Office 6.1 for Windows Mobile gives compatibility with Office 2007 desktop apps.

Since Office 2007 was released there has been a bit of a problem for those who rely on their Windows Mobile device to read/ create and edit Office files on their devices. If someone sends you an Office 2007 file to your WM device you can't do anything with it!

You would have to reply and ask the sender to send again in Office 2003 format. That's a bit of a shame when you are after all using a Microsoft powered device with up to the latest firmware!

All that has been remedied today with Microsoft making an upgrade available for free download. Knock yourself out here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=4b106c1f-51e2-42f0-ba32-69bb7e9a3814&displaylang=en&tm

3G Announced for the iPhone “Next Year”

Randall Stephenson (AT&T CEO) said in an interview yesterday that the iPhone is planned for a 3G upgrade “next year”. You can read the interview at Bloomberg here: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aAoHevYzQJgw&refer=us

The current iPhone is limited to EDGE and I for one am put off owning a cutting edge sophisticated phone with a nice big screen and, by all accounts, a fantastic browser and interface generally to then be limited to EDGE.

This upgrade, along with the previously announced SDK which is coming next year, will likely change the mind of a few people like me.

No date or price was mentioned but I would expect that Apple coincide the new version with an increase in storage capacity. Who'd like a 32GB, 3G iPhone with plenty of 3rd party software available? Join the queue behind me...

I just hope that they don't forget the GSM HSDPA version for Europe!

HTC Shift - Fast HSDPA! Raon Everun 600Mhz, 60GB.

Steve over at UMPCPortal.com is really enjoying researching his HTC Shift review...the swine! I'm particularly jealous to hear of his fantastic HSDPA speeds.

You may remember that I posted some speedtests from my HSDPA connection and my home ADSL here a little while back, well Steve is getting faster speeds on his Shift than I do on my ADSL!

Thankfully Steve, anticipating my mood, has organised an Everun for me to test. The HSDPA on board should keep me occupied for a little while. I'll post a review as soon as it lands here.

Those of you following the Everun may be interested to know that www.cartft.com is offering a 600Mhz 60GB version which is more powerful than the 500Mhz 30GB version available elsewhere and its cheaper to boot! 689 Euros!

WiBrain B1 at Dynamism.com

Dyanmism are advertising a WiBrain B1 UMPC from $699. The specs include a 1024 x 600 4.8-inch WSVGA screen (the same res, but a slightly bigger screen than the Sony UX). The CPU is listed as VIA C7M 1.2GHz and with 60gb of HDD and 1GB of RAM this thing should run Vista OK, but they list it with XP Home only. That said, its clearly running Vista in one of the marketing shots.

The picture speaks for itself - the layout is a little unconventional! The WiBrain does includes a touch screen, navigation keys (Arrow/PageUp/PageDown) and a touch pad which should make input easy enough, although typing might be more of a problem with your eyes scanning from the left to the right side of the device and back to find the key you need.

It's got a popup camera and mic which will be useful if you're into Skype and standard connectivity is covered with WiFi and Bluetooth included. There's no sign of HSDPA unfortunately.

At 510g its slightly heavier than the Sony UX (which is 468g) and the OQO 02 (around 450g) and the Raon Everun which weighs in under 500g.

On price though its definately the lighter of all of the above mentioned devices. $699 for the 512mb version beats even the cheapest and lowest specced of the bunch, the Everun. The 1GB WiBrain takes the price to $849 which is still tremendous value for the spec.

The docking cradle adds a DVD-R, 4 USB 2.0 ports, a 4 in 1 Card reader (MS, SD, MMC, XD), VGA out and RJ45(LAN). This isn't included in the standard package and costs $179 from Dynamism.

Dynamism are expecting these babies in mid to late December and I'll be front of the queue to have a go on one!

Name and URL change! www.havethat.co.uk

I have been having a few problems with Blogger publishing to my FTP space, it doesn't seem to like uploading images very much. I'm guessing this could be because my server is in the UK and Google's aren't. Anyhow, having Blogger publish to my FTP is probably over complicating things a bit so I've commandeered www.havethat.co.uk (which I've had for 5+ years and never done anything with) and set that up on the Blogger system.

From now on you can read the "Have That" Blog (not a great name I know) at www.havethat.co.uk

I hope that I have managed to redirect the RSS feed so that I haven't lost anyone in the move. If it hasn't changed automatically for you please visit www.havethat.co.uk and subscribe to the new feed. This will be the last entry on this feed!

From now on I hope you'll see more pictures in my posts and I'll be able to track how many of you subscribe to the feed through Feedburner (which also didn't seem to work on the old system).

Thanks

Simon

OQO with HSDPA launch event. Exciting times! What will the new UX include?

In the few hours where I'm neutral again it has gone through my mind that I should wait and see what happens in the next few weeks. OQO have invited me to a launch event of a new "Anytime/ Anywhere(TM)" OQO device next week...I think we all know what that's going to be. Its going to be a fantastic thing as well. It's just going to be a bit pricey.

And Sony are clearly selling off the UX1XN in readiness for a new device. My contact at Sony is being tight lipped but I'm guessing that we'll see a UK version of the UX92/ UX490N. Most likely with the Intel Core 2 Solo U2200 1.2GHz (compared to a Core Solo U1500 1.33Ghz in the UX1XN) and 64GB SSD. Thats not that important though, the question is...will it have HSDPA? And if it does, will the price be back up where it was for the UX1XN at first - £2000?

I've come to the conclusion that both the OQO e2 with HSDPA and the new VAIO UX, with or without HSDPA, are going to be £1600+ at launch. With that in mind I will go ahead and buy a UX1XN tomorrow and perhaps it will be my last non-always connected UMPC.

UMPC-less again! VAIO UX price drop.

I had the OQO e2 for a fortnight, then I had the UX1XN for fortnight and now I'm UMPC-less again! Well unless you count the OQO 01+ or the Nokia 770 in my "Must put on ebay" pile.

Perhaps unfortunately for me, this Blog has made me do one thing that a gadget buyer shouldn't really do...monitor prices closely AFTER you've purchased. Two weeks ago today I got a great deal on a UX1XN, by far the best available on the internet and I was very pleased. Less than a week later Zuber got a better deal from the same place, and then today someone anonymous told me of their purchase of a UX1XN from their local Sony store for £599. £200 cheaper than mine!

Now, being a Yorkshireman I decided £200 was worth a bit of hassle. So once I discovered that my local Sony centre also had the UX1XN at £599 and a couple in stock, and that there are a couple in stock in my second most local Sony store, I got in touch with Laptops Direct and agreed that mine would be making its way back to them. They are very nice people.

I also emailed and then popped into my local Sony Store (not 3 minutes walk from my front door) and asked them to put one aside until I had received my returns authorisation and sent my baby back.

Then I did a factory reset, wiped the little fella clean, found the box, spent an age working out which bit went in which plastic bag, loaded everything up and sent him on his way. By the time I'd done all that I didn't have time to get to the Sony store!

It turns out that you can take the Yorkshireman out of Yorkshire, but you can't take the Yorkshire out of the Yorkshireman! But I reckon that £200 will be much better spent on an extended battery and a Bluetooth keyboard.

It has also been a good learning experience...I now know how to pack a Sony VAIO UX series back into its box, and, perhaps more practially, I have used the Sony Restore tool. It worked really well and I was very impressed with it being able to restore itself without a CD (this has previously been a headache for devices without an optical drive). The manual was very helpful as well. Top marks to Sony.

My Anonymous trouble causer this morning mentioned that he/ she had purchased an extended battery from Amazon in the US because they are out of stock in the UK. I have found that they are pretty thin on the ground in the UK but Sony Style have them for £163. About £35 more than other places!! I will see if my new best friend in the Sony Centre can do me a deal, they don't have them in the shop but they can order them.

Otherwise I'll be doing the same and ordering from Amazon in the US.

Humax PVR9200T - New Firmware - Series Link!

Well done Humax! Its been a long time coming but last night at 11.30PM I received an email that the new Humax PVR firmware was available for download. The new firmware gives us Series Link!

Series Link is part of the new Freeview Playback specification and Freeview have very graciously made the firmware backwardly compatible with existing units. That's a really great move from Humax and it makes customers like me extremely happy. I'm even planning on purchasing a new unit for my parents for Christmas.

Unfortunately due to a last minute bug in the previous firmware it was not released in the November OTA (over the air) slot so those of you without a serial cable, and a PC with a serial port, will probably now have to wait until the January slot to receive the update automatically.

You can download the firmware from www.hummy.org.uk

I dug out an old PC with a serial port, installed the necessary software and loaded the new firmware on to my PVR9200T last night and its great to see the Series Link option. You just browse the guide, press OK on an item and it asks "Whole Series"? Choose that option and you'll get the whole lot!

If it works properly I will be a very happy Humax user. Long live the PVR9200 series, they are excellent devices.

UPDATE: In what I would call the worst timing ever (if you've been patiently waiting for your Series Link firmware update) the Hummy.org.uk forum is down. I hope I'm not breaking any rules by posting these here (if I am asked to I'll remove them straight away):
Formula 4 Neo (software for uploading the firmware)

PGXTF10020_all.hdf (1.00.20 firmware)

Amazon Kindle - no sign in the UK!

The Kindle eReader from Amazon is a bit different to what has gone before in the eReader space. Not because of the way it works, or the design or the unit itself, but because of the delivery mechanism that it forms part of.

The device itself has its own connectivity (through Sprint in the US) and you can use this, free of charge, to choose from nearly 90,000 eBooks online and download them right to your device.

That is a leap which could really put eBooks in the mainstream. It will be very interesting to see how this plays out.

However, despite most of the front page of Amazon.com being covered in an ad for the Kindle, the .co.uk site has no mention of it. If you search for Kindle on Amazon.co.uk you are offered a Franklin eBook reader...

Lets hope that Amazon can come to an agreement with a UK phone network and provide the Kindle to us ASAP.

VAIO UX1XN Tablet Edition

This article by James Kendrick makes a good point about the UX and Vista. For some reason the UX doesn't include the tablet bits, therefore its not a true UMPC by definition. James said, and this was in January of this year, that Vista would solve this problem because when Vista came along it would include the tablet bits (whereas with XP they were only in the Tablet Edition which wasn't included with the UX).

Unfortunately this hasn't turned out to be true. Or rather, the tablet features are most likely there but they're just not showing on the UX with Vista.

This article confirms that tablet stuff is included in Vista Business(which the UX ships with).

So the question is, how do we turn it on? I imagine that this is to do with the driver for the touch screen. The touch screen on the UX doesn't seem to be recognised as a HID (Human Input Device) like a digitizer would be.

I've posted previously about a registry hack which can trick Office 2007 into showing us the inking options, but this isn't quite the same. I miss the full OS integration which I saw with XP Tablet Edition on the OQO 01+.

If anyone knows of a way to achieve this please let me know!

Photoshop CS3 on the UX1XN - Video

Its time for the first video Blog entry! This is a short clip of the UX1XN in use with Photoshop CS3 and the touch screen in response to Junki's questions. Sorry about the auto-focus going a bit mad, I will sort that out before I do any more video.

Blackberry Curve 8310

A friend of mine has recently started working for Blackberry in London so I thought it was about time that I had a go with a modern Blackberry device. The last time I used a Blackberry was some years ago and I was rather underwhelmed by the large mono device. Clearly they have come on a bit since then!

This certainly isn't a review, its more of a very brief log of my first impressions following 5 minutes of playing with the thing.

The build quality is superb and as a result the device is quite tactile - I wanted to pick it up, and I didn't want to give it back! The screen is nice and bright, the keyboard isn't bad considering the size and the joystick is good - if a little strange.

So its a pretty sexy little phone, its got GPS on board, a browser and obviously its great for email. There's not much more that you need...is there? I did spot a VNC client on there, but apparently it doesn't work very well.

Personally I won't be cancelling my order on the HTC TyTN II Windows Mobile 6 device, to replace my HTC TyTN I. I like the extra functionality (eg the excellent remote desktop client) and hackability of Windows Mobile (see my earlier post about the software that makes your Windows Mobile phone into a wireless router) and most of all the over the air sync with Exchange which will synch my email (including sent items), contacts, notes and tasks within a few seconds of a change.

My hosted Exchange provider doesn't offer Blackberry compatibility yet. If and when they do and I'm due an upgrade (in a year's time) I may reconsider this because the device itself is quite appealing and the Blackberry service is obvisouly extremely robust...thousands of crackberry fiends can't all be wrong!

UX1XN - further price drop!

Zuber, our top reader, has bitten the bullet and bought a UX1XN from Laptops Direct. He got the great price of £699 including VAT! Mine was delivered 7 days ago from the same place and I paid £821 (£699 plus VAT)!!

Sony Style has also reduced the price by £100 to £899 inc VAT.

I am enjoying using mine more and more each day and I can highly recommend them to you.

VAIO UX1XN - thanks for your comments

Thanks everyone for reading and posting on the blog! Thanks for the tip on the Fn sticky key, that has solved another niggle for me.

So far I haven't used the VAIO for inking and I haven't used this on any other Windows device previously either. By default the VAIO seems to have the standard Vista XP overridden/ turned off. Is there something that I need to do to make Vista present me with the inking stuff when I hit a text area?

EDIT: Zuber pointed me in the direction of this article about a hack to tell Vista that the UX is a tablet PC. I will try it this evening! Thanks again Zuber!

If I can work out how to turn it on I will give it a go and report back, for what its worth!

Thanks to Zuber for the screen protector advice also. I will give one a try I think.

I'm also going to install DIVx and give a movie a try on the VAIO. I tried this on the OQO 2 and it did some strange things with Black. I could only watch from a strange angle. Hopefully the Sony is better.

Screen Protectors - Yes or No?

They seem awfully expensive and I've read several bad reviews which say that a screen protector for the UX1XN is hard to fit and can cause damage to the screen when removed!

I also read a review where someone said that the stylus scratches them easily and recommended not using the stylus if you have a screen protector applied! Surely that's the main point for the screen protector in the first place?!

The cheapest I can find in the UK, with stock, is £12.99 + £10.99 postage! That's £24 for two sheets of plastic!

Before I order I wonder what other users think about screen protectors on the UX1XN or other devices?

Its definitely one/ nil to OQO for providing the Model 02 with a screen protector expertly pre-installed. Good call OQO.

Sony VAIO UX1XN is redeeming itself.

I've been using the UX1XN for a few days now so its about time that I capture my thoughts.

When it first arrived it did go through my mind that I should send it straight back, but I'm glad I haven't. Its proven to be a very useful little fella over the past couple of days.

I said before that the screen resolution is just too high. On Saturday I changed the font size to 120dpi (and thanks to someone for the anonymous tip on that today) and that has improved things a lot. The screen is very clear and bright and with the increased font size its easy enough to read. Unlike the OQO there is no problem with windows being too small for the resolution.

I do miss the wonderful horizontal and vertical thumb scrollers on the OQO but I discovered a third mouse button on the VAIO which gives the same functionality. I can hold down the third button and then point the mouse button in the direction to scroll. It's not quite as slick but it works very well.

I mentioned that the VAIO doesn't have sticky keys like the OQO does. This was a real pain. Luckily another anonymous tip came in the comments section of this Blog...press shift 5 times and sticky keys will be activated! Sure enough Windows has sticky keys built in, and after a little tweaking of the settings (turning off the beep for instance) this works fine and solves the issue!

It doesn't include the function key like the OQO does, but I can live with that.

I'm surprised to say that I have found the keyboard to be excellent and I haven't had any wrist pain even after prolonged use. I have found that my typing is extremely accurate and my speed is good.

The design reminds most people of a games handheld. I'm not sure whether that is a good thing or a bad thing. Perhaps I'm less likely to be mugged if people think I'm playing on an Atari Lynx?

I quite like the fact that the device can be used without pulling the keyboard open. I also like the provided stand. Its useful for using the VAIO to watch video or with an external keyboard.

I experimented with using the docking station with my 20" widescreen TFT and USB keyboard and mouse and it worked fine. I personally won't be using the VAIO like this as I prefer a seperate desktop and UMPC. That way I can RDP into the desktop at home when I'm out and about and set it doing something, then reconnect later when the task is complete to do the next piece of work.

I have found the performance to be a delight. I have never consciously thought about it being slow, which can only be a good thing! Its great to have Vista on it as well. The user experience is great.

The jury is still out on battery life until I have done some more scientific experiments and stopped using the thing constantly day and night!

VAIO UX1XN first thoughts

First Impressions of the VAIO UX1XN

The screen resolution IS too high and there doesn't seem to be an option to reduce it. I have perfect eyesight and I am finding this a struggle in use sitting at a desk. This may be better when I use it in my native environment...laying in bed!

The keyboard is not as bad as I expected. Its actually reasonably usable. I would say that the OQO model 2 is better but I may change my mind as I get used to this one. The Sony doesn't have sticky buttons like the OQO does for shift, Function, Ctrl. I have badly missed that so far on the VAIO.

The touch screen on the VAIO is much better than the digitizer on the OQO. The Sony is accurate enough to be usable where the OQO was simply not good enough to use.

The device itself is pretty ugly to be honest. Unlike the elegant OQO this thing is a bit of a monster.

I quite like the biometric fingerprint scanner although its not really essential for me. The two cameras are quite fun and might come in handy for Skype or the odd photo. Mostly a gimmick for me I guess.

The case which comes with the device is quite nice and the various accessories seem quite well thought out, although I haven't used any of them in anger yet.

I'll write some more after I've got the device on the internet and given it a bit more of a test.

Asus EEE PC with XP - Hands on!

I have just had a very short go with an Asus EEE PC with XP installed. It's fantastic! The screen is very usable indeed and it was extremely responsive in use. We fired up the WiFi router on my phone, connected the ASUS to it and we were straight on the Web! We then opened a VPN and RDP'd to a server...all flawlessly.

I was very impressed with the Asus. Its light, its bright, it has a good sized keyboard with good response and its £229 inc VAT! You can't really argue at that!

Here is a picture of it with this blog on screen and a few, albeit archaic (I might get in trouble from the owner for that) items for size comparison.

The Asus is 800x480 so there is sometimes the problem with dialogues dropping off the bottom of the screen. I've recommended the UMPC Scroll Bar Power Toy though so that should help. You can download it here.

Thanks to Matt Andrews for the quick look. Hopefully he will be writing something about the Asus for us here soon.

Mobile Phone Internet Connection Sharing over WiFI

This is something I've wondered about doing for years. Particularly when I purchased a Nokia 770 and found that there was no way to connect it to my WM6 mobile.

Basically the idea is that your Windows Mobile 6 (or WM5 AKU3) mobile phone acts as a wireless AP sharing your 3G connection to other devices. This is likely to be more compatible with devices that you already own, without having to worry about pairing and such, than Bluetooth. Oh, and its faster to boot!

A little while ago I did some speed tests on the OQO 02 over my broadband with WiFi, my mobile phone with USB and my mobile phone with Bluetooth. Bluetooth was the slowest unsurprisingly.

I've just done the test again, not on the OQO this time but still using the same mobile phone. Only this time I have WMWifiRouter v0.6 installed and its sharing my HSDPA T-Mobile connection to my laptop wirelessly. Scroll down or click here for the results.



This is a great function to have and I think a lot of people will find this useful. There is nothing to configure on the PC side and the software handles everything on the WM6 device side. Just load it up, select the new wifi connection from your laptop and you're off!

You can find out more and download the free software here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=341398

Today is a good day!

OQO e2/02 review continued. VAIO UX1XN ordered!

Continued from here...

The build of the 02/ E2 is very solid. This feels like an expensive solid device. Most people who took hold of the device commented on it being heavy, which it is for comparable electronics of its size, however for what it packs inside its very light. I carried the unit in a small pocket in my rucksack each day and never noticed it was there. I can't say the same about my work Thinkpad T42 whenever I carry that!

OQO have addressed the issues with WiFi on the 01/01+ and I never encountered any problems with the 02 wifi. This is how it should be!

Overall I found the model 02 to be an excellent device. Its very capable and very well designed. OQO really have done an excellent job here. I have only two negative points to raise against the Model 02.

1) The touch screen is still extremely inaccurate. It seems no better than the model 01+. Perhaps this is why they don't provide a stylus, or anywhere to put a stylus on the 02. This is a real shame as I was looking forward to taking advantage of tablet features on the 02.

2) The price. Since I returned my review unit to OQO a week ago today I have missed it! So much so that I have been trying to get my hands on one all day. I'm afraid that its just too expensive!! I simply can't justify the cost for an additional device. The cost on the OQO 02 is nearly twice what my Dell Core 2 Duo 2.4, 2gb RAM, 360GB HDD, 20" UltraBright wide screen desktop cost. That can't be right...?!

Instead, to feed my addiction, I have ordered a Sony UX1XN. This is a 1.33Ghz Intel Core Solo, 1GB RAM, with 32GB solid state HDD. On paper it has plenty of features over and above the OQO. A faster CPU, a bundled docking station, two cameras, a higher resolution screen, a memory stick reader, a CF reader, a fingerprint scanner, a touch screen which works (rather than a digitizer which does not), a better graphics chip which support Aero, etc, etc.

The VAIO UX1XN (1.33Ghz Intel Core Solo, 1GB RAM, 32GB SSD, Vista Business) costs £795 inc VAT delivered. The comparable OQO would be the £1,320.61 inc VAT OQO e2 1.6GHz, 1GB, 32GB SSD, Vista Bus plus the £234.95 docking station. That's not quite fair because the OQO docking station includes a DVDr, but putting that aside fpr a moment that's £760 difference between the two devices...or very nearly double the cost for the SSD OQO! Despite how good the OQO is, I'm now finding it even harder to justify owning one!

I will write a review after I receive the Sony tomorrow. The OQO is a very hard act to beat in terms of usability so we'll see if I have made the right decision. I have read reviews which slate the Sony keyboard, an area where I found the OQO to be very strong so we will have to see what its like.

You will also notice that I have spent my hard earned cash on another UMPC device rather than the HTC Advantage. I'm still not convinced by the HTC Advantage. 640 x 480 is the biggest put off for me. At the end of the day I would rather spend £795 on a solid state Vista UMPC than £564 inc VAT on a Windows Mobile 6 device with a microdrive. £231 seems like a reasonable price for the extra features.

That said, I would love to use the HTC for a couple of weeks to see if my on off love affair with the idea of ownership is right or wrong.

All prices quoted here are from Expansys today 8 November 2007.