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Into
the Great White North: An Enthusiast's Visit to Montréal with iPAQ in Hand
Having
lived in Montréal three years ago, my family and I were anxious to return
for a short visit to see the city, catch up with friends, and to see what's changed.
This past week, we did so to usher in the beginning of our 10-day long Spring
Break. As I would be away from my desk and PC, it seemed like the perfect opportunity
for me to load up my iPAQ and to put it to good use.
With two modest additions,
a Silver Slider modified CF sleeve and a Kingston 64 MB CF card, not to mention
my AC adaptor to juice up the iPAQ during downtime, I took the taxi with my family
to Laguardia airport Friday morning to catch the flight. On the taxi and shortly
after check-in, I was able to listen to the 30 tracks ranging from Barenaked Ladies
to Blue's Traveler I had loaded to both my CF card and to the iPAQ's main memory.
I ended up with only about three stored in the unit's memory itself as I needed
to keep some program memory free for other things. Once on the plane, I spent
the first twenty minutes or so in the air replying to a friend's email. Although
I was fully aware that I wouldn't be able to send it until I got back, I reasoned
that I'd keep it short and sweet, ready to be fired off once synced up with Outlook.
I
was wrong. I experienced first hand what composing anything but the briefest,
most succinct email with a stylus (even a decently sized 3rd party stylus) would
result in: pain. I was very pleased with Transcriber's ability to keep up with
me, but the slickness of the smallish screen and the inability to rest the stylus'
tip on it while pondering my next sentence (unless a string of i's and periods
would play a part in my ramblings) combined with my tendency to write in small
cursive left the impression that Inbox, when used without a keyboard, is best
suited to reading messages and responding to lunch invitations with no more than
a "Hi, I'll be there."
I then spent several
minutes reading a NY Times article by means of Avantgo in Pocket Internet Explorer
before remembering that I needed to try out a new beta I had downloaded just the
night before. The application is called First Diagramming for Pocket PC, developed
by Matter and Motion, Inc. and in its first Beta. Without getting into too much
detail regarding that one application, I can say that it's nice to see more and
more uses for the Pocket PC being realized with new software, and that I'm completely
puzzled how to move the "Link", much less use it to join two textboxes
together to form anything that even remotely resembles a diagram. I did figure
out how to enter text into the different shapes, which turned out to be more logical
and simplistic than I thought.
Once in Montréal,
I used mainly Contacts and Inbox to retrieve phone numbers to get in touch with
some friends, as well as several games to pass the time on the Metro (aka Subway).
I had loaded up Metalion, the first release of Chopper Alley (mission logic not
yet functioning), Fire Drill, as well as both versions of each Turjah and ZioGolf.
I found no need for a map since I know my way around and also because a Pocket
Streets map would seem to take too much memory for what it'd offer me. A Pharos
Ostia map on the other hand, even with its route-plotting capabilities would be
even worse, even when stored on CF. My major gripe with their software is that
most maps are at least 5 MB, whether you need all the detail and the surrounding
areas of a region or not; there is no option to set boundaries or levels of detail
for maps, and no possibility of shrinking a map's size either.
The
trip was cut short with a work obligation that forced my family to come home a
day earlier, and with all flights on Wednesday filled, this time around would
be aboard the Amtrak. It would be about a 10 hour ride, but no matter I thought,
I had my iPAQ. We boarded at about 10 AM, upon which time I turned on my music
and started reading a .lit freebie courtesy of bn.com: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
#5- Fallen Heroes. After about two hours of reading with the sun by my shoulder
and the backlight off, I dozed off for a nap. I resumed reading about an hour
and a half later, and after about five hours of reading and playing music, the
battery had weakened to the point where audio playback was no longer possible.
Not a problem I thought, I could simply continuing doing other minor tasks as
I had finished the novel- my battery usually lasted the rest of the day even after
Windows Media Player would no longer play.
I continued
to read some half-week-old Avantgo content and began to review some notes I had
with Pocket Word in preparation for a standardized exam I will be taking in May.
A mere hour into my non-processor-intensive activities with the backlight off,
my iPAQ shut off without warning and wouldn't turn back on despite repeated soft
resets. After bringing my AC adaptor in my left hand and iPAQ in my right to the
dining car and discovering that the electrical outlets carried no current, I sat
back down. Suffice it to say, the subsequent four hours were long.
Having
my iPAQ along for the trip was indispensable, as I use it for all of its PIM functions,
as well as for its multimedia and gaming abilities. It was the perfect companion:
providing me with all of my necessary information, and entertaining me whenever
I had a spare moment while either traveling or waiting. I never experienced problems
with battery life as I topped off the iPAQ's battery each night, except for the
last day, upon which time my iPAQ decided to roll over and die on me. I can hear
the Palm users now, taunting me with their month-long battery lives. I suppose
I should simply show them the amazing work Sven of Amazing Games has done with
the Voxel-based game engine in Chopper Alley, and have it run through one of its
magnificent landscapes, all the while with the Counting Crows' Einstein on the
Beach playing in the background, of course.