Wi-Fi for handhelds made easy

Since last fall, I've been having difficulties getting my Compaq iPaq 3870 to cooperate with various 802.11b-based wireless networking adapters. But instead of disparaging the adapters that didn't work (I have no idea why), I'll tell how Symbol Technologies' compact flash-based Wireless Networker turned frustration into child's play.

At least part of the problem is the operating system's fault. The 3870 is based on Microsoft's PocketPC 2002. If you've ever paid a visit to that OS's control panel for networking (called "connection settings" in PocketPC parlance), you'll agree that getting anything networking-related to work is confusing--at best. Third-party networking adapters--be they for wired LANs, wireless LANs, wired modems, or wireless WANS--need to make the process of getting connected idiot-proof.

So, while at Networld+Interop this year, I cruised through the Wi-Fi Pavilion to see if anyone there knew how to solve my problems. Symbol Technologies was the first booth I found. I thought to myself, "Symbol Technologies doing wireless Ethernet? Aren't those the barcode guys?" But there they were. So I walked up to the systems engineer manning the booth and said, "I've got this problem. Nothing works in my iPaq."

A minute later, my iPaq was on the Internet. The systems engineer whipped out Symbol's Wireless Networker CF card and asked "Can you take one of these?" Compaq's iPaq doesn't have a slot that accommodates a CF card. But, fortunately, I had the next best things: an expansion sleeve for the iPaq that takes a PC Card and SanDisk's CF-to-PC Card adapter.

After several months without seeing something as simple as Google's search on my iPaq's display, I was rather excited to suddenly be on the Net. But the engineer in the Symbol booth made it look easy. I asked if I could take the card and drivers home to see if the installation process was as idiot-proof as he made it look. He could have given me one in the regular PC Card form factor, but I stuck with the CF-based unit because I wanted to try it out on my HP Jornada, which has a CF-slot built into the base unit.

All this and utilities too
I went home and tried to duplicate the experience on both my iPaq and my Jornada. Not only was it the same piece of cake that I had observed at N+I, but I also had a better chance to play with the Wireless Networker's utilities, which seemed well-tuned to the PocketPC.

The utility has nine tabs, each representing a grouping of card configuration functions. The IP configuration tab not only shows if you picked DHCP (automatic, network determined) or Static IP addressing, it also shows values in the IP settings (address, mask, gateway, DNS, etc.)--even if they were determined via DHCP. Not even my PC does that.

Because of the way a wireless adapter can drain power, there's another tab just for configuring the card's power consumption. This tab includes several settings that throttle the amount of power the card uses. The less power the card uses, the weaker the signal and, perhaps, the throughput. This allows you to determine what performance is acceptable and how much battery-life you're willing to give up in order to get that performance.

There's an Info tab that gives you driver and firmware information. If Symbol really wanted to make this into a slick application, it would put some buttons on this tab that check Symbol's Web site for updates to both drivers and firmware.

Now that I'm walking around with 802.11b connectivity on my handhelds, what can I use it for? Well, as long as I'm in a hot spot (a place like my house, office, Starbucks, or the airport where Wi-Fi signals are strong enough), browsing Web sites is pretty snappy--but the display is still a problem.

Even though I have Internet Explorer set for "Fit to Screen" (the browser attempts to squeeze, width-wise, the text and graphics from any Web page onto the handheld's display) it never works very well. The idea behind this feature is to eliminate the need to scroll both horizontally and vertically to read a document. Scrolling horizontally can make reading Web pages on a handheld a real drag. Technologies like AvantGo, Web clipping (used with Palm devices), and even WAP do a pretty good job of solving the problem, but they're not implemented for every Web page that you might end up visiting.

While I've found that browsing the Web can be a chore, having the wireless connectivity is great for some of my other applications. PocketPC's ActiveSync is one of them. By installing a Wi-Fi card in your handheld, you should be able to synchronize all of your mail, contacts, tasks, etc. without the need for a cradle. As long as the wireless PocketPC can reach the computer that's running ActiveSync over the network (or even over the Internet by using a VPN), you should be able to perform a full synchronization.

E-mail and AvantGo are two other applications that I like to use when I have a wireless connection. Once you have a high speed wireless connection, sending and receiving e-mail between Pocket Outlook (or whichever e-mail client you use) and any POP3 or IMAP4 mailbox is a snap. For example, if you normally go through ActiveSync to download mail into a handheld from an Exchange Server, you can now ask your network administrator to enable the Exchange Server for POP3 or IMAP4 access (see details). As with any POP3 or IMAP4 e-mail client, you can also access any inboxes you have floating around on the Internet. (I have way too many of these.)

The AvantGo client that comes built into PocketPC can synchronize with AvantGo's Web site without needing ActiveSync to serve as the intermediary. Since content downloaded from AvantGo is especially designed to fit on a handheld's display, it's a great way to keep up to date on the day's news.

CF-based wireless Ethernet cards aren't cheap. When this story was first published, the lowest street price I could find for Symbol's Wireless Networker was $132.60 via a search on CNET's Shopper.com. Symbol Technologies can be reached at www.symbol.com.

Do you have a wireless handheld solution that you'd like to share? Join our TalkBack forum or e-mail me at david.berlind@cnet.com.