5 Ways EEE PC (4G) Beats HTC Advantage

1. I can update my blog with the EEE PC. Blogger won't work with Windows Mobile browsers (either Opera or PIE).
2. Bigger screen and keyboard. It's still small enough to carry but provides a better computing experience.
   
3. Firefox on the EEE PC is way better than either Opera or PIE on HTC Advantage. I can run real websites with Flash.
4. Better OS. Any flavor of Linux provides a better computer experience Windows Mobile.
   
5. It's a lot cheaper!
   

Showing HTC Advantage Love

James Kendrick at JK On the Run is one of the people who turned me on to the HTC Advantage. This is one of my favorite mobile devices of all times, despite the fact that it runs Windows Mobile and not XP or Vista. All-day battery life, instant on, HSDPA connection, and small form factor combine to make this an extremely usable device. In this article, James does his usual outstanding job of describing how he uses the HTC Advantage. I might have to buy that Telenav after all. I've just been using the built-in GPS with Google Maps. It doesn't speak to me but it shows me where I am. Instead of Resco Radio, I stream SIRIUS radio to my HTC for tunage. Check out James' article.

Over-The-Air eBooks for Windows Mobile! Yay!

JK On The Run reported that ereader.com is now making the Windows Mobile version of its Pro reader free and allowing you to download e-books directly to your smartphone or pocketpc over your carrier's data plan. I really like e-reader but I really don't sync my HTC Advantage to my BlackBook all that often. I am a huge advocate that companies should make their content available directly to mobile devices and I encourage you to support Ereader's efforts to make this possible with e-Books. I don't have any commercial ties to this site or it's product. I just think the company is doing the right thing for customers. Check it out!

Solution Looking for a Problem?

As much as I appreciate the concept of Softmaker's office suite for Pocket PC, my trial expired without me finding a compelling reason to buy it. It is a really well-done program, but I never really used it. I decided that if I wasn't using it for free, why pay $69.95 to buy it? So, it's gone.

Office Mobile is a very feature limited product. Complicated document formats are not only not supported but apparently stripped out of documents during the round trip between Pocket PC and desktop PC. This can be a big problem. Softmaker's suite handles many more formatting features and has the look and feel of a desktop application. No feature larceny during the round trip, either. If you need this capability on your Pocket PC or HTC Advantage, then check out the free trial of this program. For now, I think the limited feature set of Office Mobile is all I need.

AmazonMP3.com

In case you've not tried this particular combination of Amazon and MP3, amazonmp3.com is the most direct link to the MP3 download section of Amazon. Com. Last night, I installed the Amazon downloader on my BlackBook and purchased the entire Spoon "Ga Ga Ga..." album. Good stuff! It showed up instantly in my iTunes with cover art. I dragged the songs into my iPhone playlist and synced to the phone with no worries. On my way to meet the family for dinner at a nearby restaurant, I listened to the album in my car. It sounded great (compared to other MP3's and iTunes songs on my iPhone -- I'm not making an audiophile statement here).

My favorite feature is still that Amazon offers a downloader app but doesn't chain you to it. I can still buy songs using Opera from my HTC Advantage without the downloader. That feature is great news for Linux users too.

One thing I can't figure out is how to make the track preview work when I visit the store from my HTC Advantage. I can download and save a file with a ".m3u" extension to my device. I realize that an M3U file is a text file that contains a URL to an MP3 file on a server for streaming audio. WMP on the device won't even see the M3U file. TCPMP tries to load it but says I've got a bad URL. If anybody can help me with streaming the preview I'd be really excited.

Amazon MP3: Sells Me Music The Way I Want it!

I am so excited about the new Amazon MP3 music store because of what it means for owners of mobile devices. Now, if you have a Windows Mobile device you can go to their website and purchase DRM-Free MP3 songs from major artists. The kicker is that I was able to fire up Opera on my HTC Advantage and buy the song from my device over AT&T's network and download an 89 cent song directly to the microdrive on my device. I just needed to say no when asked to download the Amazon MP3 downloader. Then, I was able to start up my media player, in this case TCPMP, and play the tune I just downloaded. No syncing with a computer required. This is a big item on my list. I hope that iTunes and the other music vendors are paying attention to this. This is huge!!!! I'm thinking sliced bread, saran wrap, scotch tape, huge!!!

What Does My Handheld Really Need to Do?

I just read with great interest the latest post from James Kendrick at JKontherun.com, suggesting that Apple build the handheld device of the future.

This post got me to thinking about what I want in a handheld device:

1. Instant on.
2. Always connected with decent speed.
3. All day battery life.
4. Able to surf the web, read and create emails, and read/create documents.
5. Easy sync with other device but not dependent on "mother ship" to install software.
6 . Able to watch flash video and stream music.
7. Able to download music directly to device from online store.

So, where does the HTC Advantage fall short? #5 is a bit of a stumbling block. Activesync isn't what I would call "easy" and while some software developers are starting to catch on by putting .cab files on their websites, there should be 100% participation on this point. The "companion" model is dead! #6 is also a disappointment. People are mad at Apple because the iPhone browser doesn't do flash video. Let's not give Microsoft a bye on this issue either. Flash video is so ubiquitous on the web that you won't go long browsing the web or reading your email without wanting to view a video. #7 is also a problem that should be fixed. Get over all this DRM nonsense and make it easy for me to buy music and video over the air and play it on any device I want!

In closing, I think the trap that users fall into when they start using a new mobile device is that they ignore all the other computing devices around them and adopt a "desert island" mentality about the new device. As in: "If I were on a desert island (which happened to have electricity and high speed Internet) could this device function as my ONLY computer?" To that end, we then run through everything we might possibly want to do on a computer and start checking them off. "Does this." "Doesn't do that."

My advice? Embrace "the cloud" and recognize all the computing resources that surround you. Get off the "desert island" and focus on the strength that a particular device brings to the workflow. Is an all day battery with HSDPA connection useful? You betcha! How can I use that to extend my functionality before or after my notebook battery dies?

I'm typing this message on my HTC Advantage using the attached chicklet keyboard and posting by email to my blog over a 3G wireless connection. One thing I've taken away from Apple's design strategy is to ignore the feature list and focus on the user experience. That focus applies to manufacturers and software developers but it can also apply to consumers in how they configure and use a particular device.

Enough on that for now. Comment lines are open. Your thoughts?

Spb Mobile Shell on HTC Advantage

Thanks to Jenn at Pocketables.net, I remembered purchasing Spb Mobile Shell for my Cingular 8125 (which I have since sold to cellforcash.com for $57). I was able to find my confirmation e-mail from that purchase and the download link was still good. So, I'm now able to run this program on the HTC Advantage. I like how the program adds functionality to my Today screen, especially the weather!

Testing, Testing, One...Two...Three...

I just downloaded the free trial of Softmaker's TextMaker and PlanMaker software. These programs offer full-featured replacements for the Office Mobile Word and Excel that come installed on the HTC Advantage. I'm just starting to play with them and I'll be back soon with more details. If you have any questions about the software or anything you want me to try out, please leave me a comment.

Interested in checking it out for yourself? Download the free trial here.

Activesync: Synching with Bluetooth via Parallels on Mac

Thanks to the instructions on this blog, I was able to sync my HTC Advantage via bluetooth with Activesync running on my MacBook with Parallels. It works great!

HTC Advantage: Pocket Mac Still Doesn't Work

I've exchanged several e-mails with the Pocket Mac support team, yet I am still unable to connect my HTC Advantage with my MacBook using their product. This is an inconvenience because my address book is in Apple's Address Book Program and my calendar is in iCal. Activesync, meanwhile, is working like a hose. I even broke down and installed Outlook 2003 in my Parallels partition so I could back up stuff that I enter on Addy. Has anybody out there had luck getting Pocket Mac working with WM6?

HTC Advantage: Imagine holding in 2 hands

Here's what it looks like when I hold Addy and type on the chicklet keyboard, except that I normally do this with both hands. I had to hold the iPhone in the other hand to snap the photo.

HTC Advantage: That Keyboard!

After about 3 weeks of using the HTC Advantage, I can tell you that typing on the chicklet keyboard is not impossible, but it is hard. I have my best results holding the unit in both hands and typing with my thumbs. If I put the unit down on the desk and try to type with my fingers, I sometimes accidentally touch the screen with part of my hand. That either moves the cursor or, worse, changes to another screen. The thumb-typing method minimizes that. For serious typing, pairing Addy with my Stowaway bluetooth keyboard works great.

The hardest thing is trying to type comments in those little comment boxes on blogs. For some reason, there is a serious lag after you type before the character shows on the screen. Typing in email or mobile office apps isn't that bad.

You Tube on the HTC Advantage

Thanks to this plug-in I'm able to watch You Tube videos on the HTC Advantage. After all the flack that the iPhone got for not running flash video on Safari, you'd think that the browser on Windows Mobile supported it, right? Not so! There's an Adobe Flash Player plugin 7.0 for Pocket Internet Explorer, but I had absolutely no luck running any flash video in PIE using just that plug-in. To watch flash videos from Youtube on your HTC Advantage, you need two things:

1. You need to download and install the core pocket media player (TCPMP) from here

2. You need to download and install the Active-X plug-in for PIE which is included in the TCPMP plug-in download. This installs the Flash Player 7 plug-in for PIE.

3. You need to install the TCPMP flash plug-in from here. I learned the hard way that you need to install the plug-in in the same directory as the TCPMP program on your device.



To start watching flash video, go to the TCPMP directory on your device and run a program called youtubedownload.exe (see photo)



You need to enter the video id for the youtube video that you want to watch. The video ID is the part of the web address that comes after "watch?v=" part of the web address (URL) of your favorite youtube video. In the case of my example of the video "Burp", the video ID is A_t0DSxa-XU.



After the video is downloaded to a folder on your HTC Advantage, you then launch TCPMP and open the video file that you've downloaded.

If you are still in the mood to watch video after these umpteen steps, you should now be able to enjoy your video. You'll get the hang of it after the first time.

Pocketables Answers Questions about HTC Advantage

In this post, Jenn at Pocketables answers lots of user questions about the HTC Advantage. I never even gave any thought to the potential for issues with the magnetic keyboard. I didn't actually RTFM. Users are talking about different experiences with the browser. I've found it great for Google Reader and various websites. I've had no luck with video. Flash isn't supported. I tried downloading an episode of Geekbrief.TV but it was too jerky to watch.

Auto mount?

When I got in the car today with the HTC Advantage, I noticed that the little ledge for the steering column is the perfect size to hold the HTC Advantage for GPS. It's wedged pretty well in there. Probably not the optimal placement, but it worked.

Keyboard is Bigger Than the Computer

James Kendrick posted several photos of different mobile office configurations he's had over the years. I actually posted this before his most recent post, but I was inspired by having seen him show his Sony UX set-up a few years ago.

Spb has designed a set of Today screen plug-ins especially for the HTC Advantage. Free to try and $44.95 to buy. I've just downloaded the free trial so I'll report back later.

Here's the link

HTC Advantage running Windows XP?

Well, yes and no. That is XP running on the Advantage and it is fully functional, but I am actually accessing my desktop PC at the office using Gotomypc.com, It turns out that Gotomypc has a "pocket view" option to run their client on Windows Mobile. I actually did some navigating around in some of my desktop software and it's small but workable on the Advantage. This is a real help when WM apps just won't do.