Phones, Smartphones, and PDAs

The Japanese have been using cell phones for a couple years now that allow consumers to purchase any number of goods.
They do this by simply swiping their phone instead of a credit card. Cell phones embedded with smart cards are placed near a touch pad reader.

This enables it to perform the function of a credit card.

Nothing new really. But what has happened is it has caused a problem with Cell Phone Stealing.
If you get access to someone's cell phone you can easily buy whatever you want by simply swiping their phone.

This has lead to other inventions to prevent this and several companies are coming up with ways to prevent this.

Dell came through and dropped the promised WM5 upgrade (code named Magneto) in my mailbox, a month late but there it was. I held off doing any upgrading for a personal-record three hours.

I had already known that the upgrade would be bumpy and I had to pay close attention to the warnings throughout the CD readmes. First among all? Your current Dell backup of your Axim will NOT restore to WM5. This sucked, for a variety of reasons:

1. backing up data was now a manual process using either "Explore" from your ActiveSync connection or copying to a CF/SD card, assumingyou had space




2. Microsoft and Dell both knew that the upgrade was coming, and had enough time to roll even a one-off data import utility to get that backup restored into WM5 properly

I thought I would really use this a lot. I do, any time I can't find my remote control. It will run my dvd player. (For some reason it has trouble with the TV and I can't find the remote from the TV to use to program it.)

I thought it would be an easy way to check my email, but the security on it is not high enough to check my work email, and gmail doesn't support the format.

Works great with hotmail though.

I had fun with it for two days. Now it just sits in the cradle on my desk. I guess this is just not the gadget for me. I have tried palm pilots in the past with the same reaction. The novelty wears off, I quit bothering.

(Heck, half the time I need to call my cell phone to find it.)

I'm enjoying my new heart rate monitor and my new dryer though....