Beginners Guide part I

Introduction

There are many people who get a Pocket PC and have no idea how to use it. They need help and I hope to offer it. The purpose of writing this is to reduce the number of repetitive posts that are put up. I have not seen more than a dozen new and original posts for months. I have learned much of what I know from personal experience. I want to share what I have learned so that people do not regret buying a PDA because they can’t maximize the use of it. I present to you a short guide that contains common problems and questions as well as a Q and A section at the end. This guide will be updated regularly and will be posted in my geocities website as soon as I feel like getting some HTML practice.

RAM

RAM means random access memory. You can consider RAM as how much your device can think about at once. Sort of like how people can only have so many things going on in their heads at once. Everything takes RAM. The operating system takes anywhere from four to six megabytes. A running program can easily take up two or three megabytes. Every document, picture, book, MP3, spreadsheet, contact, program, internet file or font file takes up your RAM. If you don’t have most of your RAM free it will make your device go really slow. Simple tasks will stall and programs will take an eternity to load. To get speed out of your system, close programs that you don’t need open. You can do this with iTask or by going to Start, settings, system, memory, running programs, select one and tap end.

Memory cards

To reduce the amount of RAM needed it is important to get a memory card. If your device has a secure digital card slot or compact flash card slot, I highly recommend picking one or two up. They get cheaper and cheaper every day. 64MB through 512 MB is a good range to look at. 512MB is a little excessive and expensive. However the later can hold a lot of information and will ensure you will only need one card. Having one card prevents you from having to flip through countless cards looking for the right one.

SD means secure digital. It is a common memory card for newer mobile devices. Imagine it as a big floppy disk that is really small. Like a floppy, it has a switch that allows you to protect your documents from others by locking the contents. This prevents the write over of any documents. However it is better than a floppy because it is not affected by magnetic fields. lO SD cards are ones that can do things besides store information. There are SD lO cards that have wi-fi and most likely GPS.

Using Memory cards

Having a memory card doesn’t mean much if you don’t know how to use it. In this section I will give some ways to use it.

Add programs-The next time you want to add a program to your SD card go through the installation process as normal until, you get to the part where it asks you if you want to install the program in the default place. At this point click browse. This will allow you to put the program files on SD, RAM or ipaq file store.

MP3’s-If you like to listen to music on your handheld, sync your PDA and open Windows Media player. Go to the tab that says "Copy to CD or device" Then you can go to the left and there should be a dropdown menu that has both your device and your memory card that is in your device. Then click the copy button and it will convert and copy the music.

If the files are too large when copied to the device, you can reduce the quality and therefore the size of the music by going to the tools menu. Select options and go to the device tap. There you can select your pocket pc and click properties. From here you can use the slider to adjust the quality of the music.

You can manually add file through windows. Open my computer (while PPC is docked) then go to "Mobile device" and then "My pocket pc" from there you can access your SD card.

You can move files from your RAM to your SD card with the file explorer on your PPC. Just find the file you want to move and click and hold. Select cut from the drop down menu and navigate to your SD card. Either go to the file button on the bottom left and paste or tap and hold on a blank part in a folder on the screen and select paste from the drop down menu.

iTask

iTask is a great program which comes with all Pocket PCs made by HP and Compaq. You can customize it in settings, system. First try it out, activate it with the button on the far right side that looks like a bent arrow. It will make a popup box in the bottom left that shows all the programs running in the background. From here you can switch to or close a program. There are also three soft buttons under the window. They lead to completely customizable menus. The first two lead to some basic system options that are used somewhat frequently. However when you tap the third button, the Pocket PC just goes to brightness.

Who always wants brightness? If you want to change that and make it your own menu with all of your favorite programs, go to iTask settings. You can go there with the start menu (settings, system) or use iTask (left button). Examine the drop down menus there. Tap label and switch to 3:Brightness. Then you can select a new icon to represent your new menu. This menu only has one thing, brightness. To add more content simply select menu item and tap an unassigned one. Then select an item from the replace menu. The replace menu is somewhat tricky. There are three folders: Internal, Programs and Settings. Fill up the menu with your desired icons. While playing with your device, did you notice that the light bulb goes to brightness and doesn’t form another menu? To change that, select the first item in the list (0:) and replace it with menu. It will then automatically bring forth a menu instead of forcing you to tap and hold for the menu.

Start Menu

To change the things in the start menu you may think to go to start> settings> start menu. However this option will only allow you to add programs to your start menu. If you want to add a document, picture or folder, then access your file explorer. It looks like a magnifying glass and a folder. Its default location is in programs. You can explore the inner workings of your device through this method. Don’t worry, you can’t really hurt the device since the operating system is stored on flash memory and cannot be permanently damaged.

Firstly you must find the windows folder. It is located in “My device” (The top left button lets you go higher in the chain of folders.) Then select start menu. From there you will see all the folders, programs and documents on your device.

I personally don’t like the organization of the start menu and have opted to add a folder called Games and a folder called Utilities right at the top of my start menu. This way I don’t have to search through all the stuff I would normally have to. You may wish to do likewise. If you open a start menu folder like programs on a 2002 device, the only way to close that is to do a soft reset. (2003 OS allows you to close them easily) To stop this from happening you can simply open the programs through the file explorer. Now would be a good time to explain shortcuts.

Shortcuts

You can make a shortcut in file explorer by tapping and holding down on a document, picture, folder, ect and selecting copy. Go to the place where you want to add a shortcut, tap and hold on a blank spot and tap Paste Shortcut. When I had a Compaq Ipaq 3765, I saved precious RAM with this method. To save RAM I didn’t open any menus in the start bar like Games or programs because they will not close without a soft reset. Opening the same information with file explorer lets you close file explorer later saving about .2 MB of RAM.