[General Topics] Menneisyys:
3. Cons

no desktop PC client – BAD! In this respect, most of the alternatives are clearly better

no copy/paste features (clipboard synchronization) at all (unlike most Windows Mobile alternatives) between the remote desktop and the local PPC – this is a major problem.

Fortunately, there are still some ways of (not very sophisticated) ways of transferring clipboard / textual data between the desktop and the mobile: file transfer (bidirectional); Send as text

upon file download, target folder selection uses a somewhat awkward WinCE file selector. On MS Smartphones, you can’t select the target folder at all (screenshot 1 2 3 - as you can see, on MS Smartphones, you can only save files to the root of your storage card. At least you can rename them to avoid name clashes...)

it has a tendency of refusing to step into subdirectories on both Pocket PC’s and Smartphones in file system mode. Then, the entire client (!) needs to be restarted (simply reconnecting won’t work).

if you spend too much time idling in a menu doing nothing, the connection will terminate

no configurable hardware buttons (unlike in, say, PO Pocket Office) to be able to quickly issue, say, right clicks (to avoid having to either bring-up the context menu, click the R button on the on-screen special (hideable) keyboard (these both are shown in THIS screenshot)) on-screen. Fortunately, the Action button is overridden to send a left click.

slowish file transfer (without any kind of compression / optimization with compressable content) on Pocket PC’s and MS Smartphones – but, at least, it’s present. (Interestingly, it is considerably (about two times) faster on the Symbian S60 / Java-based Nokia N95.)

no full screen on Windows Moile Pocket PC’s and MS Smartphones: the lower menubar can’t be hidden (on Blackberries and Java phones like S60 devices, this isn’t a problem at all – there, it does use full screen); MS Smartphone screenshot

no sound transfer (unlike RDM in WM6)

D-pad is used to control the mouse even on touchscreen devices and can’t be reconfigured to emulate the desktop-side cursor keys. At least it offers a quick way of scrolling the window. Note that, on touschreen-less MS Smartphones, you can switch to the “Direct Input” mode; then, the D-pad will directly emulate the cursor keys on the desktop. This feature isn’t accessible in the Pocket PC version (dunno why - it should be!).

The cursor block on built-in keyboards / thumbboards behaves exactly the same way as the D-pad. While one would, in most cases, except it can be used to emulate the desktop-side cursor keys, this isn’t the case – it can only be used to control the virtual mouse cursor on Pocket PC’s. On MS Smartphones, as has already been explained, if you switch to the “Direct Input” mode, you can use these cursor keys to directly control the cursor (just like with the D-pad) – but, again, not on the Pocket PC version.

no “track the cursor” features (when a small-screen mobile client wants to track what the active user enters in, say, Word or Internet Explorer)

no screen dragging with the stylus in zoomed-in mode on Pocket PC’s (D-pad- or on-screen arrow-based quick scrolling works OK though)

no remote PIM (appointments, e-mails etc.) access, unlike with (the brand new, soon-to-be-reviewed version of) SoonR or I’m InTouch. The same stands for remote file search.

can be expensive if you have more than one mobile clients – you’ll need to purchase a license for each of them

no “Hovering cursor” operation – much as, by default, you can position the cursor anywhere on the screen without issuing any mouse clicks, the new position of the cursor will only be transferred to the client when you actually issue a click – this pretty much negates one of the advantages of the hovering. This is, of course, pretty much understandable if you take into account that on no-touchscreen MS Smartphones (but NOT on the Blackberry / Java versions, where you can switch to a strictly scrolling mode, without any cursor, when zoomed in) the D-pad is also used for positioning the cursor (in addition to scrolling); there it’s understandable if there’re no ways of hovering. On Pocket PC’s (where you’ll mostly use the touch screen to position your cursor), however, this behavior could be changed.

no bitmap caching – upon zooming in/out or returning to a previous place (when scrolling around), the page will reload. This is painfully slow on for example the Blackberry (at least on T-Mobile’s connection using TCP/IP; over the same T-Mo subscription & connection, the Symbian S60 N95 was way faster)

on the Pocket PC sending mouse button (left) clicks is somewhat slower than in most other clients becase you can’t configure the client to treat screen taps as left clicks. That is, the PPC client could be enhanced in that on natively touchscreen-enabled devices a screen tap (or double screentaps) could mean a left click). On all platforms (including the Pocket PC) the Action button is used for left clicks – on non-touchscreen models, this is perfectly OK.

except for the screen blinking at the start/end of the session and the tray icon’s background changing to (not very noticeable) green, no REALLY obvious feedback on the remote desktop (unlike with, say, LogMeIn, with its clearly visible, protruding dialog box) of it being remote controlled.