Category: Pocket PC/Phone Edition

Windows Mobile Pocket PC (Phone Edition) and Smartphone users have at least six broad techniques to work with email. The problem is finding one that works the way you do (or would like to).

• Microsoft Outlook Sync: This is the way most of us used to deal with email on Pocket PCs in the old days. Unfortunately, this tethers us to the PC running Outlook. There was some relief in the ability to use ActiveSync over WiFi until that option was removed with the introduction of Windows Mobile 5 and ActiveSync 4.
• Microsoft Exchange Server: If you are fortunate enough to have a mobile-enabled Exchange server and support staff help you with your device, this is a pretty good option. But, I suspect that this is not an option for many of us. There are some web/mail host services that provide Exchange Server services to individuals, however.
• Proprietary Client: A number of these are popping up these days. Good Technology for enterprise solutions probably comes to mind. But, there are also add-on clients from Google and Microsoft itself. I’m not a fan of this solution. It is just one more piece of software to take up valuable RAM space on my Pocket PC or Smartphone. And, it is redundant since we already have Inbox.
• Webmail:  This is an if-fy area. Some work, some kind-of work, and some just don’t work at all. Of the big three (Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!), I like Yahoo!’s mobile web email solution the best. However, it is also the only one that does not have session persistence. So, I am forever slowly and painfully entering my account name and password.
• POP3: Windows Mobile Inbox retrieves POP3 email fairly well. The problem is that email maangement doesn’t seem to work (at least for me). Deleting email does not delete from the server (though some people say it deletes things they want to  keep). Sent mail is not saved. And, if you like to keep lots of email on the server, don’t try to send email from Windows Mobile Inbox using SMTP. Everytime you try to send email, Inbox will try to check all the POP3 email first (hundreds or thousands of messages) before sending email out through the SMTP gateway. Google’s Gmail provides POP3 support. Yahoo! provides POP3 support if you upgrade to Yahoo! Mail Plus for $19.95/year. And, I still have no idea what happened to Microsoft’s Hotmail/Live Mail. It kind of sort of works with Inbox. But, it doesn’t look like POP3 to me.
• IMAP4: This work moderately well though delete and savings sent mail doesn’t work for me. However, sending mail using SMTP works as expected (mail goes out without rechecking the server’s incoming mail again). This is my personal preference for Windows Mobile email service.

 

 

Akihabara is the part of Tokyo known as Electric City where nearly every floor of every store is crammed with electronic goodies.. Every gadget geek should try to make a pilgrimage there at least once in a lifetime. You’ll see things in Akihabara, and Japan in general, that never get outside of Japan and is miles ahead of what we see in places like the U.S. A good way to keep up with the goings-on there is to read…

Akihabara News

…which has news and commentary in the English language. A recent redesign lost the PDA formatted pages. But, fortunately, a tweak to their new design restored it. And, the announcement specifically states that: AkihabaraNews Mobile was designed for Windows Mobile 5 (and previous versions). Just use the link above on your Pocket PC Phone Edition or Smartphone. It automatically detects the PIE browser and reformats the page appropriately.

You can find an article I wrote for O’Reilly’s MacDevCenter about my trip to Japan back in 2005 to get an idea of what a tech geek can expect when visiting that amazing country.

Japan Primer for the Mac Techno-Tourist

 

Fellow Microsoft Mobile Devices MVP Jaap van Ekris has an article to help you get started with 2007 on his MobileNomads.info site…

Get more out of your day using a PDA

The article focuses on maximizing what you get out of the PIM (Personal Information Management) and Communications features of your PDA.

After reading Jaap’s article, you might want to consider visiting an article I wrote for Microsoft.com last year…

Get Organized with Windows Mobile

In it I point you to some third party applications you can add to your Windows Mobile Pocket PC or Smartphone to organize your life in 2007.

Have a safe and happy New Year everyone! And, thank you for visiting MobileViews.com (and maybe even clicking on the ad links or buying from the Amazon affiliate store to help support this site).

Microsoft sometimes releases stable but unsupported utilities for Microsoft Windows on your desktop or notebook. They sometimes do the same thing for Windows Mobile devices. One Windows Mobile PowerToy that was released just last month is…

Windows Mobile Network Analyzer PowerToy

Microsoft describes it as: Network Analyzer for Windows Mobile runs network utilities, for example ping and ipconfig, on a Windows Mobile powered device. Network Analyzer for Windows Mobile facilitates the troubleshooting of network connectivity issues. You can extend the harness. You can add user-defined tests (DLLs) to the list of tests to be executed. An xml input file defines the list of tests to execute. You can use Network Analyzer to send information about network traffic to a .cap file. You can then view the .cap file with the Network Monitor tool or the Ethereal tool.

As a supporter of the Open Source paradigm, I was pleasantly amused to note that the output is intended for use with the Open Source Ethereal network protocol analyzer.

I haven’t tried this myself. But, it looks interesting with a beta-level of support for Windows Mobile 5 Pocket PCs and Smartphones.

Total Commander

Version 2.0 is freeware. There is also a shareware version 6.55a. Total Commander provides a rich set of file handling features, a text editor, and ftp client (among other features).