HP iPaq Data Messenger finally available in the UK

My first PocketPC was an iPaq 3600 and I have owned almost every device in the iPaq range until the iPaq 5550. After that I switched to HTC, because HP devices started to get boring and not innovative enough. So it is good to see that HP is back (again) and the new HP Data Messenger is finally ready for pre-order in the UK. It can be yours for the equivalent of about 440 British Pounds.

This latest edition of the iPaq productline kinda has it all: It runs on a Qualcomm MS7201 processor at 528 MHz, it has 256 MB ROM and 128 MB RAM Memory for all those applications that you would like to run on the Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional Operating System. It has a 2.8" QVGA screen and if you want to take some snapshots of your loved ones it is good to know that the 3.1 MP camera will take a crystal clear and sharp picture.

For those who get lost easilly, it also has an (assisted) GPS and if you need to send some data somewhere along the way, you have WiFi, GPRS/UMTS and HSDPA up to 7.2 MBit/s at your disposal. Typing an email or text message can be done very quickly on the slide-out QWERTY keyboard. This also might be a good competitor for the Xperia X1, a device which absolutely didn't work out for me.





Hoping to see more of this device soon and as soon as it is available in other countries you'll be the first one to know !

Eye-Fi - WIFI enabled SD card uploads your pictures instantly

During CntrStg at CES 2009 I got introduced to Eye-Fi. Eye-Fi did a presentation about heir WIFI enabled SD cards for digital Camera’s at CntrStg. With a quick set-up on your computer you can have the card connect to your private WIFI or have it set as well to connect to any open network. Why would you think?

Let me tell you why. Most of us do have an online photo album account. Eye-Fi is able to upload your pictures directly from your camera to many of these sites like SmugMug, Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, Shutterfly and even sites like Costco,Wal-Mart, Kodak, etc. To see a full list of their partners go here .

Instead of only directly upload your pictures it will as well upload your pictures instantly. Once you are connected every picture you take will upload immediately to your favorite sites. With an account created on the Eye-Fi website you will have access to their Eye-Fi manager where you can see the history of the uploaded pictures. Here you can change your settings to include the website you would like to upload your pictures, but also select a folder for your computer or external hard drive where these pictures will be stored as well.

Another feature that is available is to add Geotagging. Geotagging adds location data, including latitude and longitude coordinates as well as city and state details, to photos you take with your camera and Eye-Fi card. These metadata are added to the photos existing EXIF metadata. Certain software applications and websites (Eye-Fi Manager, SmugMug, Picasa Web and flickr) can use these metadata to make searching for photos easier or to visualize your photos on a map.

If you are not connected to a WIFI net work it will start uploading the pictures you took the moment you are having a connection. Just make sure your camera stays on for that time. The Eye-Fi manager will be able to send you a notification by e-mail, text message (SMS) or Twitter that the uploading has started of your pictures to your favorite website.

We were using the Eye-Fi card during our event at CntrStg and it was amazing to have instant gratification of showing the pictures directly on our big screen to all attendees. I did not do the set-up of Eye-Fi myself that time but did it yesterday to set it up for my own private camera. Really it took me only 10 minutes and I was up and running. My wife loves it. No more hassle in connecting the camera to the computer. Just organize them online.

What do I see in the future for Eye-Fi? I hope that camera manufactures will see the need of adding a menu in their firmware where users are able to use the camera to connect to a new WIFI network. This way you don’t need a computer with the Eye-Fi USB card reader to set up a new private WIFI Network.

Another thing I would like to see to have the pictures uploaded to more than 1 account. For example I would like to upload to SmugMug and Facebook at the same time. Now you can only choose one. You can set up more in the manager application. But only one can be active.

Eye-Fi already announced an iPhone application, Video capabilities. I hope it doesn’t stop here and Eye-Fi can make more applications for other platforms which will allow build in camera’s on devices to instantly publish their pictures.

For me this is a real winner.

Eye-Fi is available starting at $79.99 for the Eye-Fi Home version. You are able to upgrade your service later on as well to more services listed here

Boston-Power Adds $55 Million in Growth Capital

Boston Power made their presence during CntrStg at CES with a great presentation about their future in longer lasting batteries.



Just last week they announced that they are adding $55 Million in Growth Capital.



"The Funding Will Fuel Lithium-Ion Battery Developer’s Global Expansion of Manufacturing, Sales, Marketing and R&D. The Investment Follows News That HP Will Be First to Deliver Boston-Power’s Sonata Battery in Early 2009"



Please vist the Boston Power website for the full press release.

Microsoft cuts affect the Entertainment and Devices group

According to a good friend of mine at Pocket PC Talk is hearing from his sources that Microsoft is immediately laying off 1,400 people. A big bulk of these lay-offs are in the Entertainment and Devices group. This group is responsible for Xbox, Zune and Windows Mobile products.

So in the catch up arena against Apple (Music players and Mobile Phones) they probably will have to adjust the road map and maybe their targets. The question really is, if these economic tough times will eliminate certain projects and some customers have to lose out in the options.

The total lay-offs are going to be 5,000. I will keep my fingers crossed that Microsoft is still able to deliver us competitive materials in the future.

Pocket Chargers by Duracell

Being on the road and working long hours brings always the challenge if you have enough power with you mobile device to get through the day. There are many emergency chargers out there which you can charge-up using your computer through a USB Cable before taking it on the road with you. However the Pocket Chargers from Duracell uses two AA batteries. When drained just simply replace the batteries and you are ready to go.

These Pocket Chargers come in either for the Ipod or for the BlackBerry and Motorola series phones. The package for the BlackBerry and Motorola devices comes with both the Mini and Micro USB connectors. Once you connect your plug to the charger it will illuminate a blue light on the Pocket Charger and you can connect your device to be charged. Be care full to remove your connector from the Pocket Charger when done, because it will keep draining your Pocket Charger.

Hopefully in the future they will come out with separate connectors you can buy if you change phones. I just changed to a Samsung Omnia Phone and now I can't use it anymore.

Read here more about the Pocket Chargers. The Duracell Pocket Chargers are $19.99. They now are on sale for $ 14.97 at TigerDirect

T-Mobile G1 will hit several markets at Jan. 30th

T-Mobile Netherlands yesterday introduced the T-Mobile branded Google G1 to most of the resellers in The Netherlands. The new G1 has also a new priceplan: You'll get a white or black G1 for free when you sign the 2-year contract Relax 300, which gives you 300 minutes a month and (almost) unlimited internet access (max. 1 MBit/s) for 29,95 euro a month. Not a bad deal I think.

The G1 will be available from January 30th and will be delivered to your house a couple of days later when you order it online. You can also pick it up in your local T-Mobile store or other resellers.

From January 30th on, the G1 will also enter the German, Czech, Austrian and Polish markets. I have no info on the German markets, but the plans should not differ that much from the Dutch plans.

Given the specs of the device and the possibilities of the Android Operating System, will you give the G1 a chance, or better stick to your good-old Windows Mobile device or the iPhone ?

The Value of CntrStg

I am attending the CES right now and have been involved with CntrStg. CntrStg is a new amazing forum where companies can meet the online influential community leaders who blog in depth their products.

With only a couple of presentations held so far the companies have responded amazing to the value of presenting to the attendees of CntrStg. So far all the presentations are also quality discussions between the parties. Afterwards the companies were so excited to had the opportunity to meet these attendees since they were engaged and had some real good input.

So if you are attending CES right now and you are registered for CntrStg, make sure you don't miss the rest of their quality presentations.

HP Elitebook 2530P - up close and personal pt1

Now if you have known me a bit longer, you would know that once a device comes within reach of my personal IwannahavethatNOW-zone, there's only two things that can help a device cross that boundary. A solid field test and a fair bit of surgery.

Given the fact that this particular Elitebook needed to remain at the CntrStg for the duration of the event, surgery was the only option available to me. Thank god therefore that US customs overlooked this itsy bitsy teeny weenie screwdriver that I forgot to take out of my laptop accessory bag. This little oversight now enabled me to have a good look at this little beasts innards

(I am truly sorry HP, and I do solemnly swear that once I am done with her I will put her back together again. You will not notice that she was ever taken apart. Will this now ruin my chances of taking one out on the road for a field test?)

In the end I was glad I did open the Elitebook, because it had a few pleasant surprises in store for me.

First surprise wasn't so much a surprise as well as a confirmation of what I'd secretly hoped. The Elitebook 2530p in fact is already fully prepped for 3G. The mini PCI expresscard slot to accommodate the WWAN modem is there, the antenna cables are there and the sim card slot is there, nicely tucked away under the battery where it belongs.

The second surprise was the hard-drive. This discovery actually almost made me want to nick the drive because it was a newly introduced Toshiba 1.8" Sata drive from the MKxx29GSG series. The MK1629GSG is a 160Gb SATA II 5400rpm drive with a host transfer rate up to 3.0Gbps and an 8Mb cache buffer. Quite a nice performer and a disk I seriously would like to have in my own Lenovo X300 machine. While very nicely specked, 64Gb for me is on the small side even if it's SSD.

At first I was a bit puzzled by the presence of only one single memory slot, containing exactly 1Gb of memory but a quick glance within Windows XP showed that the machine in fact had 3Gb of memory onboard so a 4Gb configuration and a 64-bit OS definitely is a possibility.

In short a second, more up close look at the machine definitely brought the Elitebook 2530p even closer to my IwannahavethatNOW-zone. That compact and yet that performing? My name written all over it ...

More to come (if HP does not takeway my screwdriver that is)

Tweeting between blogs

Just as a little side comment: My life in the intervals between my Mobility Minded postings and my everlasting quest to resolve my needs for ultimate mobility can also be followed on Twitter. Just go to www.twitter.com/wditters and click on follow.

HP's new gifts to the Road Warriors

Those who I work with or who have been following my publications online know that for years now I have been trying to find ways to optimize working mobile.

"Teleworking" as we call it in the Netherlands has increasingly been gaining intrest over the last few years. The ever increasing traffic jams in the Netherlands have only been fuelling the discussions around "Teleworking" both at governmental level and at corporate level.

Although over the last years we have made quamtum leaps in terms of mobilizing our working environment, my quest in that matter is far from over. We're only at the dawn of the Mobile area and the recent boost in popularity of the UMPC and the devices now known as Netbooks (unless Psion gets their way) clearly demonstrates that.

That is why you can understand that I was thrilled to take the new HP Mini Note 2140 and the new HP Elitebook 2530p for a short spin.



My first impressions: HP, could I take both devices home for a more thorough test, pretty please?!?!?!?!




The HP Mini Note 2140 ... do you notice the battery that doubles as stand? Err, it does not fold in with the screen ... ?? Other that that it looks and feels fantastic!


... and guess what, HP ditched the VIA 1.7 CPU in favor of the Intel Atom 1.6Ghz that recently has become the De Facto standard. Way to go HP! This machine feels snappy!


Performance in a small package. A tad bigger than the Mini Note, the Elite Book adds a great build quality to the mix as well as a keyboard light comparable to the excellent Thinklight that I have grown so fond of in the Thinkpads.


For me personally, the Elitebook 2530p at fist glance has the upper hand. Looks and feels more serious and still is small and light enough for real nomadic computing!

(And YESSS there is the 3G Mobile Broadband option with this one)

Let me introduce myself!

Hi everyone,

Since I am new to Mobility Minded, I thought it good to have you go through a little introduction from my side :-)

My name is Willem Ditters, I am 43 years old and Dutchman from birth. Living and working in the IT industry, my Linkedin profile shows my background and professional history.

Up until today I have always been particularly interested by (Corporate) Mobility. It is therefore that over the last few years I have been active, first as moderator and later as editor and reviewer for Pocketinfo.nl. Since these publications always were in Dutch, my exposure within the Mobility Community was therefore a tad limited to the Netherlands.

That is why when this opportunity came along to do the odd blog post or two on Mobility Minded, the only thing I could do was to start blogging :)

I am currently with Johan van Mierlo at the CntrStg prepping for both the CntrStg kickoff and the CES kickoff so over the next few days you will see quite a few postings covering exciting new stuff from CES and CntrStg.

See y'all later!