the HTC Shift is nearly here

HTC push the boundaries of the UMPC form factor

well it seems they’ve done it again, those innovative people over at HTC have come up with another market beater. this time it’s the HTC Shift.

I snagged the info via Tracy and Matt who seem to be the getting the skinny first on quite a few devices these days Matt snagged it from  Hugo Ortega over at Uber tablet got hold of one of the first ones in Australia. the video is pure techno porn, minus the money shot (just)

The device specs are pretty impressive a 40 Gig HDD with HSDPA built in, Biometrics, WiFi, GPS and all in a lovely package. the shift has   dual RAM and processors – why ? you ask because it supports….

Windows Mobile 6 professional  AND Windows Vista Business

yes…   

Windows Mobile 6 professional  AND Windows Vista Business

AT THE SAME TIME!

Oh and for eye candy it supports Aero as well.

A while ago I mused on the blurring  of the line between the benefits of a full desktop OS and the rapid on off of Windows Mobile the inevitable power versus speed trade off that would inform your OS choice, well in one fell swoop HTC have blown this line to smithereens.  

Hugo describes the alternative environment as a kind of sideshow, which it isn’t, the Shift  has a full Windows Mobile 6  Professional environment, wrapped up in the HTC today skin, as seen on the Touch. With WM 6 pro of course you get Office Mobile, you get IE Mobile, you’ll get Windows Live and with exchange activesync you have near instant access to all your everyday applications, mail, calendar and contacts  in fact, all the benefits you have from a standard WM  device now with a 5 day battery life.

Switch to vista and you have a full blown operating system with all the regular applications you might need, yeah battery life drops to 3 hours but hell you’re running Vista.

The only oddity is the cellular,  apparently it’s data only, but I can’t see why using the SDK someone couldn’t write a fairly comprehensive phone application.

remember this is a UMPC but it’s a world beating UMPC, HTC innovation has done it again a unique solution to the greatest dilemma facing the mobile professional today….. Windows Mobile or Windows Vista ? ..forget it  get a Shift, I know I am and I’m going to get one as soon as humanly possible.

the only downside, I know hundreds of users that would benefit from this and I guarantee the product will be in constraint before  the day it hits the shelves.

well done HTC  very well done,  a peach of a product, a peach that’s going to have those apple fanboys green with envy !!!

it’s available for via Expansys on preorder for £740 +VAT sans contract.

Technorati Tags: HTC, UMPC, Shift, Iwant I want I want, technlogy

Orange Unique and Blackberry

Orange to launch the BlackBerry 8820 – UMA and email in a single device

Orange have announced that they will be launching the  BlackBerry 8820 will be at the end of July which   will replace the BlackBerry 8800 in Orange’s portfolio.

The 8820 is a revamped 8800 that offers all the  functionality of the 8800  and combines it with UMA  (The ability to use WiFi VoIP and Cellular in the same device). The 8820 therefor supports Orange’s  Unique offering where home workers can roam onto Orange’s Unique VoIP service via the Internet through their Orange Broadband connection when in their home location.

email on the go and UMA is a great feature, HP have combined the options in the iPAQ 514 Voice Communicator (still waiting HP!!) on the Windows Mobile 6 Platform so it’s good to see RIM following suite for those Blackberry users out there

Interestingly Orange Caveat the Unique service as follows  

Please note that the Unique/Homeworker proposition offers users the ability to continue to make voice calls when in the home, irrespective of GSM coverage, using WiFi/Orange Broadband. It may however be subject to busy periods as with all broadband connections. Customers are therefore advised to trial the solution before committing to large rollouts.

Which hints that they might be having capacity problems, I don’t use the service myself but would be interested in any Orange customer experiences of problems in this service.

I think the jury is still out on the whether UMA or Pico Cells will be the best technology to provide local roaming so any user experiences are of great interest to me.

remember Rabbit anyone ?

Technorati Tags: Blackberry, 8820, RIM, UMA, Pico Cell, VoIP

 

Blackberry and Exchange Total Cost of Ownership White Paper

real world experiences qualify a lab based paper

Jason has posted a link to the new revised RIM v’s Microsoft TCO white paper, which has been updated to include interviews with actual enterprise users of both technologies.

The original paper’s findings  back in 2005 were validated by interviewing a very small sample of 10 RIM users and  Microsoft and WiPro have extended the interviews to 160 enterprise users of one or the other mobility solutions.

the user communities of the interviewees are large, averaging over 50,000 email users with over 10,000 mobile devices.

to be honest this revision doesn’t move the debate forward all that far, it does give some insight into actual experience of users which can be supported per server in a BES environment and there are a few assumptions I’m not all that comfortable with, such as the comparative data plan costs in either environment and the relative support costs.

One of the interesting facts is that 89% of Blackberry respondents used Outlook web access before mobile deployment with only 88% of Windows Mobile respondents, following deployment the RIM figure stayed the same (unsurprisingly) whereas the WM figure rose to 96% just shows that Windows Mobile is part of a range of portals you can use to access your messaging and diary systems.

if you haven’t read the original paper this is worth a read however I don’t see it changing many minds.

Technorati Tags: Blackberry, BES, Windows Mobile 6, Flexible working, Exchange Activesync

Windows Mobile 6 and email triage

how Microsoft’s latest mobile platform has tipped the balance

email triage is one of the most popular  uses of  Windows Mobile device, which is the processing of your inbox in quiet moments when getting your laptop out is not an option.  it’s a great way to steam through a load of emails and filter the email fluff from your inbox delegate mails not for you and generally prepare your inbox for an efficient days work.  a true example of the benefits that the flexible working 9 by that I mean location independent working) that windows mobile 6 truly supports

The new shortcuts in Outlook Mobile under Windows Mobile 6 make life a whole lot easier

simply press and hold the appropriate key and you can process the email according to your wishes.

today was the day when the balance was tipped, I came out of an extended  meeting  to find over 90 emails had arrived in the time I had been out of circulation. One particular thread needed my attention but the rest were FYIs or mailing lists ( yes I have a few where the site concerned has not yet embraced RSS), I had my laptop available in front of me but chose to breeze through the mails  on my smartphone because the shortcuts make  the process so much easier.  90 emails processed in double quick time down to the seven that really needed urgent attention. of course I penned the long responses on my notebook as the keyboard is much easier to make rapid use of however I’m pretty sure my inbox will always be processed  at the top level through my smartphone from now on.

Technorati Tags: windows mobile 6, email triage, flexible working

Home Working Wayback Machine

Computing entrepreneurs the eighties way

I like my Waybacks this time it’s not just what Kevin called a mobile wayback but a whole workstyle wayback.

My family are hoarders, for me it’s trailing edge technology, for my Mother it’s old magazines which are great for those quiet contemplative moments men have :)

Recently I was perusing a copy of the countryman magazine from spring 1983, my eye was caught by the strapline ‘farming computerised‘ 

The article describes a home based business run by a Gillian Farrant of Manor Farm near Eaton in Oxfordshire.  Mrs Farrant took the enterprising step of setting up a farm data tracking business with the local vet’s wife.

The whole enterprise was run on  an apple II 

The which the author describes as  typewriter keyboard with a TV set sitting on top with a magnetic-disc recorder and an automatic printer  at the princely sum of £2000 a bargain as also unusually for a Mac  you could actually play a state of the art  computer game on the thing (ouch).  

Now unfortunately I cant find any record of Manor Farm Eaton or the Farrant brothers or Mrs Farrant and Hatch’s Farm recording Services, Farmplan are alive and well and still in the market they were in in ’83 however this appeals to my trailing edge tech interests  and is kind of on topic with a nod to homeworking.

Those were the days: the full article is copied below for your enjoyment – you can get up to date copies of the countryman from their website

Technorati Tags: vintage computing, wayback, trailing edge technology, tech

Exchange 2007 and Windows Mobile 6 feature matrix

Windows Mobile 5.0 & 6 with exchange 2007 from an Exchange perspective

This Deep Dive into Windows Mobile 6.0 and Exchange Server 2007 from the exchange team blog is essentially a rehash of the Jason’s earlier post  but from an exchange perspective ( of course ).

The post has the benefit of showing just the WM6 and Exchange 2007 synergies and also of actually showing the comparative glory of HTML mail on a WM5.0, a  WM 6 and an Outlook client which is a useful illustration.

The biggest message to take away is that the deployment of an Exchange 2007 server in the Client Access Server (CAS) role (what we used to call a front end server)  is not enough to enable the advanced functionality.

The WM6 functionality is dependent on the version of exchange the mailbox server is running not the front end server. This is different from the Exchange 2000 / 2003 mixed environment.

Be very careful here as I also hear from our deployment teams that the Exchange 2007 CAS in an Exchange 2003 environment is over complex and doesn’t quite do what it says on the tin, at least not without a bit of tweaking.

there seems to be an error as I can definitely make use of Fetchmail ( inline message fetch ) to download the remainder of the message from within the message on my E650 which is connecting to a Exchange 2003 production environment.

technorati tags: Exchange, Windows Mobile

the Joys of flexible working

making up for national work at home day

 

I’m hard at work in the fresh air  connected via WiFi to provide some much needed oxygen to flush my head of the side effects of our National Sales kick off yesterday.

now if I can just stop these bells ringing :)

technorati tags: flexible working

Work Wise Week – part four

today the topic for discussion is traffic congestion

well it’s mainly traffic congestion the main focus is actually The Eddington report.  Published in December 2006  by Sir Rod Eddington, the former chief exec of British Airways the report had as it’s stated aim to:

advise the Government on the long-term links between transport and economic growth within the context of the Government’s commitment to sustainable development and the environment

the reports conclusions were varied however key to the current unsatisfactory situation is the close geography of the British Isles this results in a number of key issues

• the British people undertake A high proportion of short journeys that are concentrated in urban areas
• other demand is concentrated in a few key corridors. 
• the overall result is a congested unreliable overcrowded transport infrastructure, that is inefficient economically and environmentally
• the  environmental cost must be born by those that are causing the impact in the first place.

it seems the problem is density rather than volume, the transport infrastructure is relatively sound however it is incapable of coping with all of the people employed in urban hotspots traveling to their place of work over the same systems at the same time.

The recommendations are to , encourage investment in local public transport infrastructure and discourage personal transport trying   anything to spread the load or reduce it.

At the heart of the solution to the problem is the encouragement of widespread adoption of flexible working practices, spreading the load both in terms of the times at which people attend and leave the workplace and where that workplace might be.

Why  battle and  contribute to the daily gridlock when you can work from the comfort of your own home?  or  start work later or leave it earlier?

the headline grabbing suggestions revolved around road and congestion pricing which will possibly provide the greatest impetus to flexible working practices.  whatever the final result it is likely to increase the cost of travel to business and technology can help here through:

• enabling the increased use of conferencing, whether audio, web or video or a combination of all three.
• providing more powerful and flexible collaboration tools
• making communication a matter of contacting a person rather than calling a device.

there are established tools for this however the packaging has been confusing and delivery has been difficult but this is changing here’s to the future

technorati tags: congestion charge, road pricing, flexible working, work wise week

/RANT

OH  whilst we’re at it there is another thing that we all can do…….

stop hogging the middle lane on the motorway, it’s there for overtaking so once you’ve used it please free it back up, things run a lot smoother and we can all get where we are going more quickly with less frustration.

and those  advisory speed limits approaching congestion are not there to annoy you and me.  Someone somewhere has spent a great deal of time modeling traffic flows, in the process they discovered that it’s much much much better to approach a jam slowly and not stop. this way we  allow the jam to clear if you scream up at top speed slamming the anchors on at the last minute….. therein lies only pain ;)

/RANT

Is this the most expensive mobile phone ever?

names changed to protect the not so innocent

I’m not talking about the excesses of Vertu‘s range

I’m taking about this:

The ever so humble Blackberry 8800, but I can buy that for less than £320 I hear you cry, oh course you can…….. however

I’ve been discussing a problem one of my customers has this afternoon, one of his management team needs email and calendar on the move, now that bits easy but the problem my customer faces is much much bigger the problem is quite simple, Blackberry envy.

One of his senior managers , fresh back from a conference with other senior managers from other companies has had his ear bent all week about how great the Blackberry 8800 is and he NEEEEEDS one, in best 3 year old tradition he NEEEEEDS one and nothing else will do.

Now this customer has a pretty mature and well managed infrastructure, has Exchange 2003 SP2 and is actually running a handful of Windows Mobile 5.0 devices with Exchange activesync which work brilliantly the problem is this:

They aren’t Blackberries…..

OK the WM devices tried so far don’t work with the chief exec’s inbuilt German Bluetooth car kit, but some (like the s710 / E650) will and there are over 40 manufacturers and OEMs so the I like / will work will overlap at some point.

The manager in question has to have Blackberry

I’ve explained the plethora of options, the OEMs the devices, the flexibility and control that you get through exchange and Windows Mobile, I’ve even offered to drive over and show the interested parties my E650 but no, no way it’s going to be BlackBerry.

I’ve even drawn their attention to the flaws in the NOC model of delivery and the trials that Blackberry users in the states had with the extended outage they suffered recently to no avail it has to be the 8800 or nothing so the Bill ……

Blackberry 8800 Pearl = £319.11
Server Hardware etc : £1,200.00
Blackberry Enterprise Server Version 4.0 for exchange = £2,500.00
Installation: £750.00
Additional Firewall Configuration: £750.00

So that brings that little shiny Blackberry 8800 in at a whopping £5,519.11

The look on the financial directors or shareholders face……. Priceless

Five and a half THOUSAND pounds for a mobile phone…… can anyone beat that?

oh …… the cost to deploy an HTC s710 with Windows Mobile and Exchange Activesync, push email and security ……. £246 less, much less on contract.

I think it’s a little more than the challenge of the work wise workstyle that threatens British Business today.

technorati tags: Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Exchange Activesync, more money than sense

Work Wise Week part III – National Work from Home Day…..

I think this week is conspiring against me :)

As the post title suggests Friday 18th May 2007 is national work from home day and yet I am penning this post from my desk at the office in the lovely Derbyshire Dales.

Why? you may ask…. well considering I work from home once or twice a week and as often from a customers, their car park or a BTOpenzone hotspot (with or without dodgy coffee) I figure I’m already doing my bit for wise working.

Jason’s en route to Wales as well so I’m not alone in going against received wisdom.  

As far as I’m concerned the whole Home Working is the way forward  thing is a bit of a  non sequitur when considering the work wise workstyle, working wise is not being tethered to any location by technology, working practices or Culture, be it home or office.

Home working can be as inappropriate as working from the traditional office what I want to be able to (and mostly can) do is work when and where I want to, that’s Working Wisely.

Why am I in the Office? – I’m having a meeting, a face to face, with a colleague who has some undigitised information, and more importantly one of my colleagues is leaving and warrants  a goodbye hug- that’s the kind of thing you just can’t do remotely.

technorati tags:work wise week, flexible working, hugs

Work Wise Week part deux

today the Stern report…

The stern report is concerned with climate change and the impact that  emissions have had do have and will have on the climate and global economy over the next 50 years.

published last year the key recommendations of the Stern report are:

· Three elements of policy are required for an effective response: carbon pricing, technology policy and energy efficiency.

· Carbon pricing, through taxation, emissions trading or regulation, will show people the full social costs of their actions. The aim should be a global carbon price across countries and sectors.

· Emissions trading schemes, like that operating across the EU, should be expanded and linked.

· Technology policy should drive the large-scale development and use of a range of low-carbon and high-efficiency products.

· Globally, support for energy research and development should at least double; support for the deployment of low-carbon technologies should be increased my up to five times.

· International product standards could be introduced.

· Large-scale international pilot programmes to explore the best ways to curb deforestation should be started very quickly.

· Climate change should be fully integrated into development policy, and rich countries should honour pledges to increase support through overseas development assistance.

· International funding should support improved regional information on climate change impacts.

· International funding should go into researching new crop varieties that will be more resilient to drought and flood.

the key areas that will impact on our workstyle are the likely introduction of emission taxation and carbon pricing both of which will be positioned to reduce the overall  carbon impact of our daily lives. inevitably emission taxation will be directed at travel to curtail the CO2 produced by the internal combustion engine and this will have the effect  of encouraging us all to consider our travel requirements and  look for more intelligent means interact with others rather than the default drive a 100 miles for a meeting approach too common today.

To reduce costs home and location independent working will be crucial tomorrow’s workforce will require the ability to work anywhere and employers will positively encourage workers to reduce the impact of their travel on the bottom line.

We’re a way off in today’s Britain, however the technology exists today to allow home working there’s just a lack of wherewithal and a distinct resistance to change that must be addressed prior to the inevitable changes in the taxation regime.

technorati tags: flexible working, Stern report, work wise week

Work Wise Week : topic du jour I

reflecting on issues raised during work wise week

Working Wise is  a subject close to my heart today as  I’ve spent a very old school unwise day of work which involved 61/2 hours in a car traveling to and from a (thankfully worthwhile as it turned out) meeting on the other side of the country when the wise move in an ideal world would have been an AV conference of interested parties. 

Carbon offsetting today is going to require a real effort  as four different members of staff had to travel from four different locations in four separate cars for a 90 minute discussion. at the moment we couldn’t do it any other way but here’s hoping.

Whilst I was trundling along the motorway network the Work Wise summit opened today with such luminaries as Sir Digby Jones, the former DG of the CBI;  Ruth Kelly, the equalities minister and Brendan Barber, General Secretary of the TUC sharing the headlines.

I can’t think of another issue that would unite that particular trinity

David Lennan, chairman of workwise UK suggested that the four main challenges of today for UK businesses are:

competitiveness the environment, road congestion and quality of life

and further more that

Working practices are a major contributor to our problems, and also the greatest opportunity to address them.
 
“Our working practices come from a bygone era and are actually extremely inefficient and wasteful in terms of time and energy.  Working 9 to 5, five days a week, from a central location, coupled with the desire to travel many many miles to attend meetings, are working practices which are largely unnecessary considering the technology available today.

the strategic partners of the initiative are very interesting, being BT,  for the obvious reason that they have a vested interest in the network that you’ll use to work wisely; and  Transport for London ….. who you would have thought would actually want you to travel,happily they have realised that the projected population of London just can’t all be moved around at the same time so we need to think strategically. 

David went on to conclude that

Smarter working is a win–win solution, there is no downside. The only obstacles to changing working practices are culture and management style. But if the UK is to remain as one of the most progressive economies in the world, we need to overcome these obstacles and encourage a workstyle revolution to create a smarter working Britain able to face up to the challenges of the 21^st century.”

this is true to a point however there is a considerable minefield to negotiate and the obstacles both in culture and management style are very very real. No organisation can afford to just drop flexible working on it’s workforce and expect it to succeed, it needs to be accepted top down and bottom up and prepared for carefully. after Flexible working is introduced it needs to be assessed and nurtured in it’s early adoption to ensure the  organisation gains the projected benefits.

technorati tags: flexible working, workwise

Wardriving revisited

The state of Wireless Security in the UK ( well Nottingham)

I’m always talking about web ubiquity and I’ve been doing some work on this recently for a couple of customers considering HSDPA access as a mobile working solution, the results have been a little disappointing and far short of my expectations but more on that later.

Peter Cochrane is always admitting stealing WiFi talking about using open WiFi access and it’s been a while since I’ve looked at the state of WiFi security.  

I’ve recently discovered WiFifofum2 which is an improvement over my old favourite Ministumbler as it allows you to use your built in WM WiFi  stack and record the location of the Access Points it discovers. a couple of years ago I used to stumble quite a bit to gauge the growth of WiFi and I used to get about 20 APs on the way home.

tonight I did the same stumbling albeit with a different device and software and I found 167 different Access points, a selection from Nottingham below :

in 2005 Security was woefully neglected with the vast majority of APs having no encryption, today….. it’s a bit better but still awful,  of 167 APs found 46 (that’s over 25%) had no encryption whatsoever.

Some Access Points may have had MAC address lists ( I don’t know I deliberately don’t connect) which will deter the casual WiFi thief but it’s still very very worrying.

whilst great for somewhat ethically dubious web ubiquity it’s not good for the AP owners or law enforcement if something nefarious happens. 

I’m off on a long journey tomorrow so I’ll do a bit more stumbling to see if the Notttinghamshire folk are typical or just downright irresponsible.

I’d be interested in other peoples experience

technorati tags: WiFi, WEP, WPA, Security, Web Ubiquity

It’s National Work Wise Week

to run from Wednesday 16th May to Tuesday May 22nd

I’ve been a little preoccupied with my latest device so have neglected my other duties, however it’s time to get back to flexible working just in time for National Work Wise Week.

Full details can be found here under the tag line of Work smart, live better … and help create a smarter working Britain.

Now some of you will say hang on that’s two weeks, however the point of it all is that Friday 18th May is National Work at Home day and the weekend of 19th – 20th may is Work Wise Weekend, the unconventional week is designed to make you think differently about how and where you work.

from the website :

Wednesday May 16 – Tuesday May 22, 2007

Work Wise Week 2007 will run from Wednesday May 16 through to Tuesday May 22 – again, an unconventional week to demonstrate flexible working. The week will consist of a number of themed days, with media opportunities and events for each. The programme for Work Wise Week includes:

Wednesday May 16 will feature the Work Wise Summit at the QEII Conference Centre in London . The summit will cover most of the elements of smarter working through a series of keynote speeches and panel discussions, including organisations such as TUC, CBI, BT and Transport for London . The emphasis will be upon making the UK more competitive in the face of growing economies in Asia, enabling a second industrial revolution to make the UK the most progressive economy in the world. 

Thursday May 17 will focus upon Stern Report, published late last year. The day will look at the significant positive impact of smarter working on the environment both in terms of the reduced need to travel and also a longer term reduction in resources and infrastructure to support a smarter working workforce. 

Friday May 18 will be National Work from Home Day. Employers and staff around the country are being encouraged to work from home on this day, so that everyone can experience the benefits. This is not giving a day off for those participating, but an opportunity to demonstrate that without the stress induced by the workplace environment and the long commute most have to endure, people can be more productive occasionally working from home. 

Weekend May 19/20 will be Wise Work Weekend, a consumer-focused initiative to provide guidance and help to those people who would like to work smarter. 

Monday May 21 will look at the transport impacts of smarter working. The Eddington Report has recommended road charging as a solution to congestion – this day will focus upon smarter working as a significant part of that solution. A fall in the need to travel, and the staggered time of travel, resulting from smarter working will significantly help in solving the problem of traffic congestion and overcrowding of public transport. 

Tuesday May 22 will focus upon employee benefits and social impacts of smarter working in terms of improving work-life balance, leisure and family benefits, and the knock-on effects on health and relationships. Various organisations with interests in these aspects will be involved in the day, both nationally and in the host region(s). The emphasis will be upon promoting a better work-life balance – working smarter, living better.

I’ll be posting appropriate daily comments to tie in with the themes of this important initiative, we all need to think about work in the 21st century we’re finally in a position where technology is an enabler rather than a barrier to working how, where and when we all want to.

technorati tags: flexible working

Outlook Anywhere and Cellular Networks

a little grumble about a lack of configuration options

this issue was brought to my attention because I use Outlook 2007 to collect RSS feeds, not for reading, I tried that and hated it the problems as I see it are

• no native aggregation, and feeds plus is broken
• standard outlook folder view with separate properties for each folder
• alphabetically arranged folders only
• when it imports from IE7 it doesn’t preserve your Feed categories

It seems that even some softies use other applications by preference

On the other hand the search facilities in Outlook 2007 make it worthwhile capturing the feeds and once I’d worked out how not to have each new item show as a new message in unread mail I can put up with it for the search alone.

The problem I have is the order that and way that Outlook Anywhere retrieves data, it downloads RSS feeds first, then downloads folder contents  alphabetically  and there’s no way to change this order or tell outlook to only download certain folders.

It’s not normally a problem on fast networks however using Outlook Anywhere over cellular it’s a pain to wait for hundreds of feeds to download  then the alphabetically ordered folders above my inbox before I get the mail I need all at a blistering 36 kbits.

You can reduce the downloaded volume  by only downloading headers  on slow networks  however the 384 kbits or 1.8 Mbits that data cards erroneously report to Windows seems to suggest to Outlook that you’re on a fast connection so you have to manually alter the settings to headers only  

it’s also costly, I don’t want to download the hundreds of emails I get through distribution groups when I’m not directly addressed at 85p a Mbyte

I could use Outlook Web Access however in Cellular environments when moving, such as in the passenger seat of a colleagues car or on the train  web sessions are difficult to maintain and Outlook Anywhere’s background drip feeding and invisible reconnection are ideal.

Has anyone discovered a way to resolve this client or server side?

Since Office 2003 SP1 and through Office 2007 Microsoft have greatly improved performance over low bandwidth and inconsistent networks, the kind of networks moofers use all day long, however I’d like a little more flexibility please, more control to keep me efficient and help me keep my costs down.

technorati tags: outlook anywhere, outlook, 3G, HSDPA,

Living with the Orange SPV E650 – the story so far

what’s the Latest Orange SPV really like to live with? my comprehensive review

Having lived with the E650 for a full three weeks this is a summary of the journey so far,  overall it’s been a very positive experience.

I’m not stat hungry so I’ll be providing real world measures of performance, my perception of the way the device operates not  stopwatch statistics.

The device has been used in a real business environment, as part of an Exchange 2003 messaging system using exchange activesync so some of the snazzier features associated with Exchange 2007 are not there yet but our upgrade is imminent so hopefully the three month review will be able to include these.

I am a geek and a techie but I try to apply the mother test for ease of use – I.e. could my mother use it? – a good yardstick for the levels of technical aptitude and patience displayed by most directors :)

my most recent devices of choice have been the Orange SPV c600 a candy bar smartphone running window Mobile smartphone edition 5.0 AKU 2 and the Orange SPV m3100 a traditional PDA form factor with touch screen 3G which I wanted it for and the addition of a sliding QWERTY keyboard (which I didn’t want at the time but now love) running Windows Mobile 5.0 AKU 2.3 Pocketphone edition (for now) 

The E650 has complemented my traditional notebook for two weeks but for the last week it’s been my only contact with work as I’ve been away on Holiday (more about that in an Off-Topic later).

conventions :

Where I refer to keypad I mean the E650 standard phone alphanumeric keypad where I refer to keyboard is the slide out QWERTY keyboard

Highlights:

• The Keyboard – it’s a great addition to a Windows Mobile 6 Standard device mitigates a lot of the fiddliness of the interface
• Fetchmail – until you try it you’ll not appreciate how much of a difference something this simple makes.
• recoverability : I’d have loved to have said stability but I’ll explain later
• Search as you type in Pocket Outlook AND Text messages

No Lights:

• search as you type search in Pocket Outlook  only searches on display name and subject and suffers the unfortunate keyboard glitch in text and PO
• lack of ‘ add word’ in T9 mode (mitigated by keyboard)
• stability seems a little suspect when battery level is low
• no MSN messenger or Voice command (included in the SDK by Microsoft but incomprehensibly omitted by Orange (I’ve bought Voice Command 1.6 US version from Handango – again more later)

Lowlights:

• Proprietary USB connector and stupid flap cover
• that damndable noise

Review

Form Factor:

it’s a Vox I know but the E650 skin isn’t out in MobiControl just yet

The device is a lovely piece of kit, a little heavier and bulkier than the C600 and most standard candybar format phones – way heavier and thicker than the slim Jim LGs of this world but it fits comfortably in the shirt pocket and the weight provides a reassuring feel that suggests great build quality.

The keyboard is a real surprise to people not in the know the E650 just doesn’t look like it could hide a  QWERTY in a device that size. the keyboard action is very slick only requiring a little push to expose or close the keys, much nicer than the m3100. Portrait to landscape transitions can be a bit slow occasionally but it’s no massive deal. 

The screen is great much more vibrant and clearer than either the m3100 or c600.

The phone has four hardware buttons on the periphery – on/off on  the top; the voice activation and volume rockers to the left of the screen and the camera button to the right – the camera button placement is somewhat counter intuitive as when you access the keyboard you rotate the phone clockwise which leaves the camera button on the bottom of the rotated handset if you are shooting in landscape mode – a minor gripe.

The front mounted function keys are easy to access, I was worried about the placement of the send and end keys as they look like they could be easily operated in a pocket however the E650 actually suffers less from this than the c600.

The soft keys are a little fiddly at first but you get used to that, and anyone with more slender fingers than mine wouldn’t be troubled. 

The SIM slot is hidden behind the keypad and is accessed when the keyboard is exposed and there is an external MicroSD card slot covered with a rubber shield, again a great improvement on the c600 but less vital now that MicroSD cards are Multi-Gigabyte

USB and accessory connection is via an HTC extended mini USB port – a pain in the backside tbh which is covered by another rubber flap which makes the handset unstable when stood up on its end, a minor design flaw that only grates because the rest of the device seems so well thought out.

Operation

The E650 is great to use, much zippier than the equivalent WM5 device, despite the underpowered processor (only 201 MHz). occasionally (very occasionally)  the Camera application refuses to start due to memory usage but this is down to the fact that there is no native way to end an application apart from through the task manager a disappointing feature of smartphone versions of the WM platform.

Battery life is good although the quoted 5 hours / 7 days actually equates to about 2 1/2 days realworld usage (GPRS, voice, a little WiFi)

Configuration

I’ve always found the smartphone interface a little fiddly for making settings changes however the keyboard is a real bonus here – there’s no massive differences between the WM5.0 & 6 menus in this area.

applications

I’m concentrating on the core business applications – for me that excludes the camera although the 2 Megapixel produces pictures sharp enough to annoy your coworkers when you are on holiday. 

Office Mobile in WM6 is great but is really only designed to read attachments the giveaway is that the apps start in view mode  - you could (at a push) compose on the E650 as  the keyboard makes this possible for those with thinner digits – I still hit space+n or b+space a bit too often for my liking.

Pocket Outlook tends to be the place I spend most of my time :) – Highlights are Fetchmail which is a massive productivity tool and a real encouragement to download the rest of any message, it’s that smooth. (and a nice GPRS earner for Orange)

Keypad shortcuts are fantastic

email triage is speeded up no end and this is a major use of most smartphones.

The E650 even has adobe reader LE installed so clicking on a PDF attachment allows you to read it

We’re still running on Exchange 2003 SP2 in our production environment so when internal IS get Exchange 2007 sorted I’m sure Webready and HTML mail will be fantastic additions, looking forward to this.

Contacts quick search is much improved and now ignores gaps between consecutive keypresses

and the # is interpreted as a space which makes finding the actual Richard or Dave or Andy you want that much easier

You at last can send a contact as a vCard however the E650 insists on sending it as an MMS rather than a text which seems odd and might affect your bill – it doesn’t work at all on my  work SIM as we disable MMS for all our staff by default.

Calendar operation is slick as well week view with appointment details is another great productivity aid 

and the ability to add both required and optional attendees from contacts or the company directory when creating an appointment was something I always yearned for in WM5

Where’s my Microsoft Voice Command Orange? and MSN messenger ?

Voice command is bundled by Microsoft and I’ve just gone out and spent £20 on it because of this omission.

No messenger is not so bad for me as we use office communicator but I can see it annoying some people – there are suggestions  that Orange’s new flat rate tariffs will exclude IM and VoIP so this might be the reasoning

Stability

overall stability is good apart from when the battery runs low when you get occasional application errors – this would have been a problem on WM5 however on the E650 the device seems to recover without a glitch and I’ve yet to lose any data at all – apart from a momentary annoyance this is much less of a problem than it has been in previous versions.

Ease of Use

The handset feels great in the hand and one handed operation is easy in phone mode, all the keys falling easily under the thumb, in landscape mode with the keyboard exposed a juggler can manage to use the E650 one handed

Missing Links

Could I get rid of my c600 at the moment? – absolutely the E650 outclasses it in every way

how about the m3100? ….. no I use TomTom navigator 5 a lot and memory map when walking neither of which are windows mobile 6 compatible. I do miss the touch screen in some apps however the E650 is rapidly weaning me off it.

Overall Assessment

I use the word slick a lot in this review that’s exactly what the E650 is, slick  very very slick.

there are a few minor niggles but they are outweighed by a factor of 10 by the improvements

Do I use the E650  more often than the equivalent WM5 devices? no

When I do use it is it faster brighter and better? sure thing 

Do I get more done? oh yes

Will Orange get this eval unit back ? NO CHANCE

the Orange E650 isn’t my perfect device but it’s not far from it. 

should you buy one – at £0 on most contracts and £165 on the Orange business price list yes you should, it’s a steal. if you are a business you’ll get that £165 back in a couple of weeks in improved productivity. 

Buy one if you can find one – after Jason’s admission – good luck :) 

[Edit : you might want to read my other earlier impressions just search here ]

[Edit: Tracy and Matt have reprinted this review over at their blog with some useful illustrative photo's of some of the physical aspects of the E650]

technorati tags: Orange, E650, review, tech, mobility, SPV

Practicalities of Mobile Computing in the UK

just how mobile is mobile?

I’m away on holiday and I’ve taken the opportunity to assess the state of mobile computing in the UK, I’ll blog about this when I get back – should  be interesting reading.

technorati tags: mobile computing, 3G, Orange, Flexible Working

Lest we forget – part I

an occasional series exposing just how spoilt we are today

I’m a big fan of the blog of James and Kevin it’s a great resource for the latest and sometimes greatest  (?) in mobile technology – I certainly get freebie envy as they seem to be inundated with stuff.

The blog has a great example of an enticing strapline (using mobile devices since they weighed 30 lbs) and inspired by this I’ve decided to get on with showing my pile of rubbish accumulated mobility solutions. 

I’ve also been inspired by the fact that some of the internal IS guys were whinging they could only get 17 Mbits from their broadband – me I remember leaving the PC on dialed in overnight to download the 17 Mbytes of Mozilla when I moved from CompuServe to Pipex and the web proper… oooh they don’t know they’re born :|

like most geeks I accumulate old technology but to my wife’s eternal gratitude I’ve been disposing of bits and bobs ( I kept the CPU and BIOS ROM of my first IBM compatible PC – I couldn’t part with all of it ) I have however been backfilling the mobile solutions I have used over the years similar to the way I have been backfilling my vinyl on MP3.

I call it my trailing edge technology – it has to have been the pinnacle or close to it when launched but has bounced off the leading edge and is tumbling of the trailing edge when I catch it :)

so first is an occasional series 1994….. the Toshiba T1910CS and the Motorola 3200 GSM :

The Tosh sports a 386sx 33 processor and a whopping 110 Mbytes HDD, 8 Mbytes of RAM it’s runs Windows for workgroups 3.11.

the Motorola 3200 is a single band GSM phone with a capacious 100 alpha numeric memories – no data capabilities and a battery life (from memory) of 12 hours with at most 60 mins talk time , it can RECEIVE point to point short message service messages (texts to you and me) but not send them :)

I’ve seen this described as the first GSM phone – certainly in the UK it was preceded by a Panasonic model whose name escapes me. and yes it is active on Cellnet – it  requires an old SIM with a squarer smart chip – the newer SIMs with oval chips with rounder edges require less power and this phone doesn’t recognise them.

The whole kit and caboodle – excluding accessories weighs in at 8 lbs (17.6 kg)  spare batteries  would add a touch more so we could be pushing 20 kg -  the 3200 is mine IIRC it cost about £300 at the time, the Tosh cost me a sandwich and a can of pop.

technorati tags: mobility, flexible working, vintage technology

Network Adapter Proritisation on Vista

How to make sure you’re connecting by the best means possible

Location independent workers routinely connect via WiFi or 3G when roaming around the countryside, however when you come into the office you won’t necessarily be connected by the fastest means possible.

Like James O’Neill‘s – the Vista man –  our hotdesks have  one of those old fangled wire thingies yet my notebook decides to connect by WiFi or occasionally both WiFi and Wire (confusing to the poor beast) this obviously means you might be chugging along at shared WiFi speeds when you could have that lovely switched connection  all to yourself.

James has posted a great tip on how to fix your network adapter priority in Vista – through manage your network connections > Advanced > advanced settings

now I looked and couldn’t see the advanced menu, until I clicked Organize (sic) > layout > menubar to reveal that old style windows favourite grey banner of helpfulness.

then just a simple matter of navigating to the advanced setting dialogue box and adjusting priorities as James suggests.

technorati tags: Vista, WiFi, Flexible Working, tweaks, tips

Groove and Sharepoint one happy family

how Groove security plays with Sharepoint Security

over  at the Groove advisor blog there’s a great post on how the user permissions in a Groove workspace interact with the security on a sharepoint site when using the sharepoint files tool in a Groove Workspace.

it’s an interesting read and throws up something to be aware of when using the sharepoint files tool:

as the synchroniser of a sharepoint files tool you must be aware that although the permissions of the Groove Workspace control who edits the content within the sharepoint tool in Groove, when you synchronise the sharepoint tool with the sharepoint document library  it will be your details indicated as the editor of the content within Sharepoint, rather than the member of the groove workspace who originally edited the document in Groove.

this makes sense (it’s the only way it could work) however it may cause a few headaches in an audit trail, particularly if the Groove workspace is broken down after the final editing of the content.

technorati tags: Groove, Sharepoint, Security