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802.11b Cards for Handhelds?
bmetzler asks: "I am in the market for a new Palm device. This time I want to buy a device that is capable of connecting to the wireless network in my home. Apart from wanting a monochrome display, the 802.11b feature is the most important one I am looking at. Xircom makes an add-on module for the M500 series and the m125. This might be a possibility because the m125 is one that I was looking at. However, at over $220 this one is a little pricey. Xircom also seemed to have a model for the Handspring, but I'm unable to locate it for sale any longer. Handera claims support for Symbol's CompactFlash card. The Handera has a nicer, bigger screen, but is also more expensive. I couldn't locate a price for the CF card either. In conclusion, I've got to purchase a Palm, and the wireless capability is the most important feature I need. Is there a good way to do this on a Palm, or should I just go for the Sharp Zaurus?" I'm also looking into replacing my old, aging Palm VII with something a bit more modern with 802.11b support. How do the Xircom models perform on Handspring Visors?
Get an Ipaq, they have support for 802.11 through a PCMCIA card if im not mistaken, then you can strip out the crap os that comes with it, and put Linux on it.
"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05
I was a beta-tester for the HandEra 330, so my view of the price is a bit skewed, but it is definitely one *sweet* device. HandEra (the company) had done a lot of specialized stuff for Symbol long before the 330 came out, and they went the extra mile to make sure that the 330 would work with every CF card that Symbol makes.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
It's for sale via the Intel website (backordered about two weeks).
N T1037&pfid=44&pindex=1&msc
http://www.shop-intel.com/shop/product.asp?pid=SI
Hope this helps.
Polymorphism -- It's what you make of it.
I use this combination at home, and at work. Being able to ssh and irc while in meetings is fun. Don't even get me started on pr0n browsing. it owns for that.
The only problem I have with the wireless nic is that it's really wide, so I'm probably going to have to file down the edges so I can get at the audio jack/stylus when the card's in the slot.
I have no complaints otherwise.
I don't have one but I've read many accounts of the handera's having problems with build quality. Many have complained about the stylus silo cracking or breaking, and i've seen several complaints about the screen failing to responde and black lines appearing on the display. You should probably go check out the handera forums at http://www.pdabuzz.com and http://www.brighthand.com and asking around there before making any big purchase.
Wrong. A lot of CF 802.11b cards are supported and most if not all of the pcmcia cards the work in the standard linux kernel work in the ipaq also. Linxsys makes a CF 802.11b ( WCF-11 ) that works very good.
A few hours grace before the madness begins again.
According to this review over at Visor Central and one at O'Reilly its a pretty nice card.
But I remember reading another review saying that its speed was nowhere near the 11Mbits advertised. This isn't really surprising considering the speed of the Dragnball processor that runs the Visor. But I'll be it beats the heck out of the VisorPhone's data mode (which is really an analog modem connection to your ISP over the cell network).
Brian
Remember Lexington Green!
Hi, I have a Handera and I was pleasantly surprised when I went into a London Drugs (Canada computer retailer) and saw a open box Linksys cf wireless card. I asked the clerk to try it and because I already loaded all the software upgrades in my handera for a demo a while ago, I was pleasantly surprised to see that I had no troubles loading up and connecting at all.
:)
One thing you should keep in mind is if you can use your keyboard after you plug on the 802.11b sled from the Palm Models. It sucks chatting with graffeti.
So I think you should get a Handera because they seem to work with more models then just the symbol card. Although I'd get it because of form factor. I wonder if you put it into a CF Card reader if you could use it in a PCMCIA slot? Also your batteries will die fast because of the power drain from the card so a Handera with all it's superior battery life is ideal. (i.e. 4AAA or Li-ion battery pack extra) Sorry but Pocket PC's just don't have Batter life. Even Palms too. Although the palm 802.11b sled I think has it's own battery pack.
Paul
The Xircom springport for the visor is very, very buggy... the user interface to setup the SSID, DHCP, Ip, Routing, DNS, etc is all over the place. It took a good three hours to set the thing up correctly with linksys wireless router... then it actually crashed the router! no other 802.11 device could connect after getting a connection from the visor.
On another router that didn't crash, the palm OS would hang at random, or disconnect for no real reason.
Save your money if you have a visor, and are thinking about getting the xircom spring port 802.11 adapter.
If you go Zaurus, make sure you get the SMC compact flash card, it's the only one I've found that has an antenna that is only as wide as the CF slot. Why is this important? All the other cards I looked at block either the headphone jack, the stylus slot, or both.
-mudge
Remove the non-food to email.
I would caution you to stay away from it if you aren't certain beyond a reasonable doubt that it'll work with your equipment (e.g., borrow one and test it with your access points).
:>
Here's the deal with the WiFi Springboard module: It contains what is essentially a Cisco wireless card. The card is a fairly nice one (from what I've read), but it communicates to the Prism as if it were a PPP serial device. In other words, it emulates a modem under PalmOS. That means that you're limited to the highest speed the device can do -- and trust me, that's relatively slow.
It's not all bad... Two nice features of the unit:
1) It has a built-in Lithium Ion battery that powers the module itself when the wireless is active (in other words, it doesn't drain the Prism's internal battery).
2) It has a bit of built in flash memory that you can use to load utility programs on -- I have the Blazer browser loaded into its memory so it's immediately available to be launched when I pop the unit it the slot.
Beyond that, be aware that I've had problems getting the unit to work with most Linksys access points with WEP enabled. Trust me, folks, I know I got the settings right because I have other cards configured the same way that work fine. I've also had some oddities with D-Link access points.
I've even tried to use an ad-hoc mode with the unit and a Linux-based wireless router. I can get a wireless link up (WEP included) and get a DHCP address, but after a while, the card starts ARPing for the router and _ignoring_ the replies that it gets. That pretty much wraps up your browsing, trust me -- when you can't see the router on your segment.
Your choice of web browsers is pretty paltry, too. There's Handspring's Blazer, but it forces you to browse through the Blazer proxies that compress everything for you (and log everywhere you go, most likely). Then there's EudoraWeb, which doesn't support images. And a few more that are mainly forgettable, including a "screen scraping" browser client.
On the other hand, when I was using the unit with VNC via the Cisco wireless APs in the office, the thing worked like a champ (albeit a slow one). And when I used it with Lucent APs, it worked very well, too.
The combination of other problems and the fact that it seems that Intel (the owner of the product line now) doesn't intend to release any updates to the unit have made me move to a Sharp Zaurus and a Dlink CF 802.11b card.
I have a Xircom 802.11b module for my Handspring.
General impressions:
Throughput sucks. You're stuck at serial speed because that's the interface to the module. That's great when you've got nothing else but it's worse than a 14.4 dialup.
Connectivity is spotty. Generally I've had no problems with getting connected at home or work, but last week I was attending Networld+Interop and the damn thing locked up my Handspring.
Tight. I had to reset. After the second time this happened (yeah, shoot me for being a glutton for punishment), I lost all my data. Yes, it was backed up, but that's not the point.
Now, in the past I've had no issues. Blazer (the browser that comes with the Xircom module ) is sweet and if you've got a Visor the color is great and the quality is decent. I liked it, until last week.
But after last week I'll not likely be using the module again. I just can't afford to lose everything on the road like that.
As always, YMMV.
I don't have a solution, but I certainly admire the problem.
I've got my Handspring Visor Prism setup on the home network with a DLink Access Point and a LinkSys router. The access to the internet is via DSL.
It works and works great - particularly for email, NNTP and wireless hotsync.
The transfer speed is nowhere near 10 mbps, but I think that is due to the DragonBall 33Mhz processor. The reason I think this is because last week I installed AfterBurner 3.1, which overclocks the CPU and I saw a very noticable improvement in the speed of browsing and of downloading messages from the news server.
Spend the money and get the Zaurus. I just purchaced the D-Link 802.11b CF card for $99 at my local Fry's Electronics and it worked flawlessly with my Linksys WAP. The Zaurus is just a good piece of technology all around.
"Keep on Tuxin"
I'd recommend springing for the Handera 330. I did, and I haven't regretted it a bit. You say: Handera has a nicer, bigger screen, but is also more expensive. I couldn't locate a price for the CF card either.
That's an understatement -- the Handera screen is very sharp and clear. The backlight is bright and clear in the dark, and because the grafitti area is part of the display (instead of being silk-screened on like all the other Palm devices) you can actually see what you're writing in the dark. In bright light, it's fantastic and quick to respond -- no screen artifacts. Folks used to rave about the b/w screen on the Rex units -- this is nicer.
As for the price of the Symbol 802.11b card, I've seen ~$175us. Note that the Symbol card is significantly smaller and less succeptable to damage than the Linksys -- the dongle on the latter is huge. From outside appearances, the Symbol card looks to be the same as the Socket brand 802.11 card. (Anyone?)
There are a lot of other benefits to the Handera 330 -- the battery life with the LiIon batter is great (important if you're using CF devices that require more power such as a microdrive or 802.11 card), the flexibility of the MMC/SD memory slot is great (and I'm hoping to see a bluetooth SD card soon). The power tap can rechange the battery while you're using the unit yet doesn't interfere with a Palm Portable Keyboard. The folks at Handera did a great job on this one; I'm very happy with it.
Handera 330 ($300) + battery ($50) + Symbol card ($175) + charger ($40, or you can pick up a Nokia ACH4U charger for $2 at a discount place or thrift store) and you're set for around $550us.
I think not...(*poof*)
I have a Palm m515 and the Xircom 802.11b sled. It works pretty well. It has its own battery, so it doesn't drain from the handheld itself. The biggest limitation is speed; it connects via RS232 serial and basically acts as a PPP "server" for the Palm.
One neat feature is that no software install is required; you simply attach it to the Palm and it installs its driver automatically. I did download and flash a firmware update for it; it corrected a few bugs and limitations of the software that came with it. (main one I noticed was that you HAD to specify a SSID - with the updated software this isn't necessary)
Overall, it works pretty well. Web clipping is a heck of a lot faster than with a Palm VII, and browsing via things like AvantGo and Blazer isn't all that bad. I also setup network HotSync which is obviously slower than USB HotSync via the cradle but works well. I've used it with a few different access points from Linksys and Cisco, and the range is pretty much the same as I get with my laptop.
I purchased mine from eBay for under $200
Matt
Whatever you do, don't make the mistake of not buyng a Zaurus. This is the highest quality device of any type that I have purchased in the last five years. The Zaurus is built to last, from the rugged, incredibly cool built-in keyboard (thumb-board) that is exposed when you slide down the bottom cover, to the world-class color screen built by Sharp, to the Linux operating system that comes pre-loaded. I am running my own personal Python applications on my Zaurus right now, form the Bash shell command line. (You can download them for free, their new, their GPL'ed, and their crafted especially for the Zaurus, just go to http://www.awaretek.com ) This device is more expandable than the IPAQ, having both a Compact Flash slot and an SD Card slot. You can buy digital cameras taylor made for it, wireless LAN cards, extra memory (although I am having trouble filling up my full 64 MB RAM with programs, the Linux operating system by Lineo is so compact and efficient that the Zaurus gives a lot more room in RAM than the IPAQ). Running scritps from the BASH shell is way-cool. The machine is based on Trolltech's Qtopia desktop, with full Trolltech QT toolkit developer's platform, plus the standard JEODE JVM Java environment. Not only Python has been ported to the machine, but also most of the Python libraires and also PyQt. This baby rocks!!! Developers all around the world are busy coding new applications for the Zaurus. New apps appear every day! Lastly, why in the world would you want to support Microsoft by buying an IPAQ running Windows CE, even if you do plan on loading Linux on it? Do youself a favor, buy a Zaurus! And then download my Python programs for the Zaurus at http://www.awaretek.com rs
If you think $220 is pricey, and the HandEra 330 too expensive at $300 (MSRP; it's widely available for less), then there's no way you're going to be able to afford a $499 Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 plus the extra cost of an 802.11 wireless card. Or any of the Pocket PCs for that matter, which can run from the $400 range up through almost $700.
If you want wireless LAN connectivity on the cheap, the HandEra is the cheapest (and one of the best) solutions out there. In addition to a well-designed device, they have great service and support. And frankly, if you don't like the HandEra, your only other option is to spend lots more money.
--Mythos