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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?
I've never understood this fascination with the wireless world on a PDA anyway, but here's my two cents:
If you've got an 802.11b wireless network card going, it's going pretty much all the time. And battery life suffers horribly, especially if you're using a high-drain PDA anyway, like a bright color screen. My boss has an iPac with a Xircom wireless LAN PCMCIA card, and it destroys his battery life - it goes from maybe 5-7 days between charges to maybe 5-7 *hours*.
So here's my advice. Either get an adapter that has it's own little battery pack and won't cripple your PDA proper, or get one that's hot-swappable, tiny, and convenient to slip in and out when needed.
That's if you really think you're going to get that much use out of the thing. Myself, I'm happy to just get in the habit of syncing every time I'm at my computer, and letting the information exchange happen then. Honestly, though, I still don't see the attraction.
GMFTatsujin
No matter what PDA you have, 802.11b is a battery drain. Partially from the radio and partially from the likelihood that your PDA will spend more of it's time actively being used than in standby mode.
The Handera 330 does indeed support the Symbol Wireless Networker Type I CF 802.11b card. The Symbol lists for $180, but there are a few online places that have it for around $150 (including my webstore). None of the other CF wireless cards have Palm drivers (with the exception fo the Socket CF Type I which is an OEM of the Symbol)
As for the Xircom 802.11b Visor and m500 series modules, pricey is the right word. Go to pricegrabber and do a search on Xircom Visor and you will find retailers who still have the Visor module.
The nice thing about the Visor module is that it has it's own battery separate from the Visor, but web browsing from your Visor will eat batteries from the extended continuous usage.
As for the m500 module, I've never used it, but it also has it's won battery.
If you go with a Pocket PC based device, you have more wireless options. Either PCMCIA (Ipaq) or CF Type II and Type I. And you'll be able to run more things that will make having wireless access more useful. Like VNC, Windows Terminal Services, stream MP3s, access windows file shares. Pocket PC devices are meant to be laptop replacements, Palm devices aren't.
We've played witht the idea off and on of putting a wireless network out in our plant for ease of our use (the sysadmins). It would be so cool if I could just whip out my iPaq (or whatever) and use many of my often used admin utilities over the network, such as Windows usermanager (playing with those stupid permissions) or a shell to see what my 'nix server is up to and if that damn 3Ware card has barfed all over itself again or running one of several custom apps that we've developed in house. I could see this being *extremely* useful in this situation, rather then having to either a. find a nearby computer to kick a user off of to login as admin or b. walk all the way back to your office because you need a utility there.
I know there is a vnc client for WinCE.
Anyone know of other useful admin type utilities that would make this venture worthwhile to us?
Run. I like water. Push My rutabaga.
Be careful, the Symbol CF 802.11 doesn't work as advertised with the Zaurus. The pricer version, made by Socket Communications not only works with it, but it also sucks up less juice.
BTW, I didn't say the Symbol card won't work, just that it doesn't work as easily as they say it should.
I live life on the edge
The Zaurus SL-5500 supports the D-Link DCF-650W out of the box. Just plug in the CompactFlash 802.11 card, and configure the SSID and WEP settings in the standard config app, and you're off and running.
The included Opera browser does a good job of scaling pages to the small PDA display.
And, since it's Linux, there is no end to the cool apps you can run on it. Check out Kismet. It's an 802.11 sniffer program, great for "War Driving". Between my office and home, I picked up 80 different 802.11 networks on one trip. I am in Silicon Valley, so your results may vary. But, it's great for finding public access points too (whether they are intentionally or accidentally public).
I've browsed the web on the Palm, iPAQ and Zaurus. They ALL suck for the all in one web browsing thing you're looking for. If you want to really do web browsing, wait a bit and get one of those oQo devices that are coming out later this summer. (Hopefully someone will gut the OS on the thing and get it to run Linux). Having said they all suck, they suck in varying degrees. Mostly it's the power consumption. The developer Zaurus absolutely sucks down the batteries big time. So does the iPAQ running WinCE. Believe it or not, the iPAQ running savaJeOS can browse the web for a Loooooong time. The other thing is that things just won't render the way they will with a "real" web browser. You can get the info from most pages, but some pages won't come up at all. (And clearly, something like Flash will just not work). having said all that...if all you're looking for is something to have to use during those boring meetings, just about anything will do. Just be aware of the limits all these devices currently have. They're not quite there yet. Oh yeah, one more thing. The Blackberry. Hands down, the best device out there. Problem with that is, no 802.11. And it's quite expensive (more than $50 per month just for the e-mail version, higher with the cell-phone e-mail combo). If they had one with 802.11, it'd be time to sell the Palm stock, they'd blow Palm away. It's that good. They're probably making money with the cell-phone networking stuff they have now, but it would pale in comparision to what they could do if they had an 802.11 device.
My first TRGpro developed dead lines and Handera replaced it totally at their cost, postage included. They took a deposit from me and sent me the replacement first so I could migrate all my stuff across. I've also had to return one folding keyboard, but that replacement cost me nothing either. And I've had to replace a RioPMP300SE as well, and that time the replacement still had problems. Modern, portable, electronic equipment all has a high failure rate, the issue is how well the company deals with it and on that score Handera are the best I've found.
> Yes but is it wise to buy from a company you've never heard of?
p /
There's a bunch of people who did.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TRGPro_Users_Grou