I've just spent a week playing with T-Mobile's Pocket PC Phone Edition, the first product to hit the market with Microsoft's new phone-enabled handheld operating system. My conclusion: While this gadget is impressive, it's still more Pocket PC than phone. And that, for me, means it can be simply maddening.
If not for the antenna and a couple of extra buttons, the new T-Mobile device looks like a standard Pocket PC. The hardware is made by the same company (HTC) that produces HP/Compaq's iPaqs, so it's no surprise that the whole thing feels sturdy. The 4,096-color TFT screen looks crisp and is a snap to read in bright sunlight. Inside, the handheld has a 206MHz StrongARM processor, 32MB Flash ROM, 32MB RAM, and an SD expansion slot.
Taiwanese contract manufacturer Wistron has reportedly won a deal to produce personal digital assistants for Dell Computer. According to a report in Taiwan's DigiTimes, Dell has placed an order with Wistron to manufacture 1.1 million handhelds, slated for launch by Christmas. The device is expected to be ready in November, with a price tag of US$299, DigiTimes said, citing sources. The PDA could possibly run on Microsoft's Pocket PC operating system, and share similar functionalities as the iPAQ from Hewlett-Packard.
Microsoft on Thursday released new versions of Money, its personal finance application. Money 2003 includes new stock monitoring and research tools as well as enhanced tax estimators. In addition, customers will receive free online tax-return filing through H&R Block and a year of free online bill payment through Microsoft's MSN service. The small-business version of Money offers new payroll functions and business documents. Money 2003 standard sells for $35, while Money 2003 Deluxe sells for $64. Money 2003 Deluxe & Business costs $85 and Money 2003 Suite: Finance, Tax & Legal goes for $95.
Microsoft Corp. unveiled a new version 1.2 release of its Windows 2000 Advanced Server Limited Edition (ASLE) operating system last month. The software giant says that ASLE 1.2 is designed to take advantage of some of the performance improvements - including a higher clock-speed and an improved bus architecture - boasted by Intel Corp.'s Itanium 2 microprocessor. ASLE 1.2 may benefit just as much from the efforts of two prominent vendors - Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) and Unisys Corp. - which have developed unique system architectures to support mixed IA-64, IA-32 and (in the case of HP) PA-RISC environments.
First, the basics. ASLE 1.2 is the second rev of Microsoft's 64-bit server operating system. ASLE 1.0, Microsoft's first foray into 64-bit computing, shipped in August 2001, and was followed in October by a 64-bit version of the software giant's Windows XP Professional operating system. Sixty-four-bit ASLE is generally positioned for large database or compute-intensive environments; 64-bit Windows XP Professional is marketed as a Windows platform for high-performance workstations.
Wireless carrier T-Mobile announced Thursday that it is selling a device using Microsoft's Pocket PC Phone Edition software, making it the first to do so in the United States. T-Mobile's Pocket PC Phone Edition combines cell phone and organizer features as well as voice and data capabilities, which will let customers wirelessly surf the Web and send and receive e-mail. The device will cost $550, but T-Mobile is offering a $50 rebate on the device for the next 45 days for subscribers who agree to a one-year service contract. The device runs on T-Mobile's GSM (global system for mobile communications) and GPRS (general packet radio service) wireless networks.
T-Mobile's device is the first device available in the United States to use Microsoft's Pocket PC Phone Edition software. Hewlett-Packard announced that it will sell a device using the Phone Edition software in Europe that runs on wireless carrier Vodaphone's network. The British wireless carrier mmO2 also announced that its XDA handheld, which is made by Taiwan's HTC, will also use Phone Edition software. The T-Mobile device is the same HTC-made device.
AOL Time Warner revealed Wednesday that the US Department of Justice (DOJ) is investigating the company's accounting practices, raising the possibility of criminal charges. The DOJ investigation of the world's largest media company comes just weeks after the corporate accounting scandals at Enron, WorldCom and other firms rocked the financial world, raising calls for widespread reform. AOL was already being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for potentially illegal bookkeeping practices, but the sudden involvement of the DOJ suggests far more serious problems exist than were previously suspected.
Microsoft is honing the user interfaces of a number of its forthcoming products in a way that the company hopes will help users find and access information. At the heart of the redesign is the so-called task shelf component, code-named Sideshow, that will likely debut first in MSN 8, and later, in the Longhorn Windows.
"Sideshow is built to use the skinning capabilities of XP and uses XML/HTML for the tasks that are 'pinned,' or stuck, onto the shelf itself," reads the related text on the WinBeta site.
According to the site and the accompanying screen shots, Sideshow will present users with an integrated view of MSN Messenger, Outlook and other task panes. The task panes, which are called "tickets," the site says, can include other feeds and notifications, providing regularly-updated information, such as weather maps, traffic maps and Webcam feeds. Sideshow will be the way that Microsoft exposes to users data and information that is organized using the programming framework, code-named Avalon, that will be at the heart of Longhorn, sources said.
The first combination cell phone and PDA to run Microsoft's Pocket PC Phone Edition is now available, taking a decidedly PDA-centric approach to its tasks and offering features of interest to international travelers. The Pocket PC 2002 Phone Edition includes the entire Pocket PC 2002 operating system, along with extras designed for personal digital assistants that have built-in wireless voice and data capability.
The initial implementation comes from T-Mobile, a German telecommunications giant that operates VoiceStream in the United States. At $549 with service contract, the device is more attractively priced than Verizon's $799 Thera-a Pocket PC-CDMA cell phone hybrid, which doesn't use the new OS. According to Microsoft, a CDMA device using the new OS will be available within a few months.
Facing further scrutiny over its accounting practices, AOL Time Warner was ordered by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to retain all documents related to financial transactions currently under investigation by the federal authorities, according to a report published Thursday.
The Internet and media company revealed last week that the SEC had initiated a probe into its accounting practices after the Washington Post ran a series of articles alleging that the company engaged in "unconventional transactions" in 2000 and 2001 in an effort to boost the performance of its sagging AOL Internet unit.
Adding to the pressure, AOLTW confirmed earlier this week that the DOJ had also initiated an investigation into the company's accounting practices, opening the door for possible criminal charges.
Working to better compete in the data center market against entrenched Unix and mainframe systems, Microsoft has launched a program to help customers build standard and tested configurations of its Windows 2000 operating system for data centers. The Microsoft Systems Architecture (MSA) program, announced Wednesday with partners including Dell, Nortel, Cisco and storage vendor EMC, is comparable to a cookbook for building data centers based on different scenarios. The program includes documentation about preconfigured systems that have been lab-tested by Microsoft and its hardware, software and networking partners.
The new program's goal is to entice customers to use the Windows 2000 operating system in place of more traditional Unix and mainframe operating systems from companies such as IBM and Sun Microsystems. Microsoft is also battling for market share against data center configurations based on low-cost servers running the Linux operating system.