Windows Mobile 5 & ActiveSync 4.1

[Guest brykins]

Well....now I can see why all those PalmOS and Symbian guys mean. After a couple of years advocating Windows Smartphones and PDAs, I am now at a stage where I simply can't recommend them to anyone.

I have gone from a C500 through an MDA Compact (HTC Magician) and now have the MDA Compact II....and wish I had never made the upgrade.

WM5 is a disaster - I used to soft-reset my Compact once per day at 6:30 after it did a backup - Sprite Backup did the reset for me and even though it never needed it, it gave some peace of mind knowing that the memory was being cleared down once per day. Never once in a year of use did I have a spontaneous reset of either the soft or hard variety.

WM5 - I am soft-reseting it five or six times each day. Mainly on due to lock-ups in the Messaging application - I have lost any number of texts due to it locking up and needing reseting before it had a chance to save the messages.

For something that's now supposed to be used one-handed, WM5 still has a hell of a long way to go. Take one handed operation of a simple thing like Notes. I can navigate to my Notes application using PocketPlus as I have an icon for Notes. Great - I open it, and am presented with my notes in a list. I can scroll down and open one, scroll around it and even close it with a single button press. But I can't close Notes - I can use the Red "Hangup" button and get back to the Today screen but that leaves Notes running and I wanted to close it. I can close it via the top-right close button but I need the stylus for that (or a grubby finger on the screen). It's just one example of many where the obvious seems to have been totally missed.

Now Activesync - for years I have been wondering why Palm devotees say that AS sucks. I NEVER had a problem with 3.x on any of my WM2003/SE devices - everything worked out of the box and worked fine all the time. Now 4.1 - well what can I say?

I don't have a paid for firewall. For years the free version of Zone Alarm has done me fine. Now it seems I can't run that or AS won't run. Nice of MS to give us some help to get through the paid for version but what about the rest of us? So - I has uninstalled that and am now relying on the Windows firewall for a while...foolish maybe.

But can I sync? Well - I could earlier in the week. I could yesterday. I can't today. I plug in the device and it hangs ..... says something about the PC requiring attention. Sometimes get's past the contacts and tries to sync the calendar....and just stops. Have deleted the partnership twice, have soft reset the PDA, have re-booted the PC, have done everything but install AS and re-install....that's next I guess.

But should it have to be this way? Shouldn't things from one of the largest companies in the worl just work? I really, really pity the "average" guy on the street that ends up with a Windows Mobile device at the moment as it's just gonna confuse and frustrate the hell out of them.

It's a shame as when they work, they are great.

Now - I wonder if it's technically possible to get Windows Mobile 2003 SE onto this MDA Compact II....do that and I will be a happy guy. Otherwise....any brave soul out there with an MDA Compact/Jam/Magician that's under three months old, in perfect condition, unlocked and maybe got a decent sized SD card with it, want to trade for a brand new, barely used MDA Compact II?

[Guest jfran]

I could understand your frustration, anyway hand in there. You should have kept the wizard ;-)

Cant quite remember much about zonealarm, however isnt there a way to add exceptions ??

WM5 Tip: reprogram the contacts and calender keys to Start menu and ok respectively, and then make sure they (calender ans contacts) are included in the start menu...

rgs

Jim

[Guest Pondrew]

Hmmm. Strange. I've only once had my MDA Compact II completely lock up once requiring a soft reset. It's never required a hard reset and I next to never bother to soft reset it (turning it off at night suffices now that we've got permanent storage!).

As for Activesync 4.1, it's co-existing well enough with Norton Internet Security for me. Only once did I have to reboot the PC before it would sync (annoying though even having it happen once :?: ).

My advice would be to get a new unit sent out as even one lockup in Messaging sounds like a faulty/buggy unit (seriously, I've not seen any of this behaviour at my end!).

Hope the situation improves for you 8)

[Guest mas99]

You should find that Active sync works fine with Zone Alarm when you write an execption rule for as it uses tcp/ip for addressing.

See the Microsoft mobile web site for details with a bit of time and tinkering it does work

Mark :roll: