Thursday, December 1, 2005
Do You Use Infrared?
Posted by Ed Hansberry in "THOUGHT" @ 06:00 AM
In Darius' excellent review of the E-Ten M600 the first thing that jumped out at me was that there is no IR port on the device. I am not sure if it is the first Pocket PC without an IR port or not, but it is the first one I've heard of, other than industrial devices like Symbol makes.
To this day, I make sure my laptops have IR on them and even though I don't IR sync much as bluetooth and USB are both faster (as is WiFi but the lack of WiFi sync is another rant altogether :? ) I do frequently beam files off of my laptop to my Pocket PC and back since a simple IR squirt is much faster for smaller files than waiting for ActiveSync to get up and running. Of course, IR is much easier to send data to other devices than bluetooth is, especially as a one time shot of contacts or a file or two. That alone would keep me from seriously considering the M600. Note too that some of you have a foldable IR keyboard that obviously wouldn't work with the M600, and this eliminates any possibility of using the PDA as a TV remote. I did that one time to see how it worked and never again. I know some of you though love the Nevo type software. Am I in the minority though on the importance of IR today?
To this day, I make sure my laptops have IR on them and even though I don't IR sync much as bluetooth and USB are both faster (as is WiFi but the lack of WiFi sync is another rant altogether :? ) I do frequently beam files off of my laptop to my Pocket PC and back since a simple IR squirt is much faster for smaller files than waiting for ActiveSync to get up and running. Of course, IR is much easier to send data to other devices than bluetooth is, especially as a one time shot of contacts or a file or two. That alone would keep me from seriously considering the M600. Note too that some of you have a foldable IR keyboard that obviously wouldn't work with the M600, and this eliminates any possibility of using the PDA as a TV remote. I did that one time to see how it worked and never again. I know some of you though love the Nevo type software. Am I in the minority though on the importance of IR today?
