My First WMD - MWg Zinc II

WMD = Windows Mobile Device
...but you can also call it a Weapon Of Mass Destruction. Originally created by Microsoft but innovated by countless OEMs.

After years and years of gadget envy, I finally brought myself to get a "smartphone".

Apple's iPhone 3G, of course, would have been preferred, but it was still way out of budget. So what did I get instead? A real steal, I thought. A Windows Mobile 6.1 device for $98 with a 2 year contract plan from SingTel.

What's more, I bought it online from www.singtelshop.com as it said the offer would expire the following day. So no prior hands-on before buying. Just a quick Google which resulted in mainly positive reviews.

...and so I waited for a week in glee. And in that time I Googled and Googled about the phone. Seems like I really did get a pretty good deal.

WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, 3G. This is one connected gadget.

Finally, it arrived. I popped in my SIM card and away we go.

Now, how do you copy all your contacts over from the SIM to the phone?
Answer From The Manual: Use the "SIM Manager" to copy contacts from SIM to phone.
Real Answer: Create a new Outlook contact, copy the number from the SIM contact and paste it in your new contact. The "SIM Manager" shows what contacts you have...but doesn't have the copy fuction at all. Bad.

I'm still slowly migrating all my contacts over to the phone from the SIM. I believe I'm somewhere in "F". Strangely, I'd rather do this on the phone rather than doing it in Outlook and syncing them in.

Okay, let's forget that. Let's do ActiveSync. And then, I realized with horror, that it only syncs with MS Outlook. I haven't loaded Outlook on my home PC for ages. Contacts, email, tasks, calendar, notes. Bugger. Most of my PIM bounces between Yahoo and Google (and occasionally Live). And so, I had to go and get MS Outlook and OneNote installed.

Solution?
I had to get a Google Calendar Sync gadget which syncs Google Calendar with MS Outlook, which syncs with my phone.

How about media?
Had to do LiveUpdate to get Windows Media Player 11.

How about movies with special codecs?
WMP11 just does syncing, and not conversion, so I had to go get Windows Media Encoder to do that. Great, now I can watch Bleach while commuting. Not really. The subs are way too small. Clone Wars, maybe? Oh, and conversion seems to be in real time.

How about GPS?
The pre-installed GPS Viewer doesn't seem to work for me. It always seems to be searching and never gets a fix. So I went and got myself Google Maps.

Simply beautiful. Clicked the blue icon and it showed a blue transparent circle layer and states that I'm within an 80 metre radius of this circle. All I need now is a simple app that gives me my lat / long / alt and speed.

Other apps I've installed over the week is Adobe Reader for Pocket PC - to read my PC Game manuals on the go. (currently Homeworld)

Another one is ComicReader Mobile for my DCP *.cbr files. (I'm currently catching up on Marvel's Secret Invasion). Had to install some Microsoft compact framework 3.5 .Net thingy to get it working.

Downloaded GMail's java applet for GMail, which is hidden in WinMo's Java engine. It's not in the All Programs menu.

Installed SkyFire web browser - just to have an alternative to IE. I heard Opera's better. Will get that soon.

Yahoo! Go finally got installed after avoiding me for the past 2 phones. Kinda disappointing.

TinyTwitter for my Twitter needs.

Today, I realized I don't have MMS. Which was strange. I heard iPhones don't have MMS. But WinMo's been around for a while and I don't hear anyone complaining about lack of MMS.

I'm kinda pissed off about that. I do use MMS regularly. (which was another reason for putting off the iPhone)

I lost the stylus too. Within a week. Unbelievable. Attempts to find a replacement have come up with nothing. http://shop.mwg.com has been down for the past week.

I'm suddenly itching to find out what a Symbian powered Nokia is capable of. And I think I “type” faster with the 12 button numeric keypad.

Catching Up

Things have been busy the past month.

Clients coming down from the US for a 1 month stay to go over the entire project (main source of busyness here).

Home equipment breaking down: The PC was mostly down and out of commission due to being in the hands of a certain niece and nephew for the past couple of months. It was returned in an unworkable condition.

While I was busy fixing up the PC, the laptop finally died. Hardware problems. First it was the battery. Couldn't hold much of a charge. Then the power supply. The wire finally frayed apart.

No power = no laptop

The Mrs has been bugging me to fix it, but I've got no spare funds to do so.

Spent most of the IT budget on getting the PC up and running again. Bought an nVidia AGP card and a DVD Writer.

Then the Mrs lost her phone.

So I pounced on a chance to get a new one. Let's try a "smart phone" this time around. Was eyeing a Nokia with a Symbian OS initially, but a good deal for an MWG Zinc II caught my eye.

For less than a $100 too! (with a 2 year contract, with SingTel). Probably one of the few rare purchases I made without having some "hands-on" research first. After entering credit card details, I spent some free time over the next few days digging up reviews. Sounds like I made a good purchase!

Can't wait to get my hands on it. It'll be delivered in a couple of days.

I've finally made an effort to blog again 'cause more than 1 person asked me, "When was the last time you updated your blog?"

Looks like I got some readers!

That makes 3, I think.