OT-ish questions re PPC

wildduck · Occasional Visitor Joined: May 12, 2004 Posts: 24

Sorry if these are OT questions, but the information here has been really helpful...
I use a combination of Palm Desktop and an old version of Lotus Organiser to keep my address, todo and appointment lists more or less synchronised with my cheap Palm organiser.

Is it possible to synchronise this info with my Medion PPC without installing Outlook? I think I can import and export on the real PC's in csv format, but has anyone any experience of this and how the fields of the various apps line up? Can these be imported direct into the PPC - it isn't immediately obvious how? Would it be easier to cobble my own app together just using my own format or, say, a spreadsheet? The more I see of the screen of Outlook that tells me I haven't registered and that I should make it my email client on one of the main machines, the more I want no part of it.

If I should think of getting a wi-fi card for the Medion, will this allow me to link via my wireless router to a local peer-to-peer network (ie one without a server)? I don't see anywhere on the PPC to find local shared directories on other machines, just a lot of ways to connect to the internet. Also, is the battery life likely to be seriously affected when using a wi-fi add-on? I think I'll have to keep the Palm because of the battery life.

I've noticed that when I unplug the PPC from the car, some random data (or it may be me inadvertantly hitting odd buttons) seems to trigger weird modes. For example, I often see it say that Warner-POI has run out of memory, which I can also trigger sometimes by hitting the email button. Is this normal? If I get this message, should I switch it off and re-boot, or doesn't it matter?

I think what all these questions mean is that I'm getting sucked into spending time investigating Windows CE properly, which is a bit depressing. Any guidance gratefully received.

wildduck · Occasional Visitor Joined: May 12, 2004 Posts: 24

To answer one of my own questions here just in case anyone is interested and just in case anyone else didn't already know......

The Palm and the PPC can communicate via infra red, so I've discovered that I can sort out my address lists etc. on any machine that has the Palm desktop loaded, sync them to the Palm, then beam them across one at a time to the PPC. This way I can still keep Outlook at arms length.

Others here have confirmed what was obvious - a wi-fi card is likely to run the battery down fairly fast, but I would be interested to know what networking facilities it gives you. For example, can you look at shared directories and pull or push files on the local desktop machines to the PPC?

drew · Lifetime Member Joined: Jan 12, 2004 Posts: 22

WiFi networking:

From the PPC you can use File Explorer to connect to any SMB shares (ie. Windows, or Linux Samba, NOT Novell) on your network and browse & copy files back/forth. Unfortunately you can't treat the share as another mounted 'disk' and use them directly, the files have to be copied locally before you can use them Sad

To do it the other way round you will need to configure Activesync to connect over WiFi. You can then use Windows Explorer to browse the PPC. This only works on the host PC, others on the network cannot connect to the PPC.

Drew

DavidW · Posted: Sat May 29, 2004 12:15 am Post subject:

There's various programs that do allow you to use network shares directly from your Pocket PC, by making the network shares appear under a \NETWORK storage card. I recommend Resco Explorer 2003 as a huge improvement over the built in File Explorer - it includes this functionality.

There is no way I know of for the Pocket PC sharing its storage over the network - the only ways I know of to access a Pocket PC is to use ActiveSync or SOTI's Pocket Controller - Professional, which are both point to point connections between a Pocket PC and one Windows machine. ActiveSync is much faster over Wi-Fi than other connection methods, by the way.

David

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