Palm (finally) brings WiFi with the Trēo 800W

[JoeD]

Originally Posted by NatCh

Yeah, but this actually built into the device, rather than as an SDIO card addon.

It was built in on the Tungsten C too. If it wasn't for the lack of WPA support, I'd still be using it now

It looks like most Palm devices after the Tungsten C didn't include any wifi support though, which is a little strange given that wifi only grew in popularity since then.

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by JoeD

It was built in on the Tungsten C too.

It was? Huh. Missed that somehow ... or more likely forgot it. Either way, thanks for the reminder, JoeD.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Charging via mini-USB is, I believe, a part of the Windows Mobile 6 hardware platform spec.

IIRC, it's a part of the USB spec.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by JoeD

It was built in on the Tungsten C too. If it wasn't for the lack of WPA support, I'd still be using it now

It looks like most Palm devices after the Tungsten C didn't include any wifi support though, which is a little strange given that wifi only grew in popularity since then.

Define "support". Wifi wasn't built in again till the TX, but you could add an Wifi SD card, which Palm would happily sell you. (And Palm and SanDisk were your only options. No other vendor made Wifi SD cards compatible with Palm OS devices.)

Lack of WPA support till the TX is a problem. I have a Tapwave Zodiac 2, which is a Palm OS device. It has two SD slots, one of which is SDIO. I have a SanDisk 256MB+Wifi card I use in it. My problem is that the Zodiac only supports WEP encryption, which is relatively trivial to crack. I'm not about to use it on my home network, where I use WPA.

My work around uses a second router. My primary router is a Linksys WRT54G - an older model that uses an embedded Linux kernel. Because it was Linux, Linksys made the firmware open source, and various people grabbed it and hacked to fix bugs and add features. I use a third-party build called Tomato. The Linksys uses WPA2, and my desktop and the SO's laptop connect through it.

I have an older Belkin router bought as a backup. I connect the Belkin to the Linksys in "access point" mode. The Belkin passes all traffic to the Linksys, which handles DHCP and NAT. The Zodiac connects to the Belkin using 128 bit WEP, and the Belkin has MAC address filtering turned on so that only my desktop and the Zodiac can connect to it. The Linksys treats the Belkin as a trusted host, and allows connections made through it. When the Zodiac isn't connected, the Belkin is powered off.

Perfectly secure? No. Secure enough that I don't worry during the infrequent cases when I connect through the Zodiac? Yes.

But it was a PITA to have to jump through those hoops.
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Dennis