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Thoughts and things I care to share

Windows Mobile 5

Been investigating Windows Mobile 5 Pocket PC Phone Edition, and I must say that as soon as more devices are on the market, I’ll have to pick one up.
The new operating system has many changes from previous versions, mostly in stability and UI enhancements. The most striking addition is the soft keys at the bottom of the screen. These have been on most cell phones for awhile and make the PPC more usable for a phone than it was in the past.
Another new "feature" for WM5 is the requirement of ActiveSync 4.0. This version of AS seems to have some issues with creating a partnership, and also with different Windows XP configurations! MS needs to address this as a #1 priority.
Other neat updates are WMP 10, better Bluetooth support, better WiFi support, better connectivity for tethering as a modem, and much more in the network department.
At the most basic level in the OS, a major change was to move to non-volatile storage. This is also similar to what most cell phones have been using for a long time. Everything in memory is not lost if the battery goes dead. In previous incarnations of the OS and its supported devices, there needed to be constant power applied to the memory. That is a nice change – it also has the positive affect of making more power available for the same battery capacity. Previously in WM, the system had to reserve a certain percentage of battery life to keep the memory contents over a 3 day period – and would even tell the user that the battery was empty when it was not, just to support this requirement. Now, that need is not there and that remaining power can now be used by the user for additional run-time.
Finding all the new features will take time, but there are a slew of people investigating the new OS and posting all over the enthusiast sites about tweaks and settings that improve the OS.
Lots of fun.

Push Email…

The opportunity to try out an Exchange 2003 "push" email account presented itself this past week. I’ve signed up for a two week trial account at www.4smartphone.com. The system sends an SMS message to my phone which then starts an ActiveSync session with the 4Smartphone email servers. Neat stuff!

Mobile Posting

Another mobile post. I’m posting from my Pocket PC while mobile again.

Microsoft Word 2007 Beta 2 First Look

Yep, this post is going up from Word 2007 directly to my blog. If the blog-posting features of Word are enhanced a bit, I will definitely start using it for major post creation.

The overall quality of Office 2007 so far is impressive. I’ve been testing Vista for awhile, but this was my first look at the Office 2007 betas. Neat stuff, though you can see some rough edges. Performance is OK and should be improved as it approaches release.

Currently, there are no extra features for blog-posting to WordPress, though I do expect that they will start to work on these soon. For example, categories are not supported directly from Word yet, and they claim that the post date is incorrect (I’ll check when I post [UPDATE: The post date was way off!]).

The last time I used an off-line tool to write and then publish a post, it would break my page layout (theme), so I’m hoping that Word doesn’t do this; though I will risk it just to test the functionality.

So far, I am impressed with the current build, the new tool bars are extremely easy to understand and use right away & I think these are the single best improvement to the Office suite.

More on the product later!

 

Beta 2 of Office 2007 & Vista

Hey, I just want to point out to anyone who is trying to download either Windows Vista Beta 2 or Office 2007 Beta 2 that the download servers are getting hit hard. I’ve read some comments around the blogosphere that MS did not plan well for the release, that there should have been more servers dedicated to the release.

Well that’s all well and good to whine & complain express your viewpoint, but I’d like to see most any project manager try to gauge the market interest in beta software and plan accordingly. Especially when there are so many people talking trash voicing their concern about your products; it gets hard to scope out the potential number of downloads, times, d/l rates, the increase in broadband connections from the last major d/l offered, etc… There are dozens of constantly changing variables in planning for a release like this, and it is nearly impossible to get it 100% at the ‘launch’ & I don’t care who you are or what you produce and sell.

You know, for so many people criticizing Microsoft on their disappointment in the Vista feature set, or their business practices, or whatever other ‘evil’ is credited to them, it is impressive that there are so many people trying out the next versions of their core products. Myself, I’m not surprised & Microsoft has made several significant changes in the last few years. I’ve seen it in the quality of software, timeliness of security patches & updates, the openness of the company, and the helpfulness of the employees that I’ve worked with on a few projects.

Now that so many people are getting Office B2 and Vista B2 to ‘test” & here is my $.02 for you. This is your chance to improve the product. The next few months while Beta 2 gets polished into release candidates, and ultimately RTM & you have the chance to improve the product.

Do you remember all the things in XP, 2000, or NT that drove you nuts? What if you would have had the chance to at least point them out to MS, so there may have been some focus on the issue before you bought the software. Take this opportunity to submit your feedback to MS & all the contact info is on the Office Beta 2 and Vista Beta 2 websites.

Now! enjoy!

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Be of good courage.

God bless America.

Long live the republic.

Sootch00

Lessons cost money. Good one's cost lots.

Tony Beets

Hard times make strong men.

Strong men make good times.

Good times make weak men.

Weak men make hard times.

Unknown

You're only worth what you're willing to work for.

Wranglerstar

You can watch things happen, you can make things happen, or you can wonder what happened.

Capt. Phil Harris

People say I have an issue with control... I say, as long as I have it, there is no issue.

Unknown

Mistakes are just success training.

DarwinOnTheTrail

Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.

Unknown

No man is a complete failure. He can always be used as a bad example.

Unknown

You're either the mouse or the lion. Time to find out which one.

Sue Aikens

Failure is always an option.

Adam Savage

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