Pocket PC Tips and Tricks -- Wireless

"Optimizing your wireless network"

Here are two tips to improve the performance and reliability of your wireless network: (continued...)

1. Change the location of your WiFi antennae horizontally and vertically to optimize your coverage. Many access points now have add-on options to place the antennae in a slightly different location than the access point itself.

2. Make sure to setup your access point to use Short Headers. Some equipment defaults to long headers. Short headers allow for faster response times compared to long headers. Long headers may increase reliability in an environment with lots of interference.


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Baseball on Your Mobile Phone

By: The Editor

If you're like me, you can't possibly get enough baseball - the great American game. Especially if you happen to have a team you're particularly passionate about, be it the Cardinals, Cubs, Reds, Yankees, the team from Boston (*sore St. Louis fan behind the keyboard*), etc.

MLB.com has come up with something that'll make your baseball loving heart skip a beat. There is an entire page dedicated to "Baseball on your Mobile Phone". The pricing is fan friendly (wish tickets would follow suit) and you can choose from any team you happen to love.

Here is a quick rundown of what you'll find available: (continued...)

-Wallpapers featuring your team's colors and logo.

-Gameday audio - you can follow Albert Pujols to bat, and subsequently around the bases.

-Access live video and all the top plays. Scott Rolen makes another great play? You're there!

-Alerts: Find out the last inning details.

-Games, trivia and other fun stuff.

-Ringtones! Music, voices, highlights. The great Barry Bond's breaking the record, "We are the Champions" (*cough, wheeze*), and special "at bats" or plays for each of the different teams.

Click the link below to access the main page. In the top left corner, and at the bottom of the page are "pull down" menus. This is where you go to find the Cardinals, Cubs, Giants, Brewers, Sox, etc. Take a look around, there's a lot of great stuff to be found.

MLB.com Goes Mobile

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DSL Broadband Definitions

By: The Editor

Many people get confused with the alphabet soup of DSL broadband terminology. It's explained here in easy to understand terms.

ADSL:
Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line - asymmetric meaning it's faster downstream than upstream.

ASAM:
Advanced Services Access Manager -Whether you have a DSLAM or ASAM in your exchange doesn't really matter. They do the same thing. See DSLAM's as well. (continued...)

ATM:
Asynchronous Transfer Mode - a method of encapsulation which is capable of many virtual circuits. With these, providers (ISP's) can split an ATM connection (155Mbit or 622Mbit) up into many connections. ATM isn't just used for DSL but in the case of DSL it's used to provision each customer.

Contention Ratios:
A contention ratio is the number of users to xMbit of bandwidth. For example some providers offer 2Mbit DSL, with a ratio of 50:1, meaning 50 users to 1Mbit of bandwidth.

CPE:
Customer Premises Equipment, the term that describes the equipment used on the customer end of a connection, for example your DSL modem/router or cable modem.

DSL:
Digital Subscriber Line.

DSLAM:
Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer – They are placed in DSL enabled Telecomm exchanges, when your modem syncs up and the DSL light comes on, it means you are connected. When data travels down your connection, it goes from the CPE -> DSLAM -> RAN -> ISP

ERX:
Edge Routing Exchange. See RAN.

IPNet:
Telecommunications backhaul networks for carrying traffic from the customer to the ISP, i.e. carrying traffic from RAN's to ISP's.

Ping or Latency:
A ping measures the time in milliseconds that it takes for a packet to travel from your computer to a remote computer and back to you again. Just because you can't ping a given host, quite a lot of providers are beginning to filter ICMP (pings come under this protocol) traffic because it is commonly used to attack hosts and wastes a lot of bandwidth. Many providers also give low priority to ping (ICMP) traffic which may mean your ping at a command line isn't very good, but in say a game, things may be fine.

RAN:
Regional Access Node - These aggregate many DSLAM's connections and then feed the data to an ISP

RTT
Round Trip Time - the time it takes in milliseconds for a packet to go from A to B and back again. See ping.

SDSL
Symmetrical Digital Subscriber Line - symmetrical meaning the same speed up and down.

Units

There is a major difference between UPPER and lowercase

MB = MegaBytes
Mb = Megabits
kB = KiloBytes
kb = Kilobits

MB/s = MegaBytes per second
Mb/s = Megabits per second
kB/s = KiloBytes per second
kb/s = Kilobits per second

There is 8bits to a Byte, 8kb = 1kB

1Meg connections only transfer at 128kB/sec or an 8Mb connection only transfers at 1024kB/sec or 1MB/s

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iPod Basics

By: The Editor
All over the world, people carry with them walkmans and other music devices so that they can play their favorite music as they move around from place to place. The latest thing in the portable music devices field is the iPod, which offers a higher quality of the music being played and one of the most compact design out there.

The iPod allows you to play your music for an very long time (up to 12 hours for most of them) and have a huge amount of storage (some have 30GB). You can store thousands songs within a standard iPod and have instant access to them wherever you are at the moment. This makes them the perfect choice for your nowadays music necessities. (continued...)

With iPods, transferring music from a CD takes less than 5 seconds, assuming that you use the FireWire and USB 2.0 support and can be transferred in a rather wide variety of formats, such as MP3, WMA, or AAC. With the iPods, users have the ability of importing songs from CDs, shuffling through songs, or choosing specific playlists, to name just a few of the iPods' features.

iPods are also equipped with a calendar, contact lists, notes and a musical alarm clock, which makes them more than just a portable music device, along with their huge storage capability. With them, you can take your files anywhere at any time, use memos as reminders and even record whatever you want with their microphone option.

iPods come with a wide variety of language support for languages like English, Italian, German etc. and models, such as iPod mini, iPod, iPod Special Edition and iPod Photo, each with its own storage capability (4GB for the iPods mini to 30GB for iPods Photo).

In addition to the device itself, a wide line of accessories are available for iPods, such as camera connector, power adapter, auto charger, car holder, voice recorder and many more.

In conclusion, with their high quality of the music being played, high storage capability, high transfer speed and all their functions, the iPods make the perfect choice if you are a music addict or just need a portable storage device.

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Three Must Have Accessories For Notebook Computers

By: Lynn Chan

An Optical Mouse

Notebooks are normally equipped with touch pads which can be awkward. There's no substitute for the mouse. Notebooks are predominantly used on a static, flat surface. With wireless broadband hotspots mushrooming all over the nation's transit locations, table tops have become as much mobile computing desktops as surfaces on which lattes sit. The touch pads on notebooks are also rather vulnerable to damage by static electricity, which is a common occurrence in aircraft cabins, carpeted airport lounges and offices and will become a big problem when you’re on the road and lose the function of your primary pointing device. (continued...)

A good optical mouse, be it wired or wireless must be able to track movement on varying tabletop surfaces. Optical mice traditionally had problems with glossy, transparent, or light-colored surfaces, but technology has advanced to a level that these problems are almost non-existent. Although wireless mice are the trend these days, stick to a wired optical mouse by virtue that it does not require additional power or equipment to operate; as in batteries or receivers for wireless ones. You don't need extra equipment in your already-overloaded and heavy notebook bag!

A Multi-Device Charger And Power Adapter Combo

Notebooks do come with their own AC-to-DC power adapters, but notebook owners typically carry a cell phone, PDA and digital camera in addition to the notebook. It’s almost impossible to carry the charging devices of all these things. Do yourself a favor by getting a multi-device charging/power adapter. Some of them even have the capability to simultaneously charge and power an additional gadget or two, giving you an extra benefit of keeping your most-used gadgets well charged up for action.

Built-In Wireless (Wifi) Connectivity Or PC Card

Notebook owners are generally mobile information warriors. It is almost impossible to ignore the wireless revolution going around; WiFi and soon, WiMAX Hotspots abound wherever you go. Instant access to the Internet's unlimited resources and communicative offerings are just a little electronic card away.

If your notebook does not have built-in WiFi, get a PC card version which is often sold for less than $30 at computer stores. Plugging in a WiFi PC card means you can access the Web, read and send your emails, instant-message your colleagues,family,buddies, broadcast your vacation video/photos or company presentations, and retrieve company information on secure virtual private networks anywhere, anytime you are around a hotspot, in broadband speed.

About The Author
Lynn Chan helps new owners learn about proper notebook care and use. To learn more, visit http://www.notebook-computer-infocenter.com.

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Basics of Buying a PDA

By: The Editor
In the early days, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) were not much more than glorified calculators with the ability to store contact information and brief notes. Now, the line between personal computer and personal digital assistant is blurred thanks to the advanced capabilities of these useful little devices.

There are plenty of makes and models to choose from in the PDA market, and finding the right model to suit an individual’s needs can be a dizzying challenge. This Tech Tip will take a look at seven basic things to consider when choosing a PDA in an attempt to help simplify the process. (continued...)

Software

The software on a PDA is capable of running completely independent of your computer, but being able to share files and resources between them is one of the key convenience features. Software availability is one issue, but compatibility is another. In general, a PDA will come with one of two operating systems: Palm OS or Microsoft Pocket PC, each with its own very different approaches to running one of these devices.

Palm OS is the modern version of the operating system that was found on some of the first PDAs, Palm Pilots. No longer just a dull, greyscale environment, the Palm OS is a sharp looking operating system with many software titles available (either included, as downloads, or for purchase separately) to do just about anything you would want to do on a PDA.

Microsoft Pocket PC is themed after the familiar Windows operating system, and this similarity gives the millions of Windows users a comfortable environment to work with when transitioning to a PDA. The basic commands are the same, and of all the software titles available for a PDA running Pocket PC, many of them are reduced “pocket” versions of what might be found on a computer such as Microsoft’s Word and Excel. Multimedia applications are a strong point of the Pocket PC environment, with many titles developed to make these devices more enjoyable and versatile.

Applications are available for either operating system to do just about the same thing, although specific titles available for one may not be available for the other.

Speed

The speed of the processors in PDAs is picking up, and some older desktop computers are being left in the dust by these little devices. Presently, the bulk of the devices on the market are running at clock speeds of 300 MHz or higher, sometimes much higher. The HP Ipaq HX4700 sports a 624 MHz Intel processor, which is also currently the processor found in the high-end Dell Axim X50v

In general, faster processors can be found in the Pocket PC devices, but that does not mean that Palm OS devices are slow. Many experts would argue that the Palm OS runs more efficiently, and may be able to get by on less system memory, which helps keep the speed comparison competitive.

The applications for PDAs have been optimized to run well with less processing power, less system memory, and to occupy a minimal amount of disk space, so either type of PDA should be able to handle typical tasks well. Speed may be the main concern on a desktop PC, but the focus is a bit different on handheld devices, where other features are definitely more important.

Connectivity

Being able to connect a PDA to a computer or other device may be essential for utilizing all of the features to their full potential. Most now make connectivity to a PC via USB the base form of transferring data to the device, but there are a few wireless protocols that may be available on a PDA to make it even more convenient.

Infrared is a short range protocol that can allow for a PDA to exchange data with another PDA, as well as with a compatible laptop or desktop computer. Many PDAs feature an infrared port, but not all computers do. The communications on this protocol are relatively slow, but may be useful for transferring basic data or synchronizing with a PC.

Bluetooth is a protocol that operates on the 2.4 GHz radio band that provides greater range than infrared, but the speeds still aren’t that great. Bluetooth can be used for transferring data from computers, but it can also allow other devices to connect to a PDA. For example, a Bluetooth-enabled PDA linked to a Bluetooth-enabled cell phone may be able to access the Internet using the phone as a sort of wireless modem.

WiFi, just as on your typical computer, is the high speed wireless protocol (802.11x) that also operates on the 2.4 GHz radio band. WiFi will not only allow compatible devices to exchange files, but the high speed will make streaming media and web surfing convenient at home, or at the numerous wireless “hot spots” popping up in public/commercial settings.

Extra Features & Accessories

It isn’t enough for PDAs to keep track of serious business items like appointments and contact information any more. They need to be able to multi-task, and most are now able to help their owners work and play. Many of these features may be considered nice extras by some, but others may insist on their availability when choosing a PDA.

Many PDAs can now surf the Internet, stream movies, or play video games thanks to the higher resolution color screens. Most now include a stereo sound processor for listening to MP3s or other audio sources, as well as being able to double as a digital voice recorder.

Other PDAs take the fun features to a whole new level. Some PDAs now double as mobile phones. Or is it that mobile phones that are doubling as PDAs? Many mobile phones have built-in cameras now. PDAs like the PalmOne Zire 72 include a digital camera for capturing stills and video clips at decent resolutions. Taking another look at the Zire 72 shows off another feature that has become popular in PDAs… GPS (Global Positioning System) receivers that will help plot and track routes during travel.

Many PDAs also offer a wide array of extra add-on accessories to add ease of use and maybe a touch of flash to your PDA. For example, most manufacturers offer such things as spare batteries, extra styluses, and upgraded leather cases. Other cool items may be a foldable keyboard that can be plugged into the PDA for easier typing, automobile charger so that you can charge your PDA while driving and even international power adaptors to use your PDA in different countries.

Like cellphones, some PDAs even come with removable covers so that you can totally customize how your PDA looks.

Expandability

PDAs generally come with a base amount of memory on board for storing data and applications, but they can be filled up quite quickly. Most of these devices now include slots that will accept some sort of flash memory to increase their capacity Typical formats supported by PDAs include: Compact Flash, SD, MMC, or Memory Stick.

Flash memory is fairly cheap these days, but selecting a PDA based on a format that one already uses could be a good idea. An SD card, for example, could be shared between a PC, digital camera, MP3 player, and a PDA to move various multimedia and application files between the devices.

A PDA such as the HP iPaq rz1715 offers an SD/MMC slot for expandability, while the Dell Axim X5 offers the convenience of multiple flash memory slots, providing support for Compact Flash, SD, and MMC.

In addition to choosing the proper format of flash memory for your PDA, it may also be necessary to consider the capacity of the card chosen. Although you may be able to purchase a 2GB flash memory card, for example, that does not mean every PDA will be able to access it. Check the PDA manufacturer’s specifications, especially on older models, to confirm that there is no maximum card size that it will accept.

In addition to allowing additional storage space, expansion slots can be used for other devices, as well. GPS receivers are popular accessories for PDAs, and can be found with different interfaces to match the slots available on a PDA. Leadtek is one manufacturer offering both Compact Flash and Secure Digital based GPS receivers.

Another innovation, from companies such as SanDisk, are combination memory and WiFi cards. However, be sure to check compatibility with your current PDA as some PDAs have problems “using” the extra features.

Size

The overall size may vary from model to model, but in general the length and width of a PDA will be in the range of a 3” x 5” index card. These values may vary slightly, and a difference of a few fractions of an inch may be important to a user with specific space constraints. For example, comparing the measurements of a Toshiba 830w (5.31” by 3.03” by 0.65”), to those of a Compaq Ipaq 3950 (4.54” x 3.00” x 0.61”), shows that the width and thickness are nearly identical. But, the difference of more than ¾” in height may be a big deal when trying to fit into a briefcase pocket, or even a shirt pocket.

The weight may be directly related to size, and is perhaps another relevant area worth considering. The weight of a typical PDA may be just a few ounces (several hundred grams), so you obviously aren’t going to strain yourself toting it. The difference between one model and another may be due to the variety and quantity of extra features included, and in general, an individual’s requirements for functionality may influence the overall weight.

Another key aspect when referencing size as it applies to PDAs is the screen size. Large screens, with higher resolutions, will allow the user to operate more comfortably. Using the same two PDAs referenced in this section, we see that the Toshiba 830w sports a 4.0” (480x640 resolution) screen while the Compaq Ipaq 3950 has a 3.8” (240x320 resolution) screen. So, the overall size of the Toshiba is a bit larger but it makes good use of the space by including a larger display capable of twice the resolution of the Compaq.

Battery Life

Most PDAs are now provided with an integrated rechargeable battery which recharges while connected to a base station or power adaptor. The most common type of rechargeable battery may be Lithium Ion (Li-Ion), and a general gauge of a battery’s capacity is provided in terms of mAh (milliAmp hours). Although real-world performance will vary among devices and how they are used, a battery with a higher mAh value will be able to hold a greater charge and last longer between charges.

The general use of the device will obviously play a role in how long the batteries will last, and is a difficult number to provide with any certainty. Manufacturers may provide a figure on the normal life between charges, but this is most likely based on occasional use, where it is idling for a majority of the time. This figure may indicate battery life of up to several days on one charge, but under more intensive operation, the battery life could be cut significantly. Watching a movie, listening to audio files, or playing games may drop the life on one charge from a few days down to a few hours. Use of wireless networking and display backlighting are two other things that can seriously impact battery life on any PDA, regardless of the type or quality of batteries included.

Your best bet for information on battery life is to seek out independent reviews or owner comments on a PDA of interest.

Final Words

With all of the options available, PDAs are far more versatile than they ever used to be. Finding a device with the flexibility to be useful for both business and pleasure doesn’t have to be a daunting task if a few key considerations are identified early in the process. A good balance of performance, size, and capabilities should be easily achieved, while still respecting a reasonable budget.

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