Author: todd

The wraps are off of Windows Mobile 6 (WM6). Other sites will give it much fuller coverage than I will. So, I won’t focus on new features. If you want to read about that and see more screenshots, take a look at some of the items on the Pocket PC Thoughts site as well as many other great sites that focus on Windows Mobile. ModernNomads, for example, has a detailed WM6 description for you to read in the article What will Windows Mobile 6 bring for the highly mobile people?
My limited experience with WM6 left me lukewarm. I suspect it is because I am not a Microsoft Exchange Server user. From a non-enterprise user perspective, WM6 will probably seem like Windows Mobile 5 Second Edition: Nice little enhancements, a smattering of new features in the mail and PIM areas, and a slightly different start page look.

With WM6 devices set to roll out after the Apple iPhone, WM6 may look like less of an upgrade by the time devices get past the FCC, through the carriers’ test cycles, and actually are available for purchase by consumers and businesses. Businesses, especially those using Exchange Server, will definitely prefer a Windows Mobile 6 device to the Apple iPhone. They won’t be limited to a single carrier (only Cingular will carry the iPhone), be able to add custom applications, have a wide-base of third-party applications to choose from, and have reasonably well documented practices to manage the devices in an enterprise setting.

But for consumers? That will be interesting. Although we’ve heard howls of protest at the iPhone’s $499 and $599 price points, consider this… The Cingular 8525 and Palm Treo 750 (both touch screen Windows Mobile 5 devices) cost $399.99 (after subsidizing is figured in). That is not much less than the lower-end iPhone. And, neither one has 4GB of storage like the low-end iPhone.

What do you consider to be your master calendar? Your PDA or your desktop calendar? For many of us, the answer is clearly our PDA (or phone). It is always with us and the most likely thing to be updated first. But, for many of us this rule more a 95/5 rule rather than a 100/0 rule. If you use a Windows Mobile Smartphone or Pocket PC, watch out for this gotcha…

I sometimes create an event using Microsoft Outlook on my desktop. This usually happens for an event with a lot of information that I’m copying and pasting from email or a vCal file. Sounds reasonable, right? But, what do you think happened in the following situation?

1. I created an appointment for the next day in Outlook on my desktop
2. I synced my Windows Mobile Smartphone with the desktop
3. The appointment is now on the Smartphone
4. Early the next morning I was told that the meeting was postponed until tomorrow
5. I changed the date for the event to the next day and checked to make sure the change was visible on the Smartphone
6. The Smartphone was then synced to the same desktop with Outlook again.

What do you think happened? If you guessed that the desktop Outlook appointment setting took precedent over my Smartphone and changed the event on the Smartphone back to the now wrong day, you guessed correctly. Try this yourself. I can reproduce this on various generations of Windows Mobile devices.

The moral is that you might think that your Pocket PC or Smartphone is your master calendar. But, ActiveSync has other ideas. Changes made to a calendar appointment on a Windows Mobile device only sticks after ActiveSync if the event was originally created on the device. It unsticks and reverts to the original date/time if the event was created using Outlook. Yuck.

I installed Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC) 1.0 on a PC running Windows Vista Ultimate Edition. You can find an illustrated guide through the WMDC partnership creation process at…

Illustrated WMDC Partnership Creation

Couple of quick notes before you click on the link above…

Installing WMDC took a very long time… Many minutes. I have no idea why this process took so long. Other applications have not taken very long to install under Windows Vista. To make matters worse, the installation process instructed me to reboot after it completed. ActiveSync (such as it is) did not require a reboot after installation.

The process of partnering (see Step 4 in the illustrated guide) also took a long long time (many minutes). This is not too unusual for Windows Mobile 5 devices. But, I was synching with a Windows Mobile 2003 device which normally does not take as long to create a partnership.

The menus have a kind of hybrid Xbox/Vista look. Lots of white space (or green space as the case may be). I would prefer a set of legacy pull-down menu lists going across the top or a ribbon navigator like Office 2007 apps. It would be much faster to navigate.

The decision to go with a Xbox-y consumerish WMDC design doesn’t make sense since Microsoft is aiming their Windows Mobile device at the Enterprise (vs. the Apple iPhone consumer market).

That said, the process was reasonably smooth (though very slow). I did, however, get a bunch of duplicate recurring events in my calendar. WMDC did not ask how it wanted me to handle events in the Outlook 2007 calendar in relation to the existing items in the Smartphone’s calendar. I also see a small number of duplicated contacts in my Contacts list.

Microsoft took away ActiveSync over the network (wired and wireless) a few versions ago and did not give it back with Windows Mobile Device Center. But, the sometimes flaky USB connection is not your only alternative.

My K-JAM Pocket PC Phone Edition, for example, syncs on the first attempt over USB. But, it somehow corrupts ActiveSync on the desktop for subsequent syncs unless I reboot my PC (and, yes, I’ve tried terminating and restarting the ActiveSync service). None of my other Windows Mobile devices causes this problem. Just the K-JAM. My solution has been sync the K-JAM using Bluetooth exclusively. This does not corrupt ActiveSync for subsequent sync sessions. The only downside is that I need to initiate ActiveSync from the K-JAM.

The GeekZone has detailed information on setting this up….

Bluetooth ActiveSync Guide for Windows XP Service Pack 2

If you have ActiveSync Bluetooth issues, take a look at this Microsoft Bluetooth FAQ…

Frequently asked questions about Microsoft Bluetooth-enabled devices

In my previous blog entry, I pointed out the two download links for the 32-bit and 64-bit veresions of the Vista replacement for ActiveSync. Here’s a link to its home web site…

Windows Mobile Device Center

It’s interesting that the full name for the software is Windows Mobile Device Center 6. Something to match up with an unreleased Windows Mobile 6, perhaps (we are currently at Windows Mobile 5 release)?

There’s a link to a WMDC troubleshooting page. One interesting note on this page is that while pre-WM2003 devices are not supported as partnered devices, you can still browse the ancient device and copy files.

I haven’t installed WMDC on my Vista PC yet. But, you can read what I have learned from installing Windows Vista Ultimate Edition on a cheap ($500) PC on another personal blog of mine: TO-Tech.com/blog.