by Jason Dunn, Microsoft MVP - Widows CE
(Most Valuable Professional)
Day 2
I did lots of email today, and my SMTP and POP mail solution works out well.
The MOVE command in the Inbox lets you keep copy of mail locally in another folder (I named my KEEPERS), but it will delete it off the server when you are connected and chose to empty the DELETED ITEMS folder. Not quite the ideal solution, but I will move all the KEEPERS messages into the INBOX when I get home, then synch the INBOX with Outlook 98 to have them all there. For messages that have attachments I want to keep, I simply left them in the INBOX. This occasionally resulted in duplicate messages - it's almost like every few days the mail server ignores the "leave on server" command and decides to send you a new copy of the mail.
It's also worthy to note that it doesn't keep SENT ITEMS by default, so you need to turn that on in the OPTIONS area if you're like me and need to keep a copy of all correspondence.
This is what you'll see if you try to empty your DELETED ITEMS folder and the messages are already gone off the server...
It was neat to have ICQ on the road with me as well, although it would have been great to have a chat feature built in. Right now ICQ for CE only does messaging. One warning - because the Velo's software modem uses the CPU so much, ICQ is a little slow to respond and open new messages.
I also logged into Royal Bank online to move money around in my accounts and check my VISA balance to see the brutal Canadian/US exchange rate on my VISA. No PIE problems here! Some services require 128-bit encryption or Java-capable browsers, but not my bank. Should that worry me? :-)
I noticed the battery didn't last all that long today - so for today it was used for an hour of modem and backlight use, and it went down to half life. Yet I know it will last for a long time on the half-life mode - the hardware doesn't talk very well to the battery monitoring software.
Day 3
The CE Powertoys for 2.0 are interesting - this is the STATUS section of the TODAY app. A nice snapshot overview of your Velo 500. I should note that these don't work very well with a Velo 1 running CE 2.0 - the links that are in the TASKS and APPOINTMENT sections don't link to the proper apps, and there's no registry hack to fix it. No problems with the Velo 500 though...
A character clipboard for those International travellers...this is a Philips add-on.
Since the USA doesn't want to join the rest of the word and play nice with the Metric system, this little app helps ease the burden of the world-traveller. Mind you, when you consider the cultural dominance the USA has in Canada, it's no wonder I still tell people my height in feet and weight in pounds! :-)
I worked with ExpenseForce today to start recording my expenses, and I still love it! I don't use MONEY or QUICKEN to keep track of things, but I do need something to keep my expenses organised for my accountant at the end of the year. ExpenseForce lets me customise practically everything. I use the VOICE MEMO feature of the Velo 500 to record expenses right after they occur, then transcribe them into ExpenseForce later.
Observant readers will notice that this is a colour shot - ok, I borrowed this from the Ruksun site. :-)
I remapped the WEB BROWSER Velo key to start it up, using the Control panel applet. With CE 1.0 we had to do an esoteric registry hack, but thankfully CE 2.0 is more flexible.
I also used the contact program to look up an address quickly (try that with a Libretto), and used calculator to figure out US to CND conversion (after which I wept).
Before sending me email, *please* read over all the
information on this site.
I try to respond to everyone who contacts me, but this FAQ was created for a reason: to
take the load off of responding to email for common issues, and to make the findings of
myself and the Windows CE community available 24 hours a day.