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About that new phone…April 13th, 2006 |
So I got the T-Mobile MDA. It’s a pocket PC smartphone based on the HTC Wizard reference design, the sort that has the keyboard that slides out from the entire unit, so you have lots of room to type with. So far, I love it even though it was kind of pricy. (By changing over the billing before doing the phone upgrade I missed out on the upgrade pricing).
Some have complained about connection quality and sound, but I haven’t had any problems whatsoever. I did have the problem that it didn’t want to sync at first, but I eventually figured out that this was an issue with my firewall — which also happened to me with setting up Media Extender to stream music to the Xbox 360, so I had some clue that was the issue.
I installed Earthcomber for directions, even though I don’t have a GPS; we’ll see if it stays on there. I also managed to get my POP email to deliver to the device reliably, and syncing worked after I screwed around with my ZoneAlarm firewall for a while. Alas, the instructions on the net are only for the Pro version, so if anyone comes looking:
- Follow the instructions on Microsoft’s website for the files you need to give permission to. They will show up in ZoneAlarm as
- “ActiveSync Application” which is WCESMgr.exe
- “ActiveSync Connection Manager” which is wcescomm.exe
- “ActiveSync RAPI Manager” which is rapimgr.exe
- The tricky one, because it just shows up as “Application Manager”, and is CEAPPMGR.exe
- Next, since there is no “Expert” tab on ZoneAlarm free edition, open the Alerts & Logs tab, and unplug and then reconnect your device. You will see the device trying to connect, and get blocked. Select that alert, and then click “Add to Zone” so that it will be allowed in the future.
I also installed a little app called Smartskey that makes the volume slider act as a scroll wheel, and one other button act as a “close app for real” button, since this phone has the annoying Windows Mobile 5.0 problem that when you hit the little X in the corner, it just closes the window, not the app. Basically, these things go a long way towards letting you use the phone one-handed.
More importantly, however, I was able to get MameCE to run, although it seems that a lot of stuff just won’t work on it. Right now, I only have a handful of games working, and it doesn’t include a bunch of my favorites. The annoying thing is actually that the button arrangement is just plain inconvenient for most things; part of this is MAME itself, which asks for a coin button, a p1 start, and so on. I don’t seem to be able to get to some of the buttons while running MameCE, so I start to run out. I ended up overloading some of the buttons.
Fortunately, this is offset by the fact that Pocket Atari works perfectly and seems to run just about at speed (I used the ARM version). M.U.L.E. seems a tad slow on the title screen, but runs fine otherwise. Archon plays just dandy, and I’ve tried several other things too. Alas, the automatic screen rotate when you slide the keyboard open does not work, and you are forced to use the on-screen keyboard; the games run faster when in landscape mode, so this is a shame. But the app does have screen rotation as part of the UI.
Anything else I ought to have on it? 
I need to go buy a mini-SD card with plenty of space so I can keep some music or video on it.
Good resources for the phone: has a few forums for the Wizard, and it’s where Smartskey comes from; and this blog.
Next up will be my new tablet PC laptop. But it’s on order and won’t be here for a while. Sigh.
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[...] I figure since others have blogged their PC upgrades and cell phone purchases, I might as well blog my (relatively) recent upgrade to home-office technology. [...]
[...] A Hymn Before Battle is a book by John Ringo with a garish Baen cover featuring soldiers charging into some sort of military sci-fi hell. That basically means that I would probably never have picked it up in the bookstore. But when I got my new phone, one of the things I tried out on it was eBooks. And if there’s one thing that Baen does right, it’s the Baen Free Library: a large collection of freely downloadable eBooks in a variety of formats. I recalled seeing this one on a designer’s desk at SOE Austin way back when, and leafing through it, so I figured why not? Well, it was enjoyable enough that I’ve now downloaded the sequel too. A complex Galactic civilization with less than pure motives shows up and tells Earth’s leaders that a ravenous alien race called the Posleen are going to swarm over the planet and basically eat everyone, unless they are fought off. The largest military recall in history then happens, aided by Galactic rejuvenation tech. The story follows a few soldiers here and there throughout the conflict — some get written out entirely and unsentimentally (usually with dismemberment) after a large amount of time establishing their characters. It took me two months to read it in three-minute snatches on my phone, but I was glad to have it around. [...]