MobileViews Blog

I wanted to try the Intel AppUp beta for Windows 7 netbooks. So, I pointed my Google Chrome browser at…

http://www.intel.com/Consumer/Products/appup.htm

This resulted in partially rendered web page and Chrome attempting to use all available processor resources. I had to use Windows Task Manager to terminate Chrome.

Next up was Firefox. It rendered correctly and did not cause the processor to rev up. However, I could not download the AppUp EXE file using Firefox.

This forced me to use Internet Explorer 8 which takes forever to startup (why is that). The AppUp webpage rendered correctly and let me download the EXE file.

Thanks for the terrible user experience, Intel!

MSN Direct Outlook Plugin Failure

One of Microsoft’s unfortunate mobile strategy failures was MSN Direct and SPOT (Smart Personal Objects Technology). I say “unfortunate” because I have two Suunto SPOT watches and an annual paid subscription for MSN Direct Plus that gave me the ability to sync my Outlook calendar over the air with the watch.

Unfortunately, the…

MSN Direct Calendar Add-in 1.2.27824

…does not install at all in Microsoft Vista. And, I just found that it fails at the end of its installation process in Microsoft Virtual PC (beta) Windows XP Mode (a virtual machine under Windows 7). You can see the failure message in the screenshot above.

And, since the MSN Direct project has been dormant for a couple of years now, there’s no chance of a plugin update. To make matters more annoying, Microsoft doesn’t even provide contact information on…

http://direct.msn.com/

…to let me cancel my $69.96 annual subscription. I’ll start making calls to figure out how to do this the hard way over the next few days.

I still think SPOT was a good idea that just never lived up to its potential.

The free and Open Source CamStudio 2.0 demoed on an Asus Eee PC 1000HA running Windows 7 Release Candidate. I was happy to see CamStudio run on this combo since it did not run under Windows Vista when I tested it after Vista’s launch.

Like Windows 7 Beta, Windows 7 Release Candidate took just under 35 seconds to boot from a cold start to the login screen.

Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix took about 36 seconds to boot to the Ubuntu login screen on an Acer Aspire One netbook with 512MB RAM and a 8GB SSD. This time I recorded the boot time of Windows 7 Beta booting to the login screen on an Asus Eee PC 1000HA netbook with 1GB RAM and a 160GB hard drive. It took about 35 seconds.

Of course, Windows gets really busy after the login process with anti-spyware, anti-virus, and bunches of different app update background processes. So, it takes about another 30+ seconds to settle down.

I installed the optional Atheros WiFi chipset update provided by Microsoft for Windows 7 Beta on my Asus Eee PC 1000HA netbook this morning. Unfortunately, after the installation and reboot, I was able to see but NOT connect to my wireless network. So, I used Windows 7′s System Restore to get me back to the pre-update state and was able to get online.

=======================
Microsoft driver update for Atheros AR5007EG Wireless Network Adapter
Download size: 1.3 MB

You may need to restart your computer for this update to take effect.
Update type: Optional

This driver was provided by Microsoft for support of Atheros AR5007EG Wireless Network Adapter

More information:

http://winqual.microsoft.com/support/?driverid=3846

Help and Support:

http://support.microsoft.com/select/?target=hub

I discovered that I couldn’t use the wired Ethernet port on my Asus Eee PC 1000HA running Windows 7 Beta while in Seattle visiting Microsoft earlier this month. This was a problem since the Seattle Sheraton Hotel room I was in didn’t provide WiFi access – just wired Ethernet access.

However, when I fired up the Eee PC this evening, Windows 7 Beta had a notification icon telling me that a solution had been found (see screenshot above). So, I downloaded the Atheros AR8131/AR8132 Ethernet Controller driver that was linked in Microsoft’s notification page and installed it. Atheros provides the driver in a RAR archive file. So, I had to download and install 7-Zip to unpack it.

I tested wired Ethernet access after installing the driver on the Eee PC 1000HA and everything worked fine. I wish this driver was available 4 weeks ago!

One Live Mobile feature I like is its option to reformat web pages you jump to from its search results to fit on your phone’s screen. The screen cap here shows the settings option to turn this on.

This won’t help my old Suunto Spot watch. But, if you have a Garmin nuvi GPS (780, 880, 5000, 750, 760, or 2×5 series) that supports it, MSN Direct Send to GPS…

MSN Direct Enables Web Sites to Deliver Location Information to GPS Navigation Devices

…allows any Web site to offer visitors the ability to send addresses, business listings, or other locations directly from the site to their GPS unit, eliminating the cumbersome step of re-entering or searching for the same information on their navigation device. Nice…

Remember all the ugliness a few weeks ago when some people lost their Google RSS feeds because of some glitch on Google’s servers? Interestingly enough, if you use Microsoft’s Windows Live web page as your RSS feed collector, you can avoid this by using a somewhat hard to find Live feature. And, as a side benefit, this procedure lets you migrate all your Windows Live RSS feeds to Ilium’s NewsBreak RSS/Podcast feed reader for Windows Mobile Pocket PCs and Smartphones.

Here’s what you can do.

• Start Windows Live and, if needed, login to your personal page
• Click on the Add stuff link near the top left of the page
• Click on the Advanced tab
• Take a look at the last line of the box that just opened up. Find the line that reads Click here to export your feed subscriptions to OPML.
• Click on the word here in that line
• A new window or tab will open up at this point and show you the OPML XML code containing all of the feeds in all of your Windows Live page tabs.
• Click File
• Click Save As
• Save the OPML XML code to a file on your PC

Assuming you have Ilium Software’s NewsBreak 2.0 installed on your Pocket PC or Smartphone, sync your device with your PC. Then, copy the OPML file you created using the steps above over to your Windows Mobile device. Now, start up NewsBreak and use its New Channel Wizard to import the OPML file. NewsBreak doesn’t have a check all option in this wizard. So, if you have a lot of feeds in Windows Live like me, it might take a little while to check off all the feeds for NewsBreak to use. But, this is not too painful. You might want to use NewsBreak’s option to store the feed data on your storage card after this. But, otherwise, that’s it. You not only have a backup of your Windows Live RSS feed collection, you also have a portable version on your Windows Mobile device.

So, we’ve got .NET Framework for PCs, .NET Compact Framework for Windows Mobile, and, now, .NET Micro Framework for MSN Direct and other embedded systems. It appears that this category also includes Windows Vista SideShow devices. Here’s a bunch of links to help you sort out the information. First up is the press release…

Microsoft .NET Micro Framework Is Now Available

Next is the frameworks website…

Microsoft .net Micro Framework

And, finally, a brief video (WMV format) providing examples of the types of devices that might run .net Micro Framework…

.NET Micro Framework demo video