Paul's Down-Home Page

I’ve got a ton of work to do, and that’s been keeping me too busy to blog (even to say “hey, I’m too busy to blog!”) I’m making travel plans to go to Lisbon, Oslo, and Johannesburg over the next few weeks for a new roadshow that Windows IT Pro is putting on in those cities, and I’m trying to wrap up several ongoing projects that all close out at the end of this month. I also have some great info on the Exchange 2007 Unified Messaging server role, and I’ll be posting that as time allows over the next couple of months. (Plus, I had to write a cover story on Monad, er, PowerShell, and that took some time to boot!)

SAP is announcing that it will expand its efforts to sell low-cost support for Oracle products. I wonder what they think their margins will be on this?

In my earlier post, I compared some aspects of the new-to-me T-Mobile MDA with my familiar Verizon Treo 650.

First, about the customizations. I installed the AKU2 ROM (which includes the MSFP DirectPush bits), and I stil love it. Having wireless sync for all my calendar and contact data was extremely valuable when I was in France (although I’m not looking forward to getting the bill for data charges, which are something like $0.015/KB). I also installed a ton of software, including SPB PocketPlus, SPB Weather, and PocketInformant. I’m really impressed with SPB’s products, and I like PocketInformant too although it’s taken some getting used to. I’ve also installed a free app called Smartkeys that makes the right softkey double as an “OK” button– highly recommended.

Second, the hardware. Battery life, even with WiFi and Bluetooth off, has generally been poor. I started yesterday with a fully charged battery; after a total of about 15 min of phone calls and a day worth of DirectPush, I was down to 20% (the first warning threshold) by about 6pm. I’ve gotten in the habit of turning on flight mode overnight, and that helps some, but not enough. The camera is decent, and I like having the three additional side buttons (I have one mapped to PocketInformant so I get one-button calendar access), plus the two softkeys, plus the red/green buttons, plus the dedicated mail and IE buttons.

The screen is excellent, and I like the ability to switch between portrait and landscape mode. Overall, though, the phone feels a bit slow. It’s not entirely clear how much performance is affected by the homebrew AKU2 ROM I’m using; consensus seems to be that it’s actually faster than the factory ROM, but I don’t have any basis for comparison.

Windows Mobile 5.0 has been quite stable. Occasionally when I press the “mail” button, Pocket Outlook launches and updates the softkeys but doesn’t display the message list. This is a little bothersome, but closing Outlook and IE generally fixes it. (Speaking of Outlook: I complained that there was no way to move between messages, but that was just me not knowing to use the 5-way navigator by moving left/right).

There are still some things I miss from Palm OS. For one thing, Palm OS has the concept of numeric fields, so when you go to enter something like a phone number, the keypad automatically goes into numeric mode. Applications can leverage this, so entering things like flight numbers or birthdays is easy. As far as I can tell, there’s no equivalent concept in WM. The Palm text entry engine does a better job of correcting some kinds of shorthand entries (e.g. “dont” turns automatically into “don’t”); although WM will suggest words, I haven’t figured out how to edit the list of suggestions or turn the feature off.

How is the MDA as a phone? Decent. T-Mobile’s network coverage isn’t as good as Verizon’s in the areas I’ve tested (around Toledo and at CVG and JFK). The phone worked fairly well on the Orange and Bouygtel networks in France, although incoming calls didn’t always make the phone ring on my end. Sound quality isn’t as good on the Treo 650, and the speaker volume for ringtones and alerts isn’t loud enough. (Part of the problem is that Voice Command adds an audio announcement, which it mixes over the ringtone audio, reducing its volume further). When the phone’s in its holster on my belt, it’s very difficult to hear it ring if there’s any kind of environmental noise.

EDGE data speeds are acceptable; by comparison, all I have here in Toledo is Verizon’s 1xRTT, which feels about the same.

Overall, I like the form factor of the device quite a bit, but I’m not satisfied enough with T-Mobile’s network to switch.

Next up: evaluating the Verizon Treo 700w that I got in yesterday. So far, after a little fiddling with it, I like it a lot.

Update: PhoneScoop just posted their review of the MDA. Their conclusion: it’s great if you’re using Exchange, but only mediocre otherwise.

Today marks the end of my first week carrying the Verizon Treo 700w as my primary phone. I haven’t traveled with it much, which means it hasn’t been subjected to the true acid tests that I usually use to judge a smartphone’s worth. However, the Treo has been remarkably stable, and it remains considerably faster than the MDA I last tested.

Audio and call quality have been excellent. The Treo line has always had a very good speed-dial implementation, and that’s also true of the 700w; it’s simple to peck in a few letters of the name you want to call (well, as long as it’s not a company name!) and dial it. Palm has obviously spent a good bit of effort on small touches, too; for example, if you turn on the device PIN lock, you can enter your PIN using the number keys on the keyboard without having to first touch the Option key. Palm also includes a Today plug-in for Google searches, which is handy.

When I was in Detroit this weekend, I got to use the 700w on an EvDO network. Subjective performance was excellent. I didn’t do any speed tests, but I did tell Outlook to pull down several large attachments that people had sent me and was pleased with the sync performance. Overall, I think it’s fair to expect EvDO speeds to beat EDGE speeds consistently, by a factor of 4-5x in some cases.

I used the camera to shoot some pictures and video over the weekend. Not bad, but not super-impressive. I shot two short 30-sec clips at a concert this weekend; at the end of each clip, the phone gave me the spinning Windows busy cursor for a very long time, and now I can’t find the videos. I haven’t taken the time to re-test in a better-lit, less distracting environment.

Of course, the 700w isn’t without its flaws. It refuses to recognize the same 2GB mini-SD card that the MDA happily used. I suspect it’s because of the card’s size, not because it’s a mini-SD card in an SD adapter. The card doesn’t work in my Treo 650 either. The MDA has a few advantages, too. I really like the Communications Manager software that HTC includes; because it’s mapped to a button, it’s easy to quickly turn Bluetooth, wi-fi, EAS, and/or the phone on or off. The MDA has two additional buttons on the right side that can be mapped to different applications; the Treo simulates this by letting you bind app launches to the four primary buttons, plus a different set of bindings when the Option key is held down. This is a little awkward; I think I’d rather have the extra buttons along the device edge. The built-in wi-fi is useful, too, although I’m not sure the tradeoff in battery life is worth it for my typical usage patterns.

Overall, though, I’m very pleased with the 700w; it’s a strong contender for the not-exactly-coveted title of “most likely to be hanging on Paul’s right hip”.

Update: I just saw that Verizon said they’re going to allow EvDO phone owners to tether their phones as modems. This is a pretty good deal, since it would let me drop my existing aircard subscription and move over to using a tethered phone.

Wow, looks like RIM is starting to feel the love from Exchange ActiveSync. They’re now offering a “free” Express version of BES; it supports up to 15 users, and the first user license doesn’t cost anything. In total, BES Express supports up to 15 users, with users 2-15 costing you US$99 each. So, a fully loaded 15-user server costs you $1405, compared with $1099 for the “Small Business Edition” of BES (which then requires CALs @ $99). This is not quite “free”, especially since you’re still paying the RIM device tax. Having said that, it’s an interesting move by RIM to capture a market segment that has historically balked at paying the Big Bucks for the full-blown version of BES.