The Joy of Mobility...

I spend a fair amount of my day on the train going to and getting back from work. People deal with the daily commute differently. Some read newspapers, others talk - sometime even to people they actually know, some sleep, some work etc...

To get through boredom of travelling I rely on a few personal electronics.

1: Creative Labs Zen Xtra

This was my first travelling buddy. I bought it shortly after joining Ideaworks (I commuted by car before that). It's now about 20 months old and has never failed me. It's got 60 gigs, so it hold a decent chunk of my music collection, and the battery lasts about 3-4 days or travel. Only negatives of the Zen xtra are it's whole interface is very poor. The on screen is needlessly full of sub menus and the little nipple thing to scroll is bad. The other thing I don't like is that you can't simply plug it into a PC and view it as removable storage.

Still - it's essential for my daily commute. Cost me £270 new. I'm Sure they are cheaper now on Ebay.

2: Nintendo DS/PSP

The DS is definitely preferred over the PSP here, but based on what I'm currently playing I will always have one or both of these with me. I see people using both on the trains, more PSPs than DS (where most people are doing the Brain Training) but most PSPs are used as video players, not games machines.

If I had to choose one, I'd go for the DS every time. Fav games to play on the train are Phoenix Wright and Trauma Center.

3: T-Mobile MDA Pro

I've posted a whole bunch of times about my 'phone'. I genuinely have a love/hate relationship with it. I think the problem is that is is SO CLOSE to being perfect that when it fails its so disappointing.

However, ever since the great 'Kitten Vs Coffee Cup Vs Sony Vaio' incident of a few weeks ago (my super cute Vaio is now dead) I've been using the MDA Pro a lot more.

Also, T-Mobile now has unlimited data, which has helped in the fun that can now be had.

Here's some of the apps that make the MDA Pro the almost 'cant live without it' device it is.

1: TCPMP - The Core Media... Erm... Something. Basically is a video/audio player and, pretty like much everything else I'm going to mention here, replaces Microsoft's awful version of the media player. TCPMP plays divx/xvid/mpeg etc. Most movies work straight of the memory card so no need to convert anything like a PSP.

It also works great with Orb so I can stream movies, music and pics direct from my desktop PC over 3G or WiFi.

2: NetFront 3.3 - NetFront is the web browser that should be standard on the MDA Pro. The in-built Internet Explorer is terrible. I've tried Opera (which is okay) and once tried Minimo (which was really bad) but NetFront is the best. Viewing we pages over 3G or Wi-Fi is fast and NetFront smart displays most pages to the 640x480 display very well. Has Java and all that's stuff built in so you don't really miss anything.

3: SJPhone - I don't use this much anymore (since my wife is now in the UK), but it's hooked into my voipbuster account so I can make sip calls either over WiFi or 3G. Why pay mobile charges ;).

4: Total Commander - replaces the excuse for explorer that comes with Windows mobile. Quick and easy to use. Also features FTP so I can drag files from my desktop PC while on the move.

5: VNC Viewer - I have Tight VNC running on my desktop and use VNC Viewer to connect to it from my phone. Works great. The other day I was remote viewing my desktop and editing an Excel spreadsheet over the 3G network while waiting for the train to leave.

6: A6 Times - An RSS reader that grabs headlines from websites. Beats buying a newspaper in the morning.

7: Phoenix Studio - Mentioned this before in a blog, but basically it's a simple music package with a drum machine and 3 synths. Great for when I feel like making some on the move acid and beats. I have Syntrax as well but haven't had a chance to play with it yet.

8: Pocket Artist - Photoshop for Pocket PC. Very powerful. Have been trying it out to colour some of the manga I'm creating at the moment. Crashes sometimes if the memory is stretched, but features all the core tools you would want from Photoshop.

9. PPL - I just grabbed this and want to spend some time learning it. PPL is a programming language for Pocket PC comes with everything you need to make games on Pocket PC. You can create, edit, compile, run programs direct on device. I used to program games on the old Psion 3a (the MDA Pro is like a modern day Psion 3a in so many ways) and now I have the ability!

10: Pocket Blogger - I wrote this blog and posted it all from the MDA Pro.

In reality - The MDA Pro could replace my MP3 player except for the storage, does replace the PSP for movie playback, and could replace the DS and PSP for games (there just aren't any REALLY high quality games for Pocket PC). I'm also not missing my laptop as much as I thought I would.

It will be interesting to see if Microsoft are thinking like me. They have the Zune coming out soon. No doubt it uses some if not all of Windows Mobile 5. Unfortuntly all the bits of WM5 that suck are written by MS. Go figure.

Nic

posted by Nic @ 8:28 AM 0 comments