A Japanese version of the Asus Pocket PC is on show at World PC Expo. No news of a release date yet. Dell plan to reveal their Pocket PC at Comdex in Las Vegas in November. I wonder whether they will release worldwide or whether it will be English/US only ???
Sounds good but having an extra device takes something away from the portability of the PDA. Another option to achieve the same storage capacity would be the 5GB PC card in the PC card jacket. The choice is having the bulk in in your hand or in your bag. The other disadvantage is that unless your PDA has built-in Bluetooth you will have to give up one slot (CF or SD) for a Bluetooth card.
http://www.idg.net/ic_956458_1794_9-10000.html
The World PC Expo is this week and and as reputedly Asia's largest IT trade show is certainly worth going to.
Good news for Pocket PC users everywhere - 1GB SD cards are due to hit the market next year. The current prices for 256MB and 512MB cards in Japan are around 20,000 yen and 40,000 yen. Still a bit expensive but they can only get cheaper.
Compaq to release H3900 series iPAQS in Japan at the end of October (four months after the US versions were released). The H3970 comes with Bluetooth. More information (in Japanese).
There is a Japanese<->English dictionary for Pocket PCs available from a company called Beiks here. Love it or hate it - it's romaji only!
NEC Infrontia have announced a new wireless modem that in addition to a 128 kbps flat rate connectivity capability features voice capability on a PDA. Here's the news on Windows CE Fan:
http://www.wince.ne.jp/frame.asp?/bbs/cnBoard.asp?PID=592
Although technologically this may be interesting news and I'm happy DDI and manufacturers are pushing forward new products and services I'm dubious about the real benefits for average PDA users. Everyone in Japan owns a phone anyway, and I feel using your PDA as a phone is going too far, although in the longer term PDAs and phones will most likely merge. I just can't imagine it being practical - current PDAs are just not designed to be phones. In addition, if you want to use your card a lot for data access then you wouldn't be able to use the phone function at the same time. I would guess this is just a step along the road to the eventual merger of phones and PDAs and it will be interesting to see how widely used it becomes in Japan.
It is also rumoured that NTT DoCoMo may be planning to start a flat rate plan for their popular P-in Comp@ct 64 kbps data cards in October: http://www.wince.ne.jp/bbs/device.asp (Japanese only): A later poster points out that DoCoMo's 64 kbps PHS cards have the big disadvantage that the 64 kbps PHS connection cannot be used while in motion, although the P-in Master does also have 9.6kpbs packet switched capability that can. The P-in Master can also make calls but cannot receive them. Will be interesting to see what the pricing is (expected around 5,000 yen) if the rumour is true and whether they come out with any new cards with improved features at the same time.
VoIP phone functionality for PDAs is more interesting as it potentially offers cheaper calls and an alternative to conventional mobile phones. Yozan and SkyWave are two companies in Japan pushing this forward. See this AsiaBizTech article and the others linked at the end.
For anyone who doesn't already know, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and ICQ are already available for Pocket PCs. In addition Microsoft also have research software called Portrait offering voice and video chat on a Pocket PC and this supports various existing standards.
What follows is a brief description of how I use my Pocket PC on a daily basis to show how it fits in to a busy Tokyo lifestyle. Not all uses are unique to Japan, but the need to be able to read Japanese and significant commuting and desk time will be common factors among many people living here.
07.35 - Set off to from home. Listen to an audio book from audible.com on the way to the station.
07.43 - Board first train. Only two minutes on this one and two crowded to do much so take the opportunity to read the mails (news, stock prices, kanji of the day, horoscope) on my mobile (cell) phone. (Has the advantage over the Pocket PC of easy one handed operation).
07.51 - Board next train. Still usually got enough phone mails for this 10 minute journey, but Pocket PC is handy for jotting down any notes, tasks to do today, or referring to dictionary.
08.06 - Presuming I'm on time I can get a seat for the final 40 minute journey. Makes a big difference. Currently cramming Japanese study in the morning in some part using Pocket PC dictionaries and flashcards. Very useful to have access to EDICT and other dictionaries. JWPce and JFC are great tools. I also like King Kanji which gives you space to draw the kanji using the stylus.
08.46 - Just enough time to grab a coffee from Starbucks and get to the office for 9.
09.00 - Pocket PC goes into USB cradle for synch, backup and charging. Use Remote Display Control to see and control Pocket PC from desktop. Start up Pocket IE currently with www.newsnow.co.uk Live News feed as home page. Pocket PC uses USB connection to connect to internet via desktop in addition to synching and power. If I'm lucky I'll get chance to download and install a piece of software or two I've heard about recently. It's so simple. Simply click on a link, then 'Open' and 'Next', 'Next', 'Next' ... finished. Usually it will go on the 256 MB SD card as the internal memory was filled up long ago. Quickly check my favorite 3 Pocket PC sites WinCE Fan (Japanese), Pocket PC Magazine and Pocket PC Thoughts. I'm using NetCaptor featuring tabbed windows and these are some of the sites which automatically open when I start my browser.
Rest of working day - Pocket PC usually always leaves the cradle to accompany me to lunch and any meetings. I'm sure to need it for something ... perhaps the calendar, taking/referring to notes or tasks, dictionary or reading or listening to books if I get any free time or to answer an unanticipated trivia question which is sure to have an answer in at least one of the Tomeraider reference files I have on the SD card.
18:00 ~ 23.40 - Depends what time I leave work. I may check e-mail using P-in Comp@ct 64 kbps wireless modem as I walk to the station and reply to any important mails on the train using Calligrapher handwriting recognition. No chance of a seat so comfortable standing space is crucial. If I need to contact any friends quickly I can see if they are online using MSN/Yahoo Messenger or ICQ. One problem is that wireless modem only keeps a signal when stationary. Would really like DDI 128kbps flat rate (abt. 9000 yen/mnth) CF card which keeps the signal when moving but it's hard to justify this amount for the number of times I would actually need it. When mail is finished I set about reading any current e-books I'm currently engrossed in, usually using MobiPocket of Palm Reader Pro. May also read any doc, text, HTML or PDF files I synched for reading during the day. Walking back from the station I again switch to audio books. If I'm feeling in need of distraction I can play with any new software I've installed recently (including just a few games for emergencies only :-).
Back at home - Check the task list for any tasks I had to complete at home this evening. Using categories means I can easily filter home tasks, work tasks, tasks related to the internet or mail or any combination of these or other categories. Agenda Fusion may this very easy. Usually use laptop for any home computing, but if a quick mail check or web site check is required the Pocket PC is instantly connected using a CF WLAN card and 8 Mbps ADSL wireless LAN. If I'm feeling adventurous will look for a short movie or interesting video file to watch whilst eating from the increasing number of Pocket PC multimedia content providers out there. Before sleeping will check calendar and update tasks for the following day, before popping in the charger to ensure batteries are fully fueled for the journey the following day.
Those are many of the uses on a typical day, but always having a Pocket PC loaded with all the software I need close by means I always have important information to hand and there is never a wasted minute. Just the tool to help make a busy life in Tokyo all the better.
Not much of interest to users here, but good to see this type of support for the PDA industry from businesses and a good sign for the PDA industry's future in Japan. Site is only in Japanese: PDABiz
Originally posted as an answer to a aimilar question in the discussion group.
JWPce (freeware) can take a bit of getting used to and installing is not quite as simple as click-and-go but when you do get it installed and get used to it it provides good access to EDICT. It's actually a word processor but the kanji and word dictionary are the key features. There is a companion freeware flash card program called JFC contributing to what is an excellent package. All the info is here: http://www.physics.ucla.edu/~grosenth/jwpce.html
Do some obvious searches on Google and you will find some good flash card sets other people have created. (Same goes for King Kanji).
In addition most Japanese model PPCs come with E-J, J-E, kokugo and perhaps kanji dict. The Sanseido one on my old G-FORT and the Jisyo Supa on my Genio perform well but don't offer anything more than very basic lookup functions are certainly have no tools to help learn vocab.
Some of the better of the other tools out there (Most only have Japanese information):
- PDIC: http://member.nifty.ne.jp/TaN/ (Can be used to access Eijiro but I have yet to try it pending getting hold of a bigger memory card).
- ZPDVIEW: http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA004474/wince/wince.html (Another good looking tool I really have to try)
There are also an increasingly good range of commercial dictionaries out there, including on the shelves of some of the larger computer stores. Searching for Ž«�‘ (jisyo) here http://www.wince.ne.jp/soft2002/ will get you a list of most of them. I'm not sure about the user interface but the content is the equivalent of the print dictionaries from the same companies. (Aside: I personally like EIJIRO (www.alc.co.jp for web access) for translations but it doesn't have the kanji readings so it may also be necessary to look these up using a separate tool/dictionary).
Finally, this Java dictionary - Babbletower - is still at early release stage but it has been getting very good comments from people who know what they are talking about: http://home.att.ne.jp/theta/xelalex/v
I had to remove this report for a few days after reading this slightly unclear article about the Musea on the AsiaBizTech site. The article seems to suggest that the Musea has in-built FOMA communication capability (quote: 'first PDA terminal with FOMA built-in wireless communications functions on the operating system'), something I had not understood when I wrote the post below and so I removed the post thinking it was inaccurate. In reality after checking the DoCoMo site in Japanese and the press release in English I am reasonably confident that this is not the case. The original post follows:
See a report on Pocket PC Life. There's nothing that this Pocket PC can do that any other Japanese capable Pocket PC can't except m-stage visual. Why do NTT DoCoMo bother doing this? Surely they won't make money from selling the device itself. If it is anything like the G-FORT it will be priced lower than other Pocket PCs but will suffer from lack of third part peripheral support. They are already out of the race using an old generation processor, a 3.5" screen and only one expansion slot. The design is okay but the weight is still heavier than the Genio at 180g. I' sure DoCoMo would have been much better off investing the money in rolling out solutions and services for all the Pocket PCs out there from real consumer goods manufacturers, for example by releasing software for m-stage visual.
Check out the new Pocket PC Japan discussion group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pocketpcjapan/.
There is a review of the Fujitsu Loox Pocket PC due out in Japan on 2nd
August here: http://www.tekguru.co.uk/PPC_Reviews/LOOX/index.htm.
Main (only?) advantages over the Genio are built-in Bluetooth, jog dial and
action button on left side. Disadvantages include smaller screen, slightly
heavier and bulkier, no PC card jacket option, at first glance less bundled
software (including no dictionary), no USB host functionality. Also I'm not
confident about the technical details, but the Genio SD slot can also use
I/O cards which I believe are those which outside the scope of flash memory,
I'm not sure the Fujitsu can.
Price is expected to be similar so I'd say only people who really need
built-in Bluetooth would be better off with the Loox rather than the Genio.
