I was a bit confused when I saw iTunes tell me it was downloading the movie after that. However, I soon realized that it was “downloading” the digital movie from the DVD and not the net. After this download process completed, I plugged my iPhone into the Mac and copied the movie over to it. There wasn’t any problem or additional steps above (activation-wise) to copy and view the movie to the iPhone.

I posted a podcast of myself, Linda Barrabee (MobileContent/MarketingToday) and Michael Gartenberg (MobileDevicesToday) earlier today. You can find it at:

Mobile [Apps| Devices| Content| Marketing] Today Joint Podcast #2

I turned off the iPhone 3G’s assisted GPS feature (Location Services) for the past two days and noticed a huge battery life improvement. My 3G’s battery life was not too bad to begin with. It seemed to last all day even with GPS turned on. But, with GPS turned off, battery life looks much better.

I had a great discussion with Windows Mobile expert Frank McPherson (PocketPCHow2.com) about his experience using the T-Mobile G1 (Google Android) smartphone since its release. You can find the podcast (with embedded web player) here:

MobileAppsToday Podcast: T-Mobile G1/Google Android Discussion with Windows Mobile Expert Frank McPherson

TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington makes some interesting points in…

Three Reasons Why Netbooks Just Aren’t Good Enough

I think I agree with his basic point that netbooks are NOT notebook replacements. But, I disagree with the rationale given. Here are his main points and my issues with them.

1. Arrington says netbooks are underpowered: The question is what does he mean by underpowered? Underpowered for what? Video processing? Yep. Heavy PhotoShop use? Yep. 3D graphics intensive games? Yep, again. But, what about what netbooks are presumably designed for: Web browsing, email, word processing, small to medium size spreadsheets, etc. The netbooks I’ve tried perform these tasks just fine. Quite frankly, the Atom processors in the Acer Aspire One and Asus Eee PC 1000H I have are plenty fast compared to desktop and notebook PCs I used a couple of years ago back when I was using Windows XP and Linux. Oh wait, what am I running today on my netbooks? Hey, I’m still using Windows XP and Linux. Does that mean all the desktops and notebooks I used prior to the emergence of the Core 2 Duo were unacceptable too? Perhaps, but I do not think so.

2. Arrington says netbook screens are too small for effective web surfing: The TechCrunch piece keeps talking about 7 inch screens. Except for the first Asus Eee PCs that came out, most current generation netbooks (starting around this past summer) comes with 8.9 inch or 10 inch displays. And, the resolution has gone up from 800×400 to 1024×600. Yes, 600 vertical pixels seems a little low to me sometimes too. But, I don’t find myself scrolling horizontally with a 1024 wide display. My Asus Eee PC 1000H with its 10 inch screen is the netbook that is on the road (and air) with me all the time these days. It is more than fine for web browsing. And, yes, I’m using it right now to write and edit this blog entry (which is getting kind of long).

3. Arrington says netbook keyboards are too small for effective typing: Again, it depends on which netbook you are using. Yes, the original Asus Eee PCs with the 7 inch screen and proportiately small keyboards are too small for many adult hands. But, I’ve found the keyboard on the Acer and Asus netbooks I’ve used for the past couple of months quite good for typing. I can touch type on both keyboards and maintain what seems to me to be a normal touch typing speed.

So, while I don’t recommend rendering video, running PhotoShop with large images, or working on a spreadsheet with thousands of rows on a netbook, I’ve found it perfectly fine for what it was designed for: Web browsing, email, light image editing (I use The GIMP), and light to medium word processing and other office document work.

Michael Gartenberg (Jupitermedia VP & Editor of MobileDevicesToday.com and I (I’m editor of MobileAppsToday.com) recorded our first joint podcast. I posted it up yesterday. You can hear it using the embedded player above. I posted show-notes (of sorts over on MobileAppsToday.com.

I’ve been a full-time blogger for 3 months now (check out my day job blog MobileAppsToday.com). I’m pretty happy to be working alone and uninterrupted most of the time. But, it is nice to interact with real people now and then too. Although I used Twitter before making this job-lifestyle change, it has become invaluable as my virtual water cooler weather working at home or on the road (with netbook and smartphone(s) in tow).

I maintain a locked personal Twitter account to talk/tweet with people I actually know for this purpose. It was one of the smartest things I’ve done, I think. I also have a public Twitter account to mostly talk about my work and tweet with people I don’t know personally. You can find this public account at:

twitter.com/toddogasawara

Ha! I noticed Michael Gartenberg, who is my blog-neighbor MobileDevicesToday (I edit MobileAppsToday), asked…

Is the Zune the Rodney Dangerfield of technology?

Then, Roy Furchgott on The New York Times said…

Google Phone Is the New Zune

So, I guess…

T-Mobile G1 == Zune == Rodney Dangerfield

I was just reading a good review of the new Celio Redfly C8N terminal companion for Windows Mobile smartphones over on Brighthand…

Celio Redfly C8N Review

It looks like Celio listened to potential customers who told them their $500 price for the original model was way too high for a dumb terminal. The new C8N comes in at a more reasonable $299 (but still too high, IMHO). There’s also a smaller model for $229 (also too high). For $299 you get a dumb terminal that provides an 800×400 view into your Windows Mobile smartphone, a decent keyboard, and the ability (with an additional $20 cable) to watch videos from an iPod or Zune (or other media player).

If you spend another $40, you can get an Asus Eee PC 904 with a 1024×600 display, 1GB RAM, 160GB HD, and a 6-cell battery. It does not have Bluetooth. But, you can add one via a USB dongle very inexpensively or step up to another model like the Eee PC 1000H (what I use) for $479 and get a 10-inch display as well as Bluetooth. And, oh yes, it also has an SDHC card reader built in so I can read photos off my camera. And, wait, it has a 160GB hard drive so I can backup my photos while on the road. And, what’s this? 802.11n WiFi too? And since you can run Windows XP or Linux (or Mac OS X for that matter), I can use a real browser like Firefox instead of IE4 Mobile Minus for web browsing. And, yes, I can tether my Windows Mobile T-Mobile Dash smartphone to it either using Bluetooth or a USB cable.

It would make a lot more sense for Celio to become a software vendor that enables low-end netbooks like the Acer Aspire One ($329 for the flash storage-only, 3-cell battery model) to become Windows Mobile terminals. It would remove the all the issues surrounding hardware manufacturing and distribution and become a nimble firm with a use software product.