Last month I noted the PC World magazine article about Windows Mobile 6 smartphones that incorrectly said that Word Mobile and Excel Mobile on WM6 smartphones could not edit documents. This month iti s Maximum PC magazine’s turn to get it wrong. The Smartphone State of the Union article in the July 2007 issue of Maximum PC includes mini-reviews of many smartphones. Page 44 has a 1/3-page review of the T-Mobile Dash says: You’ll be able to open MS Office documents but not edit them. Given paper publication lag time, this article was probably written way before Windows Mobile 6 became available. Pre-WM6 smartphones did not come with Office Mobile components. So, the review may be speaking of some third party viewing application (but does not clarify this). WM6, however, does provide mobile versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Word and Excel do have edit modes. But, they are just that: Modes. It is not seamless experience like what you find on the desktop or Pocket PC. It is more like old moded vi editor in UNIX. You need to select Edit Mode from the Word or Excel initial menu (the Word menu is shown here). A different menu structure appears at that point and you can edit an existing document.
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More Windows Mobile Press Confusion: Maximum PC This Time
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Nintendo DS Browser Model Issue
The Nintendo DS Browser
(Amazon affiliate link) became available in the US earlier this month (although it had been available in Japan and Europe months before). Reading through the comments on Amazon, I learned that while the item is simply listed as the Nintendo DS Browser, it is actually specifically for the second generation DS Lite model. The Opera browser itself is on a standard small DS cartridge while a memory expansion card is provided in non-standard sized GBA card that only fits in the DS Lite model. So, if you have the first generation Nintendo DS, make sure you get a version specifically for that model.
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Windows Mobile 6 & Mac OS X
So, the not-quite-ready Apple iPhone is not the only phone that can sync with a Mac. I read an article over at MacNN describing an alpha release of Mark/Space’s…
Missing Sync for Windows Mobile 4.0 Alpha
According to the article the free alpha release (production release is $40) supports WM6 upgraded Blackjack and Dash smartphones. I’m not quite ready to sync my Dash with a Mac. But, if you are, please let me know how well it works for you.
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SDHC Card Reader Amazingly Fast
I bought a SanDisk Ultra II SDHC 4GB w/MicroMate USB 2.0 Bundle
for use with a digital camera. When I bought it the Micromate SDHC reader seemed like a nice to have add-on. However, since the 4GB SDHC card does not seem to be readable by my older SD readers, it became a must-have accessory. The SDHC card is recognized immediately when used with the bundled reader and file transfers are lightning fast. The SDHC card also slips into and out of the reader without any fuss.
The SanDisk MobileMate SD+ reader I bought just a week earlier, on the other hand, has such a tight SD slot, that I’m worried it might strip the metal contacts on SD cards I use with it. I’m probably going to put it away and give it a negative review over on Amazon.com.
The SanDisk SDHC card and reader bundle, on the other hand, gets a thumbs up from me.
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Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC) 6.1
Microsoft released an update to WMDC (ActiveSync for Vista)…
Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC) 6.1
The biggest win probably goes to Smartphone (Standard Edition) users who can now sync files with Windows Vista (Windows XP users could do so with ActiveSync). The surprise for me is that the download worked with Firefox. I didn’t have to switch back to IE to download the file to my Vista box.
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HiRISE Mobile: Images from Mars
The University of Arizona High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment has some spectacular high res photos of Mars on their website. And, I was surprised to find that they have pages formatted specially for mobile devices too. You can find it at…