Pocket PC

[Santos007]

What are these useful for?

[busithoth]

Whatever you use a palm for, and more, if you want it in a nutshell.

I use mine to to browse internet and watch TV shows, too, as well as listen to MP3s.

Oh, and mine's also my phone, so all the contacts and stuff are only a click away.

nice try, though

[mozilla4]

Originally posted by busithoth
Whatever you use a palm for, and more, if you want it in a nutshell.

I use mine to to browse internet and watch TV shows, too, as well as listen to MP3s.

Oh, and mine's also my phone, so all the contacts and stuff are only a click away.

nice try, though

How much battery life do those phone editions get?

[busithoth]

I get 2.5-3 hours of use, with the backlight on.
That could be either phone or playing mp3s, movies, what have you.

Actually, that's using the estimate I get from the battery pack program I used for a while on it. Seems a little lower than I remember. But if I don't recharge it overnight, it'll be really in need of a charge by the end of the second night.

I had an Ipaq 3765 before this, and that had about half the life, so I'm pretty happy with what I got. Plus the battery extension can be modded to take up very little extra space.

[SkyDog]

There's all sorts of "non-mainstream" uses for them, too. There are companies that make barcode readers and card scanners for PocketPC so that they can be used for inventory tracking or credit card processing. I use mine with a wireless network card and MiniStumbler to track down the location of rogue access points on my networks.

[almer]

I have a Dell Axim. Great little gadget. I use it with wireless card to check e-mail (when I do not want to fire up my computers), ICQ on the go, great for GPS (with compact flash add-on), the usual (contacts, documents). Great to keep pictures for business use and personal. I think possibilities are endless. It is for sure not a replacement for desktop or Lappy, but a great portable tool.

[GenoG]

what do I need to browse the internet on my clie? or watch TV shows?

[SkyDog]

Originally posted by GenoG
what do I need to browse the internet on my clie? or watch TV shows?

This thread is about PocketPC devices, which run Windows CE. Your Clie runs Palm OS. PocketPC's have a version of Internet Explorer built-in. Palm OS 5 includes a web browser, and there are browsers you can download for previous versions of Palm OS. Other than the browser, you need a way to connect the device to the Internet: via modem, Ethernet, or wireless, for example.

I don't use my PocketPC to watch TV, so I don't have all the info on that. I know that Snapstream is one method. And this page has a little snippet about a TV tuner sleeve for the Compaq iPaq. These are both for PocketPC devices -- I have no idea what's out there for Palm OS.

[melee]

Um, Most Pocket Pc (almost all nowadays) don't run Windows CE... They run Windows Pocket PC and Pocket PC 2002 which are based on Windows CE. Windoiws CE is mainly used on those mini laptop deals. I just wan't to clarify

[SkyDog]

I know it's splitting hairs, but PocketPC 2000 & 2002 are front ends for Windows CE 3.0. PocketPC's still do run Windows CE, but they're also running PocketPC 2000 or 2002 as well.

I guess a good analogy would be a PC running DOS and Windows 3.x. The OS was DOS, and the operating environment was Windows 3.1 or 3.11. Along those same lines, PocketPC devices are running Windows CE for an OS and PocketPC 2000 or 2002 as an operating environment.

[busithoth]

I don't know which movie players work for Clie's, but there are some, like ActiveSky. The real problem would be encoding it.

I switched to PocketPC pretty quickly after having a Palm, so I didn't really experiment too much with palm's video capabilities.

But you should hunt some websites for it.
I bet google would yield some good results for you. (Incidentally, the Clie's resolution is higher than PocketPC's (320x320 vs 320x240). This ratio could be a boon or a pain for you.)

I'd never heard of Snapstream before, SkyDog, thanks for the link.

The first program I used to encode for pocketpc was windows media encoder 7.1. This worked nearly perfectly, but you can't edit the video too much.
Right now I'm using Windows Movie Maker, with XP, and it's pretty good. Good meaning easy. You can arrange clips to a different order, if you want, and choose whether you want a full screen video at 15 fps or smaller screen at 20 fps.
I've got an AIW, so TV's patched right in, and I can record the program from ATI's recorder program (which has a ton of settings for quality/size) and then convert it using Movie Maker, or capture it straight from Movie Maker, which can record it in a variety of formats also, including PocketPC optimized. This eliminates a step in the process of getting a video to play on the device, but I don't like the preview window's restrictions, so tend to record in ATI and convert it later (if I think it's worth converting).

also, my 12-bit screen clips the colors of humans a bit, (dell Axim and color Clie's are 16-bit, right?) so I try to stick more with cartoons to watch, as you don't really notice the color limitations with them. video is watchable in 12-bit, but I find it distracting at times.