[General Topics] Menneisyys:
Here follows a quick follow-up to my previous, big, Pocket PC Thoughts-frontpaged article on Windows Mobile vs. other platforms communication. In here, I elaborate a bit more on Palm OS vs Windows Mobile and intra-WindowsCE communication issues. I also explain what PeaceMaker Pro can be used for.

You should definitely read this article if you want to know how you can exchange data with the oldest Pocket PC brands. This information may prove VERY handy (and even life/business-saving!) if you meet people that (still) use these kinds of Pocket PC’s.

Also, it contains some additional, Palm OS-related tips and tricks that may prove REALLY useful if you need to do any kind of data / file transfer with Palm users - for example, easily transferring Pocket Word / Word Mobile or Notes files.

1. Palm OS and Pocket PC interoperability via infrared

What I’ve stated about the data transfer issues between Windows Mobile and Palm OS (please DO read the above-linked article - I won't repeat everything I've stated in there) holds true when the data is exchanged over Infrared instead of Bluetooth. This means you can beam the same types of files and data in both directions as is the case with Bluetooth.

There are some cases, however, where a third-party application, PeaceMaker Pro by Conduits, may be of help. In the following, I elaborate on this application a bit more.

First, if you still happen to have a Pocket PC 2000 (or a Handheld PC / a Palm-size PC) device, you will need to turn to PeaceMaker Pro, which is meant to help in these situations. It’s the only way to transfer any (!) kind of data between a PPC 2000 and a Palm device.

Second, if you plan to directly transfer .PWI (Notes) or .PSW (Pocket Word; the built-in “word processor” of pre-WM5 operating systems; I’ll elaborate on WM5 promptly) files from a post-Pocket PC 2000 device to a Palm, you may also need this application.

Note that the latter may be easily circumvented on post Pocket PC 2000 platforms because these files will be inevitably converted to simple textual Memos (textual means all the inline graphics in Notes files and all formatting in Pocket Word files will be gone) by just

with Pocket Word (or, for that matter, Word Mobile under WM5), open the file in Pocket Word / Word Mobile, go to (under pre-WM5) Tools / File / Save Document As (under WM5, Menu / File / Save As…) and, choosing Plain Text (Document) in the Type drop-down list, save the file as a textual file. Make sure you answer No to the following question so that the conversion does take place.

With Notes, open the file, bring up the on-screen keyboard, click Ctl and, then, A so that everything is selected. Now, tap-and-hold the screen and select Copy in the context menu. Now, create a new file in Pocket Word / Word Mobile, Paste the contents of the just-populated clipboard into it and save it as a plain textual (TXT) file in the above-explained way.

This way, you will be able to safely beam the newly created TXT file to a Palm OS device by just tap-and-holding the file in the File list view of Pocket Word / Word Mobile and choosing Beam File...

These cases are summarized in the next two charts:

Post-PPC 2000:

Note that under WM5 you can’t use Peacemaker’s contact sending capabilities: the DLL plug-in file doesn’t seem to be signed. This is clearly visible in the following two times two screenshots (taken on the WM5 HTC Wizard and Dell Axim x51v): HTC Wizard-1 HTC Wizard-2; x51v-1 x51v-2.

1.1 What’s wrong with the PPC 2000 operating system?

As can clearly be seen, the Pocket PC 2000 operating system, infrared-wise, is vastly different from later Pocket PC operating systems. Its infrared communication is non-standard. This, unfortunately, also has a bad effect on its capabilities of communicating with Pocket PC’s running later operating system versions. In the following section, I elaborate on this question a bit more.

2. Pocket PC 2000 vs. newer Pocket PC / Windows Mobile operating systems

If you’ve ever seen a Pocket PC 2000 or 2002 device, you’ve seen a program called “Infrared Receive” on it and wondered what’s it for, particularly because the latter operating system, Pocket PC 2002, was already able to auto-receive beams without your having to explicitly ask it to do so. What’s the point in Pocket PC 2002’s having the “Infrared Receive” program, then? you may ask.

The answer is that using it was the only way to receive both files and PIM data on the Pocket PC 2002 (PPC2k2) operating system from PPC 2k devices. While, on PPC2k2 devices, you can receive any kinds of PIM data or files from any other, later PPC / Windows Mobile devices without touching anything (assuming the auto-receiving beams was enabled in Settings / Connections / Beam), this wasn’t the case with PPC2k devices’ beaming information: the only way of receiving it was explicitly starting “Infrared Receive”.

Later (post-PPC2k2; that is, WM2003+) operating systems’ not having “Infrared Receive” also means they are unable to receive any kind of data from PPC2k devices any more.

This case is shown in the following chart:

What about the opposite direction, that is, later operating systems trying to beam information / files to PPC2k, you may ask. Well, the situation is a bit better in this case: up to (and including) WM2003SE, you could beam anything from these devices to PPC2k-based Pocket PC’s (of course, as PPC2k has no auto-receiving capabilities, you must start “Infrared Receive” on them to receive any beams). WM5, however, no longer supports this kind of transfer – that is, it’s impossible to beam anything from a WM5 device to a PPC2k one. This is shown in the next chart:

Note that PeaceMaker Pro does NOT allow for communicating with later (WM2003+) operating systems - it's only meant for communicating with Palm OS.