Introduction
Who has at least a little knowledge about HPC’s should know how Microsoft and most OEM’s abandoned HPC’s a while ago. It is really very sad though there’s always hoping they and their popularity can be revived/restored some time in the (near?) future.
As far as Microsoft is concerned, they have never released a new edition of the Handheld PC operating system since the second half of 2000. They’re still actively developing Windows CE first in the form of so called
CE.NET which simply means the 4.x versions of CE (.NET was just a new MS fashion at that time), and now CE 5. As for the OEM’s: very few of them manufacture now HPC’s but fortunately there are definitely some of them. Of course as there’s no longer a HPC platform, OEM’s have to choose between the last incarnation of HPC platform, HPC2000, or
CE.NET (and now CE 5.0). This is a rather ambiguous question to many and there’s no definite agreement whether HPC2000 or
CE.NET is "better".
My opinion about these arguments is that everyone has to choose for themselves. I will try and compare these two OS’es on the same model, and finally tell about my opinion, but this will only be my personal view of
things.
So, the above introduction explains why i’m reviewing now the NEC MobilePro 900 and 900C. Obviously this is not the only one reason. The other is that i believe both the MP900 and 900C (as they’re completely the same hardware), are excellent devices and many people is going to like them immediately if they ever have a chance to get hold of one of these elusive HPC’s. :) Yes, I’m saying elusive because they’ve been discontinued this year and were sold only in the US officially. Even though I’m not a US resident I do own one... so don’t give up on finding one for yourself
yet!
First impressions and the hardware
Before i was lucky enough to see a MP900 in the flesh, I never had any real idea about the size of the machine. I’d had only Jornada 72x HPC’s before and thought the difference is less in size. I was genuinely surprised to see the MP900 for the first time next to my Jornada 728... Size and portability always mattered to me greatly as a Jornada user, but the 900 convinced me a larger HPC still makes sense compared to subnotebooks. The MP900 is still only half or less of the size of a really small, older Toshiba Portege subnotebook, and it feels much more comfortable. Yes even more comfortable than my beloved Jornada’s. This is somehow just the perfect size for handling an HPC. The weight which is around 820 grams is acceptable as well, I don’t feel it in my bag at all.
The size and design allows for a gorgeous keyboard. MobilePro’s have always been famous for this and the 900 is no exception! You can bet I’m writing this whole review on this keyboard. There’s no compromises for typing and even though i don’t know how to touch type I can type as fast on it as on a PC keyboard. Maybe even faster sometimes because it is a bit smaller so I don’t have to move my hands so much. The only glitch is of course the layout of the arrow keys. NEC have never been convinced to change their layout so they’re all still in the same row which requires a little time to get used to it. No worries though, it only took one or two days for me to get completely accustomed to the keys. Only a problem specific to me arises when I’m using another HPC keyboard for a few days and then I need to get used to the MP again...
The design itself also deserves some words. MobilePro’s always had a nice design but I especially like the 900’s design! The silver on the top cover and the battery which serves as a hinge as well is really nice along with the gray shades of the casing and keyboard. The build quality is excellent as well, something NEC finally learned from previous experiences. This HPC is really sturdy and comfortable to hold and use it in your lap or on a table, not with one hand
though.
The screen has a HVGA (640x240) resolution even though it measures 8.1" diagonally. Some think it is a waste of screen real estate not to use a higher resolution, others think it is just the perfect balance between resolution and pixel count. As for me, I don’t mind HVGA, I’ve always liked it and it is suitable for most tasks and anyway probably Windows CE don’t support a strange resolution like 960x360 so NEC didn’t have many options to choose from without completely redesigning the hardware.
The MP900 and 900C still have a DSTN display, and many will find it disappointing that a device RTM’ed in 2003, still can’t have a decent TFT screen. So you will not be able to see the screen very well in sunlight outside on a sunny day or watch videos at 24 or more fps. There’s one advantage though: I do like the longer battery life which is ensured this way.
If you inspect the sides closely, you will find plenty of options for expansion. Starting with the right side, besides the usual PCMCIA Type II slot, it is a real pleasure for most of the users to discover a full sized USB host along with a USB client port. One of the important differences between HPC2000 and
CE.NET is to do with the capabilities of the USB host. I will discuss this issue later.
The CF Type II slot is located in the front with a headphone jack and the microphone.
The infrared port is to be found at the back. Finally, the left side has the serial, VGA out and standard modem ports. The VGA out port is obviously not full sized, as there’s not much room for that, but you can get a VGA adapter cable for it
optionally.
All in all, I must say the hardware is impressive. But what about the software side of
things?
Software and CE.NET
A large proportion of users have used HPC2000 and are well aware of its possibilities and limitations. But
CE.NET is still relatively unknown even though lately I’m seeing increased numbers of
CE.NET users, thanks to for example a large dump of Siemens Simpad and Bsquare PHH devices on ebay. Now, it is well worth mentioning that there is or was a
CE.NET upgrade path for MP900 users so they could have a chance to get to know
CE.NET as an alternative to HPC2000. The real problem besides that the upgrade is now hard to find after the decision to discontinue it, that it is an one way upgrade really. There’s no going back to HPC2000. I repeat, none whatsoever, unless someone finds a reliable way to dump the rom contents out of a HPC2000 MP900 and another way to get the NEC bootloader to accept that ROM image. I am aware of two different rom dump utilities existing but I found none of those are reliable enough at the time of writing, to make images available for others even if they were willing to run some risk of rendering their machines unusable. They’re simply very far from a quality where one would even be thinking of it.
So if you’re still stuck at a purchase or upgrade decision, I can try and help to make this easier for
you.
To begin with, you will immediately notice the similarity and the differences in the the user interface at the same time. Even though
CE.NET is only a CE core operating system, and not a real platform, it still feels the same in handling it as HPC2000. Apparently, the looks are relatively different, as
CE.NET has a newer more modern design. But the real differences aren’t to be found
there.
As CE.NET is not an HPC platform, you’re going to have some issues if PIM use is important for
you. CE.NET doesn’t provide any PIM capabilities by default which shows Microsoft is no longer devoted to our HPC devices. Fortunately there are still options for the heavy PIM users. Most of the OEM’s do include some custom made or third party PIM software, all the contacts, calendar and tasks software. Furthermore, you can also install very good quality third party applications for yourself, such as CE Agenda or Odyssey’s Pocket On-Schedule of which the latter is a fully featured PIM software and should be able to satisfy most users. Only downside is that I heard some users have had problems with smooth synchronizing with the desktop PC.
NEC provide Bsquare’s PIM suite for the MP900C.
The other software suite missing from CE.NET is Pocket Office. This can sound shocking at first, but if you look into things a little further you’ll see it should not be a real issue in most cases. You still have the exact same Pocket Word renamed to WordPad and in addition a nice Word Viewer. The latter doesn’t allow you to edit documents but you can finally see for example tables and pictures easly unlike in Pocket Word!
However, in the case of spreadsheet editors, you need to rely on the OEM whether they include a version of such an application. NEC does include Bsquare spreadsheet (and other Bsquare programs... seems like they had an exclusive contract with Bsquare - even the bootloader talks about Bsquare!) but if you feel this is not able to perform adequately for your needs (it is fine for me), you have many (at least three) options for third party spreadsheet applicatons. Most notable of those is Softmaker’s Planmaker, and I should mention Textmaker here as well, as a worthwhile Pocket Word replacement equally for HPC Pro, HPC2000 and
CE.NET users.
You get a PowerPoint viewer as well, not any worse than the one in HPC2000. Finally, probably very few users care about Pocket Access, so its exclusion from
CE.NET doesn’t come as a big disappointment.
There are other file viewers natively included on most of the CE.NET
devices (for example Sigmarion III does not have them by default), a PDF and an image viewer.
The Pdf viewer is worth a few words: it can scroll really fast after it has finished loading the document, much faster than the Adobe Acrobat reader, but unfortunately it is not compatible with many pdf’s espacially those that contain accented
characters.
There are many improvements in CE.NET regarding built in software I didn’t mention so far. Of course everyone thinks of IE 6.0 now. Yes, indeed it is an excellent browser, one of the best available for any PDA platform today, especially if your OEM included Insignia’s Jeode Java JVM and/or Macromedia’s Flashplayer 5.5 or 6.0. Unfortunately NEC did not choose any of these options so you only get plain IE 6.0 which is still capable of rendering most of the pages very well. Don’t forget you can add Jeode or install Access Netfront 3.0, with a little tweaking, which has amazing Java capabilities - in many cases better than Jeode.
IE 6.0 is not always particularly faster than the older browsers but it is not slow either and it is quite stable in my experience! Interestingly I did feel IE6 faster on some sites with a Netbook Pro than on my 900C, but that might have been a false impression as I did not have the chance to compare them side by
side.
Among other important built in software is a client for Remote Desktop which looks and operates similar to XP’s own RDP client, with many features that older TS clients were missing on HPC2000 and HPC Pro systems. Additionally the 900C has Media Player 9 Series like most of the new PocketPC’s. NEC did not include MSN messenger and you cannot acquire an installable version of it apart from the old and not official MSN clients like MS Portrait and Imov messenger, but I’m working on
this...
Last but not least you get a lot of advanced connection possibilities and security options with
CE.NET 4.2 on the 900C. You can easily establish a PPPOE or VPN (PPTP or L2TP) connection and you can have WPA or WPA-PSK, etc. for wlan connections! Speaking of wlan, you’re going to like the native wlan zero config application, which solves many earlier problems with seeing and choosing from available wlan networks along with creating preferred networks, and even being able to see your own IP, or release/renew it without using any additional software. If you’re familiar with the dos like command prompt you can get extra useful information about the networks by using it, for example you can find out about all the IP addresses and transferred bytes. Another nice feature: when using a pcmcia or CF wlan card which is based on the "standard" prism chipset, you don’t have to look at the card’s own driver at all after installation of it...
CE.NET configuration application fully supports these cards.
All of the above and other little things I can’t mention here due to space limitations, helps to enjoy an experience closer to a desktop PC or more like notebook with Windows
CE.NET.
There are other very important issues we need to discuss here.
One of these is the amount of available software for CE.NET. Many inexperienced newbies aren’t initially aware they can use almost all older HPC2000 or HPC Pro software provided it is compiled for an ARM processor. The Xscale PXA255 employed in the Mobilepro 900/900C is fully compatible with the older StrongARM used in older HPC’s like the HP Jornada 72x series. You’ll need to note some things though. The 900C doesn’t have essential files with a dll extension (those are a kind of executables) included by default (even the 900 is missing a couple of them) so you will need to add them manually. It is really easy, all you need to do is copy the files in your 900C’s \Windows folder: mfcce211, olece211, mfcce300, olece300 and toolhelp.dll. The first two allows almost full compatibilty with HPC Pro software and the third and fourth with HPC2000. Toolhelp.dll is also needed for a few programs like Itaskmanager or Nyditot Virtual Display! Yes you can definitely run Nyditot’s famous software on your 900C, just make sure you’re using the latest version (4.23).
Did you notice I only said "almost" full compatibility earlier? I said so intentionally - here are the bad news: many earlier hpc programs were written with the HPC2000 version of a certain dll file, namely htmlview.dll, in mind. The 900C does not have this file at all unlike some other
CE.NET devices. What’s more is that strangely several versions of this file exist for
CE.NET, and none are fully compatible with the original HPC2000 file. So it is an inherent limitation in
CE.NET but it applies even more substantially to the 900C. You might be able to acquire a copy of those
CE.NET dll’s but programs will only partially work with it. For example Pocket On-Schedule works fine, but Mdict will not. Interestingly Mdict does work on the Sigmarion III which has another version of htmlview.
Don’t worry though, very few programs require htmlview and you’ll be able to use some of them in any
case.
I don't know of any other particular issue that would lead to incompatibilty with HPC2000 programs though that doesn't mean there couldn't be other things. Rarely, but it can and does happen.Still I can conclude that 95-99% of programs will work fine on CE.NET."
I guess many of you are aware that hpc2000 can run a certain partition of pocketpc programs (mainly ppc2000 and ppc2002, sometimes even wm2003!), but what is the case with CE.NET? Well the compatibility is about the same with older pocketpc programs if you're not afraid to do an extra hack concerning aygshell.dll. More bad news: in many cases you need to do additional hexediting for programs that will run fine on HPC2000 without any serious tweaking. This hack is however not a difficult task for the experienced user.
On the other hand, CE.NET 4.2 has a definitely greater compatibility with WM2003 stuff as long as you're willing to perform the
hexedits.
The other issue is the general stability and speed of the operating system. I was a little frustrated sometimes with stability with HPC2000 though it is really acceptable most of the time and I have never had any data loss from it on HPC2000. So I really like that
CE.NET 4.2 is quite stable and that it almost never required a reset due to system crashes or lockups. System slowdowns are more rare as well and
CE.NET 4.2 seems to recover faster from such a slow down so it takes only a few seconds at most, and as I said I rarely encounter a serious instance of these even if I’m using Internet Explorer. It is not always the case with the 4.1 version of the OS but 4.2 is almost perfect in this respect. 4.1 also doesn’t really require resets either though.
About speed: I did feel the MP900 a little sluggish on HPC2000 - the 900C on
CE.NET might be a little speedier and that’s nice.
Finally I’ll mention a popular issue. In a certain sense, more expansion options are available with
CE.NET, and this is mainly to do with the USB capabilities. Actually fewer drivers are found in terms of other hardware for
CE.NET than for the older HPC2000 but it isn’t true of usb. With the HPC2000 MP900 you can’t use many usb devices, except for a few mice and keyboards maybe. The built in usb drivers in
CE.NET enable you to use mass storage devices from some digital cameras and hard drives to usb pendrives. You can even read from a usb cd or dvd-rom or writer - though you can’t write to these optical drives.
A note here: I heard general usb drivers can be installed on for example the Intermec 6651, and if they are available for the MP900 as well (I never found them), the above issue ceases to
be.
Conclusion
So is it worth it for you to upgrade to CE.NET or buy a MP900C instead of your trusty MP900?
Personally I can definitely answer with a resounding Yes. Most people I heard of did not regret upgrading to the 900C but those that need Pocket Outlook and don’t find the
CE.NET options fully satisfying, might still prefer HPC2000. But all the others could find
CE.NET has more potential and less limitations in many respects than the older HPC
platforms.
07 October 2005
Monica Erdody (cmonex)
|
