Scribblings of a Techie
Ever since I was stung on eBay a few years back for around AUD$ 500 worth of wireless equipment from some bastard in Deer Park, USA, I’ve not used eBay. But now I’m thinking of getting a few things:
Well, the brakes on the car weren’t so good, to the point that it was more effective to try and ‘will’ the car to a halt by the sheer power of the mind in place of using either the pedal or the handbrake! Turns out the front pads were gone, and brake fluid had leaked on the rear ones making them ineffective. Luckily, its only about 150 quid to get it fixed.
After three weeks, the bank finally deposits my cheque. Guess they made a bit of money off of my money while they looked after it.
*sigh*
So I had a cheque, for a reasonable amount of money. I took it to HSBC to pay into their machines. They normally have two forms, very similar in size and appearance. On this occassion they had run out of the savings account deposit one. So I grabbed the other form, crossed through the incorrect information on the form, and wrote out the deposit details as normal. On the back, I filled in the cheque details, and wrote a note explaining the ‘normal’ account deposit forms had run out. I depositied this on 2nd June 2005.
The cheque was processed on June 6, and funds transferred on June 7. But not into any of my accounts; disappeared into the HSBC slush fund, deep within their clearing services.
On June 10 I contact the bank to enquire as to my missing deposit. Thats when I found out it had been cleared. Despite numerous phone calls, the problem has still not been resolved. I have had to obtain a statement from the organisation who issued the cheque, showing the amount on the cheque, so that the branch will, “In good faith” credit me this money while they try and sort out what happened.
I purchased a Toshiba PocketPC e570 PDA in June 2002. This device is a little bulky, but had the advantage of a CF (Compact Flash) port and a secure media port.
My hopes where to be able to send and recieve emails (plain text is fine), and be able to print (via IRDA).
While printing does work, it is not a part of the default suite of programs available. You have to shell out more money to 3rd party developers to get this support working. Looks like Toshiba, or Microsoft, took shortcuts. I was trying to print to a Hewlet Packard LaserJet 2100 M, and HP’s web site directed me to get drivers from my manufacturer, Toshiba. Toshiba’s PocketPC web site is completely fucking useless. There entire support structure is geared *away* from these products. Their staff reject and disencourage PocketPC support questions. Aghhh!
Luckily, their telephone support does exist. Place a call and save time. While you’re there, ask to speak to a manager, and tell them that in place of wasting their time right now, you could be helping yourself to the information you are after if they put some effort into their web site!
Ho hum. Lets move on. Printing. Looks like the 3rd party software is at fieldsoftware.com. The product is called PrintPocketCE, and while a little sliggish on some redraws, it does work under PocketPC 2002 quite well. Well done FS. A 30 day trial is availale, and the software is around US$39 or so.
Back to getting data in and out of the device. I got a belkin 802.11b wireless CF card. I can cruise around my network; I can see it DHCP, and I can use the built-in IE browser to look at HTTP and HTTPS web sites. I havent forced it yet, but using a specific proxy with HTTPS would be nice; if people are going to use wireless, doing a bit extra to help secure it at an application layer is nice.
And it is security that brings me to my next issue. For me, email is either accessed locally on a server, or via IMAPS. IMAPS is like IMAP, except over SSL. If I am going to have passwords fly around the network, I like them to be encrypted in transit! However, the ‘INBOX’ client that comes with PocketPC 2002 seems to be too cut down, only supporting unencrypted POP3 and IMAPv4. There is no SSL support here. This is pretty important. It seems there are no Mail User Agents (MUA) for the PocketPC that support IMAPS. Fr me. this greatly hinders the use of the product.