Category: Pocket PC/Phone Edition

Most non-geeky, non-techie people (if you are reading this, you are a tech geek, btw), seem to know how to distinquish the different Apple iPod models. The shuffle doesn’t have a screen. The nano is the little one with a screen The iPod (now iPod classic) is the big one. And, the touch… well you can touch its screen on purpose. It is the iPhone without the phone (for the most part). You don’t need to go into engineering or design philosophy details to distinguish the various models. And, note that the distinguishing names are all in lower case: shuffle, nano, classic, touch.

Now look (literally) at the Windows Mobile Standard Edition and Windows Mobile Professional Edition. You practically need to be an engineer to sufficiently distinguish the two devices past the touch non-touch dimension because the Professional Edition is not a true superset of the Standard Edition. The Pro Edition is actually missing a few features that are in the Standard. And, quick, look at the photo above and figure out which is the Standard and which is the Professional in under 1 second (the time it would take to distinguish between iPod models).

What is the deal with the Standard and Professional designations anyway? Is the Standard Edition for non-professionals? That’s the implication from the names, isn’t it? Microsoft needs to rethink this whole branding campaign. The previous Smartphone vs. Pocket PC Phone Edition was much easier for the average consumer to figure out (though still way to wordy) that Standard vs. Professional. The first thing they should do is create a secondary branding using WiMo instead of Windows Mobile just to shorten that part of the name. Then, they need to shorten the device category names to something like WiMo Touch (Pocket PCs with touch screens) and WiMo Phone (no touch screen) or WiMo One (one-handed Smartphone operations) and WiMo Two (two-handed Pocket PC operation). Or, how about WiMo Pocketphone and WiMo Smartphone? It would be a lot easier for non-techies to remember and cut down the typing and awkward sentences in articles and blogs 🙂

Lotus Notes Traveler is scheduled for release sometime in 2008 (screen shot above obtained from IBM’s site). The big deal about this IBM product is that it will, for the first time, provide native Windows Mobile connectivity to Lotus Notes. I wonder, though, how widely accepted this will be buy Lotus Notes support staff may be very unfamiliar with Windows Mobile devices. And, I wonder how it will affect the long available CommonTime products that seem to currently be the product line of choice to get Lotus Notes and Windows Mobile devices working together.

OK, this one is for the Windows Mobile developers out there…

Power Toys for .NET Compact Framework 3.5

…was released on Sept. 12. The various toys focus on diagnostics and performance evaluation. The Known Issues list is quite long. So, be sure to read through the list before using the Power Toys.

I was just thinking about Mel Sampat’s clever OutSync that I blogged about yesterday. Microsoft obviously has some bright and talented software developers in its ranks. And, you know what? I think none of them should be involved in cutting a single line of code for clever stuff like OutSync? Why? Microsoft should be focusing its energies on just two problems: First, fix the horror that should not be named but instead has two names: ActiveSync and Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC). This has been broken since Windows CE Services 2.0 (1.0 was actually pretty stable) for a decade now and needs to be fixed. Second, Internet Explorer. IE for Windows Mobile is damaged goods. Operamini gives a much better visual experience but suffers from its Java roots that creates a keyboard navigation problem for those of us who expect certains keys (like Back) to behave a certain way. Who know what happened to the Microsoft Labs SeaDragon project? It made a splash and then disappeared.

In the meantime, the Apple iPod touch is on its way to customers in the next three or four weeks. And, since a lot of Windows Mobile users already carry an iPod for their music and video, it isn’t much of leap to think some percentage (like me) will swap out their old iPod for an iPod touch and start playing with Safari on it. From what I’ve seen on the iPhone, it looks like a pretty good mobile browsing experience.

Microsoft’s Mel Sampat released a free utility called OutSync that syncs your Facebook contacts’ photos with Outlook. The side-effect for Windows Mobile users is that the photos become attached and visible to contacts on a smartphone. Of course, I consider ActiveSync and WMDC so flaky that I refuse to add anything that might even slightly upset the delicate balance and duct tape that appears to keep sync working for me (some of the time, anyway).

You can watch a video demo of this on on10.net.