Abutilon

Hello - I just purchased (yesterday) the x50v, and its my first handheld so i am a bit unfamiliar w/ software options. I understand the general stuff (email/excel/outlook/etc) ... but i have a specific question.

One thing I would like to do is create (on my pc) a field guide to the plant species in the field sites i use (i am an ecological researcher). Having that key available for students in the handheld would be a great thing. The question is that to make/run the key, I want to use IntKey (http://delta-intkey.com/www/programs.htm) ... a standard (and free) program. The newbie question in me then is ... does software written for XP/NT work on Windows Mobile? Or ... do I need to figure out a different way to go about this (e.g. html pages).

Advice/comments are welcomed.

cheers,

jc

RobertCF

Stuff written for Windows XP will not run on Windows Mobile. Which is why there are versions of Excel, Outlook, Word, etc. specifically called Pocket Excel, Pocket Outlook and so forth. In fact, until the last couple of years, you had be worried about if an application was written for your PROCESSOR. The early PocketPCs were built--depending on the OEM--on three different processors. Often you found an application written in three versions, one for each processor. Microsoft finally got tired of that mess and said all OEMs must use the ARM-based processors. I'm hoping they eventually do the same thing again and force OEMs to standardize even more so we can get our updated operating system INDEPENDENT of PDA manufacturer.

Anyway, the best you can hope for is to do a Google search for POCKETPC and INTERACTIVE KEY. I confess to not having a clue what an interactive key is, but I did a quick search and came up with this:
http://www.stingersplace.com/SLIKS/

Toward the bottom of the linked page is something about a demo version for PocketPC. They specifically mentioned it wasn't intended to be as full featured as Intkey. Perhaps this would be a good starting point, though.

The bottom line is you need to make sure software you're looking at is designed to run on ARM-based PocketPCs. Even better, you want it to have been written for Windows Mobile 2003. Most stuff written for PocketPC 2002 runs fine, and even most PocketPC 2000 works fine, too.

BTW, because I'm sure the question will come up, let me give you the Reader's Digest version of PocketPCs:

Microsoft has this ROM-based core operating platform called Windows CE. The actual operating system, graphical interface you're playing with on your X50v is Windows Mobile 2003, built on the WinCE 4.x platform. However, in the early days of these PDAs it was call PocketPC (often referred to now as PocketPC 2000). PPC2000 was built on the WinCE 2.x core. Then came PocketPC 2002, built on the WinCE 3.x core. Well, the actual devices were also called Pocket PC. This tended to be a bit confusing when you threw in the OEM. For instance, you had the Compaq iPaq Pocket PC running PocketPC 2002. So, MS decided to rename their operating system with the next generation of devices, so now you have PocketPCs running Windows Mobile operating system. The upcoming devices will be running Windows Mobile 2005, built on the WinCE 5.x core.

It's late and I'm sure I missed something, but this is the shorthand version anyway.

StingerBOT

Thanks for the plug RobertCF. I wrote SLIKS (www.stingersplace.com/SLIKS). It is a funny thing about WM5.0, the cache for IE seems to be smaller than the one in CE2003. SLIKS is just simple early version Javascript. Funny thing, I can run data sets of a few hundred taxa in IE on my old iPAQ running CE2003 but a large matrix of taxa won't load completely in IE in WM5.0 on my new Axim or in IE on the few other WM5.0 devices I've tried. I'm limited to a much smaller matrix in IE on my new Axim 51v. Another Microsoft Feature I guess. Opera does not have the problem in WM and is generally a far superior browser for the Axim but it is annoying that MSIE is actually loosing functionality in newer versions. I'd like to hear others experiences on this.