Got any tips for a newbie to pocket pc

[Guest sandys]

Hi There,

I've been running a PDA for years originally with Palm and got into the combo phone with the Treo 180 which was cool and my follow on from that was a Symbian P800 which I have had for the last 3 yrs, anyway I quite fancied something a bit quicker with more storage that could use TomTom so opted for the M500.

My problem is I find the UI awful coming from what I considered to be far better thought out interfaces on Palm/Symbian, the simple things from the other devices just aren't simple on this, no doubt I am missing some key stuff as I thought these things were supposed to be good, any pointer you can give to help a newbie make his PDA Phone more Phone than PDA would be appreciated, this phone edition doesn't seem that phone centric.

The sort of thing I am on about is configuring voice dialling for a Bluetooth headset, being able to switch on speakerphone at a touch of a button incall, the ability for the M500 to be a phone when I switch it on rather than that today screen, or default to phone when I come out fo apps, syncing via bluetooth and to go into phone mode when I make a call from contacts rather than that silly bubble, its a bit of a pain to get to the keypad on touch tone calls, its these sorts of little things I have taken for granted on the other systems.

The device is lovely and I can see the potential, I just don't think its being fully realized out of the box, I imagine a few of you have discovered work around already that could probably help me out.

Oh and another thing, it seems to want to use outlook, is it configurable for thunderbird?

Thanks

Sandy

[Guest bennish]

Hey, congratulations! I just purchased this lovely device, it's my 2nd pda and 2nd smartphone.

Unfortunately, some of the things you're after sound more like a smartphone (for example the mpx220). The basic rule with windows mobile devices is, smartphone (no stylus support) is more phone than pda. Pocket PC phone (with stylus) is more pda than phone. For example, I bought the M500 because i want more a PDA/text machine than phone.

About having it go straight to phone... you may not realise, but the green 'phone' button on the left will do this immediately, bringing up a nice big keypad... is that what you were trying to do?

Unfortunately, I've looked at syncing with Thunderbird as well and it doesn't seem to be possible at the moment. There are 3rd party sync programs, but they don't do Thunderbird either. (Unfortunately, despite their great products we're still talking about Microsoft here, they don't like supporting anyone else).

You may have heard of Windows Mobile 5, which has just been released. It's rumoured the M500 will be receiving this later this year (here's hoping!). This version ads some nice new features including one-handed operation ('smartphone' style soft buttons on the bottom left and right).

I'm looking forward to this... pressing 'dismiss' on a reminder with a key... mmm.

I'll also admit I miss speakerphone in-call (this was easy on the MPX220 windows smartphone).

As for the bluetooth voice dialling, take a look in windows mobile phone edition main forum, you'll find a thread on the ETEN, I think there are some people in there discussing this.

Is that helpful at all?

Edited July 4, 2005 by bennish

[Guest sandys]

Cheers for the comments, I will admit to only having a brief skim of the manual, I gave it a proper read on Sunday night and discovered that the green button will bring the phone which is what I wanted, I think I have just some adapting to do, I like the device its just so different, try a Treo and you'll see how it should be done, you would have thought MS would have copied the other ideas like it does on the desktop or that its smartphone ideas would have made it to the pocket pc phone app.

I didn't think of pushing the pickup button in call to get the dialler as I assumed it may put on hold like other phones but it brings up the dialler so thats one issue solved for me :cool:

Speakerphone would be nice on a button but I supose I can live with starting M-Desk via the home key and enabling it, guess it was the initial shock of how clumsy the phone UI is, little things that anyone could have though up that haven't been implemented in a user-friendly manner

Found the other thread on the ETEN but it wasn't clear to me a non windows mobile type how to get vioce dialling to work though it gave me ideas, turned out it was simply a case of assigning voice commander to the bluetooth headset on the buttons page rather than the button on the edge of the device, whilst the thread had mentioned that I couldn't get it to work, I had to play with the various volume sliders until it recorded my voice loud and clear, now things like digit dial, it works really well on my car kit, it would be nice if I could increase the volume of the incoming caller though, the volume slider is at max but its still loads quieter than my p800, may be an issue on the motorway, I'll see I guess.

I don't mind using outlook, I have just never owned it before and used other apps, course I now need to convert thunderbird to Outlook, it seems it easy to go Outlook -> Thunderbird but how do you go back?

Now to sort out the Bluetooth computer connection for modem and web access and my wifi sd card and actually get some software on it.

Oh and why aren't MMS meassages included in the messaging app, it looks like MMS was an after thought?

Thanks

Sandy

Edited July 4, 2005 by sandys

[Guest Blakey]

In order to switch straight to speaker phone in mid chat, simply press and hold the green phone button.

Hope that helps

Blakey

[Guest sandys]

Excellent I'll give that a shot in a bit.

In order to switch straight to speaker phone in mid chat, simply press and hold the green phone button. 

Hope that helps

Blakey

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[Guest sandys]

Yep thats worked a treat, I must have missed that in the manual, starting to get to grips with it a bit more, its not bad, I expected it to be quite a bit faster though, even without anything preloaded it slower switching apps than my old p800 which had a 150Mhz CPU and about 8Mb free to the user vs 400 ond more ram in the ETEN and boy does this device lack a jog dial for one handed navigation, still I love the multitasking side of this M500, the p800 always closed down the app you were running when you switch to another, making copy a paste between apps quite a chore, so much easier and quicker with this.

Edited July 6, 2005 by sandys

[Guest sandys]

Right finally got my eten to sync by bluetooth things are starting to go a little smoother now, since getting it to work via bluetooth Active Sync 4 doesn't seem to want to start on boot of windows and it'd be nice if it just sync upon seeing my PC, got any tips for that?

Web over bluetooth to check mail and stuff without going to my main machine upstairs is pretty quick, now I'm seeing the speed it has over the old phone 8)

Thanks

Sandy

Edited July 7, 2005 by sandys