06:42 AM by Alexander Turcic in E-Book General | News

Times Online has published an interesting article hinting that reading e-books on dedicated e-book devices could be ready for mainstream in 2005.

There is already a healthy market for written material that can be downloaded on to a handheld computer or a mobile phone, but even the most die-hard geek will admit that back-lit liquid crystal screens are a strain on the eye, and the battery power needed to read an entire book is vast.

The article mentions two dedicated e-book readers: Sony's Librie and Matsushita's latest version of the Sigma Book, both of which require energy only when a book page is being turned (the Librie uses E-Ink technology, the Sigma Book uses Kent' Cholesteric technology).

12:31 AM by Bob Russell in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

This is Part II of an article describing my conversion from a PalmOS Sony Clie to a Toshiba e405 Pocket PC. Click here for Part I To recap briefly, my motivation for switching was multi-fold:
* I had to replace my Clie soon
* The current Palm PDA hardware just didn't excite me
* I like to try new things, and this seemed like a good time to try PPC
* There was a special on www.woot.com for a $150 refurbished Toshiba (if you haven't tried Woot, give it a look!)
* It looked like it might be a while until Cobalt gets straightened out
* PalmOne and Tapwave seemed to be the only significant sources of Palm devices, and one was dedicated to smartphones, the other gaming handhelds.
...So, bottom line, I decided to make the plunge even though I really prefer the simplicity and efficiency of the "zen of Palm."

Data Conversion
The most serious part of this exercise was the conversion of data. For me, this was exacerbated by the hundreds of pages of organized and categorized and formated data. Certainly a large part was Calendar, Memo, ToDo and Contact data in the basic PIM apps. But there was also a lot of other stuff. My copy of ShadowPlan outliner had most of it, but also things like ebooks, encrypted passwords, HandyShopper, etc etc.

You really have two options for the basic PIM data...
1) Manually re-enter it by copy and paste from the desktop PC, and manual entry on the PPC where necessary
2) Automatic conversion from Palm Desktop to Outlook

I chose #2 for the basic PIM data in the 4 basic Palm PIM apps. My free solution was Stratabase Resync. It worked okay, but didn't give me that warm satisfied feeling like everything worked well. You may want to do a printout of your Palm address list as a minimum to check and see if everything went according to plan. In my case, I printed to a .pdf file, which seemed like a convenient way to go.

If you have a way to sync directly to Outlook (which is the required desktop PIM app for Pocket PC to sync to), you are all set. Just sync your data to Outlook and then set up your PPC. The data will be there. Note, however, that due to a restriction in Activesync, all the memo notes will be synched to the MyDocuments folder on your PPC, with no folders for categories, or even a subfolder to hold all the notes. They're just thrown in along with everything else. I didn't like this, so I found an alternative, Tombo, which I think is much better anyway. More later, when I list the apps I'm using and how they compare to my old Palm apps.

Other Sources Of Info On The Web
There are a number of reviews out there comparing Palm and PPC, and discussing conversion. Very interesting reading, but you have to remember that they are all somewhat biased based on what they have previous experience with, and what the author cares about. (Just like this article is baised because of my background and preferences.) Plus a lot of the articles doing comparisons are pretty old, so they may not really reflect the newer features, especially for Palm.
To give you a sample of how popular this subject is, here are a few links I found with just a quick search on Google...
http://www.clieuk.co.uk/vs.htm
http://www.cewindows.net/faqs/convertpalm.htm
http://computertimes.asia1.com.sg/sp...,1554,00.html?
http://www.pdabuyersguide.com/tips/palm_vs_pocketpc.htm
http://palmtops.about.com/od/pda101/l/blchart.htm
http://www.palmone.com/us/solutions/...ogo/chart.html
http://www.clieuk.co.uk/bye.shtml
http://www.comp-talk.co.uk/Articles/POS%20v%20PPC.htm
http://www.writingonyourpalm.net/column010924.htm
http://www.writingonyourpalm.net/column011001.htm
http://palmtops.about.com/cs/pdafact..._Pocket_PC.htm
http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article...,111825,00.asp

Okay, so suppose you've survived the core conversion and you have your PPC set up and you have all your basic PIM data over there. Now what? In my case, it was a very manual process of trial and error to get the right programs to hold my data effectively, and then to cut and paste everything over into the new format and organization. After many false starts I think I've come up with a plan that works well. For me it does, anyway!

Software Replacements on PPC
Here are the basics that I used (Palm -> PPC):

* DateBk5 -> Pocket Informant (PI)
You gotta try PI! My favorite benefits are the weekly view with text in boxes (you may have to set vertical or horizontal orientation of the day layout to get it to look like you want) and the monthly view that lets you have a full month calendar on the screen, and when you tap any day it shows the appointments in a list just below the month calendar. Wonderful!

* Graffiti -> Fitaly
You don't need Fitaly, of course, but I just hated the PPC built-in input methods. I do like, however the PPC method of chosing the input method from a drop down box you can access at the time of input.

* SecureIt (password vault) -> eWallet
I like eWallet both because it has a desktop app available, and because it has a Palm version in case I go back to PalmOS.

* Handy Shopper -> Handy Shopper!
And even better, the data files can be copied directly!

* MyBible -> PocketBible (also from Laridian, and has NIV)
But eSword is what I'm actually using right now. Free and has a lot of commentaries and resource materials available. Can buy NASB for it. I use Modern King James Version right now, and it is adequate. But I miss the NIV.

* Sony Backup Software -> Sprite Professional
I can't understand why the default is to backup to the internal Flash ROM on my Toshiba (that ROM gets cleared out in a hard reset), but fortunately the default can be changed in advanced mode. The scheduled backup is what I like, and you can set all the parameters like target and what to backup, etc. I am running it on schedule each day at 3:30am when (hopefully) I am sleeping. Then I hope to get an xcopy batch file working to automatically copy the contents of the SD card to my PC using a card reader. Not sure if that will work yet, but it would really simlify and speed up things if it does. Right now, even though the SD card contents doesn't change much, I end up copying it all for every backup, and that takes a long time.

* MemoPad & ShadowPlan -> Tombo
This is a free and wonderful app. Slick, fast and reliable. It stores each "memo" as a text file, but you can do categories and they show up as folders. I miss Shadow, but not as much now that I'm using Tombo. I haven't seen a single other app that works well for me in the memopad/outliner category.

* Patience (Solitaire) -> ??
This is one of the programs I miss a lot. I loved the version on Palm because it was fast and slick and you could double tap cards to play and move them. On PPC, cards look ugly and the UI is awful in my opinion. Solitaire City improves on the look I think, but until the UI improves with tappable play, I'll pass. Instead, my mind-numbing game has become PDAMills Gamebox Asia (Mahjongg). It's a lot of fun. Lots of game emulators are available on PPC also, but that's not really my thing. Until I figure out how to do it and how to play the games... Then I may be hooked!

* iSilo -> iSilo! Yippee! That's a big deal to me and I'm glad the PPC version is almost as good as the Palm version.

* eReader -> eReader! Another big deal for me that things are interchangable. See my tip for how to use bold fonts for reading.. https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...2928#post12928

* Adobe Acrobat Reader -> Adobe Acrobat Reader!
This works much better for me on my Toshiba because of the faster processor. On the Clie, it was so slow turning pages I just gave up.

* Noah Free Dictionary -> Pocket Dict

* DocsToGo -> MS Pocket Excel and Word
This is a sad comparison as DocsToGo is much better, even in the very old versions I was using on my Clie!

* FileZ -> Resco Explorer
I didn't buy it, though, because I so far have been surviving with the built-in file explorer in Win Mobile 2003 SE.

* Launcher -> Multiple options, but you will want a task manager.
I'm using a combo of SPB Pocket Plus for the Today Screen Launcher with tabs, vBar for the task switcher that allows you to switch apps or close apps, and program menu plus which is a cascading start menu very nice for app launching.
But there are many other options like WisBar Advance and cLaunch (tabbed today launcher like Pocket Plus, but free) and Pocket Launcher (a full-screen tabbed launcher like Palm which seems to also work with WisBar Advance) and many more.

Lots of other stuff is available, of course. Multimedia players, Karaoke, Pocket Streets is nice, Vade Mecum and Sunrise are a nice combo, email, voice recorder, journaling, photo albums, time accounting, skype VOIP, etc etc The list goes on and on!

For the freeware, be sure to check at...
http://www.freewareppc.com/ and
http://www.pocketpcfreewares.com/en/index.php

Well, that's it for now. Hope that is helpful info for someone moving from Palm to PocketPC!

09:39 PM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Announcements

I did some tweaks to our RSS feeds to reduce the server strain. If you experience any weird changes or bugs, please be so kind and inform us!

And, of course, a Happy New Year to everyone!

Alex

01:04 PM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Just before year's end Tom's Hardware has published an in-depth review of the Dell Axim X50v, which I consider the nicest PDA out there right now (relax, my opinion may be slightly biased ). Quote from the conclusion:

To just who is the Axim X50v aimed at? Well, just about everyone - consumers and businesspeople alike - who want to buy a fully loaded, relatively reasonably priced PDA with VGA display right now. Die-hards like that won't be deterred by the fact that the device's dedicated graphics accelerator is useless at present, except for the occasional gaming title.

To everyone else, such as folks who only recently bought a fast and well-equipped PDA like the X30i, our advice is: sit tight and wait for the price reductions that are sure to come.

11:11 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Sunrise

Our friend Laurens never sleeps, it seems! He has just released Sunrise 0.40 pre3 which contains some important bug fixes (freeze at startup, documents stuck at "Generating 100%", AutoUpdate issues, and more).

The enhanced conduit will follow in the next prerelease.

You can click here to download Sunrise 0.40 pre3.

09:55 AM by Mobipocket in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Mobipocket has a Holiday Special Sale with a selection of 200 e-books offered for USD 4.99$ each.

Offer lasts until 1st Jan, 2005 - hurry up!

08:27 AM by Alexander Turcic in Archive | Handhelds and Smartphones

Font Collector by Alexander Pruss is an easy-to-use companion program to Fonts4OS5, FontSubst, eReader, iSilo, Mobipocket, FontHackV, FontHack123, Palm Bible+ and Plucker, allowing you to convert fonts from many other formats - including fonts within applications you may have sitting around on your PDA - to formats for these applications.

The following input font formats are supported: FontHack123, eReader, Fonts4OS5 (not for conversion to other formats), FontSubst (not for conversion to other formats), FontHackV, fonts inside all applications' main .prc files, Plucker, iSilo, PalmBible+, VersaMail fonts, FontBucket, vuilt-in Sony NX fonts, built-in Palm OS fonts on many devices.

It's free when used to convert fonts to PalmBible+ and Plucker. For other output formats, Font Collector is shareware ($5.00/USD; free trial with slightly uglified output font).

12:47 PM by Colin Dunstan in Archive | Portable Audio/Video

Archos will showcase its first "fourth generation" personal video player (PVP) at the Consumer Electronics Show next week in Las Vegas. The Pocket Media Assistant PMA400, which runs embedded Linux, boasts wireless Internet access and "a host of additional new features," (touch screen, PIM, ...) according to an Archos spokesperson.

Before you buy a product from Archos, make sure you are aware of screen defects here and here that were experienced by some users with the Archos AV420, an earlier incarnation of the PMA400.

[via LinuxDevices.com]