Sep 05, 2001, 10:50pm

Well, PocketPC 2002 (terrible name btw) was officially "released" today, with a big to do down in Redmond. Several articles are online, including this one at Brighthand and this one at PDA Buzz. After reading the articles, here's my initial thoughts:

The good:
MS Reader might actually no longer suck. Performance is still a question since it appears both Wes and Steve Bush haven't used it yet.

YES! MSN Messenger is NOT in ROM. Thank the stars. ROM's too valuable. And what if I'm a long term (read: my UIN is only 6 digits) ICQ user? Hopefully AOL will bring out ICQ for the Pocket PC... and since MSN Messenger seems to be a RAM app (and hopefully not so hooked in that you can't uninstall it), this is SWEEEEEET.

YES! WMP 8 interacts with PIE! FINALLY! No more stumbling, or registry hacks, or 3rd party stuff for viewing movies or audio via a web page.

YES! Icon views in Calendar. Sweet.

YES! With a Caveat - PIE has been completely retooled. About friggin' time. HTML 3.2 support, Javascript native, active x support (who cares :-) active x is evil :-), client side xml. The caveat is this... even though I work for a webdev company, I cannot recall if CSS 1.0 is considered part of the HTML 3.2 spec or not. And regardless, is CSS supported in PIE? Dunno. Didn't read anything to that effect. The download manager is also sweet.

Good, with a caveat: retooled inbox. Finally we have folders. Sweet. Finally we have a spell checker (more on that below). But BOOOOO microsoft, still no support for popular 3rd party apps like Eudora. I like using outlook for scheduling etc, but do NOT like it for email... and avoid it like the plague. 99% of the media-popular virii out there are targetted to Outlook users. I use Eudora Pro 5.1 and want Pocket PC to support it. Bastards :-)

The neutral:
Spell checker appears to only work in Pocket Outlook and Word. If so, this is not good. Good we have a spell checker but not good if it's limited to these apps. I made this neutral, but it should have been a universal spell checker, usable in every app, installed or future.

The comments on the VPN confused me a bit... it still appears as if the PPC device will NOT connect to the internet while in the sync cradle (via USB). Just through network, modem, wireless or infrared (cell phones). This is given a neutral because the connectivity has become better, but where's the USB connectivity? Do we still have to hack the registry?

Windows Media Player is in RAM on upgrades? WTF? At roughly 1.6mb, yeah, it's big, and yeah, most of us have lived with WMP 7.1 in RAM (in my case, on the CF card) but surely WMP would be considered defacto?

The X isn't a close function but a minimize? I'm making this a neutral comment because Wes sez that it "works". I'll wait to see. I have my serious doubts. Microsoft has NEVER been able to manage memory well, at least till Windows 2K (and even that has its hiccups). I doubt the PPC will handle it, but I'll wait and see.

Reader in RAM? Damnit. I guess this is neutral because then we can upgrade Reader.

The Bad:
VERY BAD: COMPAQ CHARGING EVERYONE for the F'ing upgrade? So those of us who have bought this device in the last month or two are screwed. Not good planning. IMO, free upgrades to this system should be given to anyone who has bought an iPaq within 90 days of this new release.

Very Bad: You have to do online activation before you can use the Reader? For Cripes' sakes. Give me a f'ing break.

Bad: A fakey, faux "skinning" ability for the Today page that has one intrinsic fault - the colour choices you set for fonts affects all apps, so that means no dark colours in your skins, kiddies... otherwise, your white fonts used in that will make your pocket word documents invisible. Other faults include what appears to be a distinct lack of stuff that we get in Dashboard et al. They SHOULD have bought Dashboard and Wisbar (ie the intellectual property) and incorporated those into the OS. Why? Because they work, and they rock. And Microsoft? I want the ability to skin EVERYTHING not just the today page.

Bad: Sounds like portions of of the ROM is taken up by wizards, like the auto configing for your ISPs in the Mail app, etc etc. Other portions are taken up by MSN wizard crap. If this is the case, this is BAD. ROM is too valuable for that crap. Should be (or have been) a removeable component in RAM, or left on the desktop.

Overall, from what I've read, I'll give Mikeysoft a 7.5 out of 10 on this new version. Still lots of problems it seems, and a lot of "Microsoft's way of doing things or screw you" going on. We'll see.

I can't believe Compaq is going to charge me (or Wayne) for the upgrades on our less than 60 day old iPaqs... grrrrr.

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