"My son first wanted to go to Stanford, which I thought was O.K. The weather is pretty good, and it's a fairly short drive to the beach. But it wouldn't be as good as let's say, Pepperdine, which is in Malibu. And he said, 'Dad, what about the education?' I said, 'Clearly, I failed as a parent." -Larry Ellison



   
BentUser Updates Feed     


Featured Articles
iPhone 3G Review, Gripes and Praise: Part I
Xbox Live Arcade 2008 Preview: Part I
Resident Evil 5 Preview
Customer Service?
The Fallout from Sony’s E3 Press Conference
Windows XP and Vista b5270 Side-by-Side
DRM Hell
Sharp XR-10X LCD Projector Review
Xbox 360 Launch
Microsoft BOB Review
Logitech V200 Wireless Notebook Mouse
Office 12 Screenshot Gallery
Apple Thinks Same, Goes Intel
.NET 2.0 vs. Java 1.5 Shootout
Microsoft Windows Vista Build 5231 Indepth Look - Part 2
Why Google is Being Sued by Publishers
Microsoft Windows Vista Build 5231 Indepth Look - Part I
Comprehensive Tablet PC Review with the HP tc1100
Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 Review
IBM / Lenovo ThinkPad T43 Review
Windows OneCare Live Preview
OpenOffice 2.0 Writer Beta Preview
Battle of the Betas: IE7 vs. Firefox 1.5
Unicomp Customizer 101 Keyboard Review
Dell UltraSharp 24" Widescreen LCD Monitor - 2405FPW Review
Yahoo! Music Engine First Look
TopDesk Review
More
 
  Windows Mobile 5.0 Preview
  By Andy

  Front > Software
  9/11/2005
  Specifications    Images    

 

Applications

A very important part of a Windows-based handheld, as with Windows itself, are of course the applications.  As this is a review of Windows Mobile 5.0 we will be sticking with the applications that Microsoft ships with the OS.

What
What's New? 

As you can see, there are a several additions: PowerPoint Mobile and ActiveSync.  Then of course we have a few name changes, notably Pocket Word becomes Word Mobile, Find becomes Search, etc.

PowerPoint Mobile

PowerPoint Mobile is a much needed addition that allows you to view – but not edit – presentations.  So if you receive a presentation as an email attachment, no problem.  Now you can view it – complete with most of the animations you would get on the desktop version.

PowerPoint Mobile Starting Screen
PowerPoint Mobile Presentation - Landscape View
PowerPoint Mobile - End of Presentation
PowerPoint Mobile - Options Menu

So as you can see from the screenshots, it is about what you would expect for a mobile presentation viewer.  This could be very useful for owners of 640x480 handhelds, as you could certainly give a compelling presentation with just your handheld.

Word Mobile

Word Mobile, for better or for worse, has not changed much.  As you can see in this side-by-side comparison, the toolbar has been improved a bit and all of the menu items have been integrated into a single menu:

Word Mobile Document View
Word Mobile Document View 

Unfortunately, Word Mobile still has a nasty tendency to strip out all formatting it does not understand.  This means that if you copy a document onto your handheld with complex formatting, edit it, and copy it back, said formatting will be gone.  Word Mobile also cannot seem to handle large documents well.  I attempted to open a 14 MB document with large pictures.  Although it thankfully loaded the file in a separate thread and allowed me to start working with it while it was still loading, it did eventually fail to load the entire document:

Word Mobile Document View
Word Mobile Problems


It makes a competent viewer, however, as you will probably not typically edit complex documents on the handheld anyway.




Previous      Next  
[ Introduction ] [ Applications, Continued ]
 

 

Contact Us        Links:  NLP APIs      




Copyright � 2005 Retro Reviews LLC.  All Rights Reserved.
Technorati Profile