Dave Beauvais
09-03-2003, 08:00 AM
My Windows Mobile 2003 for Pocket PC upgrade arrived this past Friday while I was out of town. I got back this afternoon, opened the package to make sure they'd shipped me the correct CD :) and then proceded to prepare for the upgrade.
The whole process went very smoothly with no problems. The flash procedure took almost exactly ten minutes, just as the on-screen note said it would. The thing that took the longest to figure out was how to setup my wireless LAN. I have SSID broadcasting turned off on my access point so WM2003's Zero Configuration Wireless wasn't able to find the network automatically.
I have installed most of my apps and have yet to find something that doesn't work. I have not yet installed Spb Pocket Plus because I'm still not convinced that it won't mess up alarms and/or reminders. I'm going to have to sift through some of the threads on that subject, I guess.
Things I Like The new Internet Explorer is very nice! CSS support is wonderful to have, it loads pages much faster than the previous versions, and the pages are rendered much better. (i.e., there's actually a blank space between paragraphs now.)
System-wide ClearType support is great! I haven't found any text so far that doesn't have ClearType enabled. I love ClearType on the Today screen, too. (I know, some people love it; others hate it.)
SSL support for Inbox is also great! I like knowing that my usernames and passwords aren't going across the air in plain text at coffee shop hotspots.
Along those lines, the Certificates control panel is a welcome addition. There are a couple places I go where I've been unable to get online since I couldn't install a security certificate. Hopefully this will permit me to do so in the future.
Transcriber 1.51 is now in ROM. I haven't used it yet, though.
I guess the replacement for Connection Manager is okay. It still seems a little more complicated than is really necessary, but it seems better.
The new Media Player 9 seems snappier than previous versions. I have not yet attempted to play any videos since I don't have any that will fit on my 64 MB backup SD card. (My 256 MB SanDisk died a couple weeks ago.) I may convert a small clip using Windows Media Encoder 9 just to see how it works with full-screen video. Full-screen content under Media Player 8.5 was choppy at best.
The new Jawbreaker game is probably going to become addicting. Simple, mindless entertainment. :)
The Calendar app shows the number of years next to a person's birthday or anniversary! A very cool feature!
Things I Dislike After a soft reset, to turn the WLAN radio on, you must go to the iPAQ Wireless applet. Once you've turned it on once, it can be switched on and off using the icon on the menu bar. This is a stupid design oversight, in my opinion and has annoyed the crap out of me after only four or five hours of using the new OS.
Media Player still adds songs to a playlist in reverse order when adding an entire folder at a time. Combined with an inability to sort a playlist automatically, this is pretty annoying.
Other Things Added or Changed ClearType Tuner was added to System Settings. I'm okay with the default settings, though some people may prefer heavier, bolder text. The ClearType Tuner allows you to tweak ClearType to your liking.
The ability to disable hardware buttons while the h5455 is turned off is nice. The application buttons and record button can be controlled independently of each other, which is a nice touch. (Though this isn't a problem for me since my iPAQ is in a hard Vaja Morpheus case, I know this will be useful to many people.) I was kinda hoping HP would have given us the ability to remap the volume buttons without the use of third-party software, though.
When pressing the volume button, the on-screen volume slider pops up to show the volume level. Not necessary, but a neat feature.
This is my first real experience with Windows Mobile 2003, and I'm very impressed so far. Overall, there are far more positive aspects than negative, and I was very pleased by how easy the whole process was. (Granted, I've been doing this for a while, and have gotten to be very good at making things work.) Bottom line, as long as you don't have some app that simply won't currently run under WM2003, this upgrade is definitely a must-have!
--Dave
The whole process went very smoothly with no problems. The flash procedure took almost exactly ten minutes, just as the on-screen note said it would. The thing that took the longest to figure out was how to setup my wireless LAN. I have SSID broadcasting turned off on my access point so WM2003's Zero Configuration Wireless wasn't able to find the network automatically.
I have installed most of my apps and have yet to find something that doesn't work. I have not yet installed Spb Pocket Plus because I'm still not convinced that it won't mess up alarms and/or reminders. I'm going to have to sift through some of the threads on that subject, I guess.
Things I Like The new Internet Explorer is very nice! CSS support is wonderful to have, it loads pages much faster than the previous versions, and the pages are rendered much better. (i.e., there's actually a blank space between paragraphs now.)
System-wide ClearType support is great! I haven't found any text so far that doesn't have ClearType enabled. I love ClearType on the Today screen, too. (I know, some people love it; others hate it.)
SSL support for Inbox is also great! I like knowing that my usernames and passwords aren't going across the air in plain text at coffee shop hotspots.
Along those lines, the Certificates control panel is a welcome addition. There are a couple places I go where I've been unable to get online since I couldn't install a security certificate. Hopefully this will permit me to do so in the future.
Transcriber 1.51 is now in ROM. I haven't used it yet, though.
I guess the replacement for Connection Manager is okay. It still seems a little more complicated than is really necessary, but it seems better.
The new Media Player 9 seems snappier than previous versions. I have not yet attempted to play any videos since I don't have any that will fit on my 64 MB backup SD card. (My 256 MB SanDisk died a couple weeks ago.) I may convert a small clip using Windows Media Encoder 9 just to see how it works with full-screen video. Full-screen content under Media Player 8.5 was choppy at best.
The new Jawbreaker game is probably going to become addicting. Simple, mindless entertainment. :)
The Calendar app shows the number of years next to a person's birthday or anniversary! A very cool feature!
Things I Dislike After a soft reset, to turn the WLAN radio on, you must go to the iPAQ Wireless applet. Once you've turned it on once, it can be switched on and off using the icon on the menu bar. This is a stupid design oversight, in my opinion and has annoyed the crap out of me after only four or five hours of using the new OS.
Media Player still adds songs to a playlist in reverse order when adding an entire folder at a time. Combined with an inability to sort a playlist automatically, this is pretty annoying.
Other Things Added or Changed ClearType Tuner was added to System Settings. I'm okay with the default settings, though some people may prefer heavier, bolder text. The ClearType Tuner allows you to tweak ClearType to your liking.
The ability to disable hardware buttons while the h5455 is turned off is nice. The application buttons and record button can be controlled independently of each other, which is a nice touch. (Though this isn't a problem for me since my iPAQ is in a hard Vaja Morpheus case, I know this will be useful to many people.) I was kinda hoping HP would have given us the ability to remap the volume buttons without the use of third-party software, though.
When pressing the volume button, the on-screen volume slider pops up to show the volume level. Not necessary, but a neat feature.
This is my first real experience with Windows Mobile 2003, and I'm very impressed so far. Overall, there are far more positive aspects than negative, and I was very pleased by how easy the whole process was. (Granted, I've been doing this for a while, and have gotten to be very good at making things work.) Bottom line, as long as you don't have some app that simply won't currently run under WM2003, this upgrade is definitely a must-have!
--Dave