Microsoft has always touted the business level quality of the Pocket PC Platform, with networkability being one of the key differentiators between the Pocket PC platform and the competition. The capability of Virtual Private Network connectivity was supposedly a plus.

Ironically, one of the things that most people could never get working was the VPN connectivity in Pocket PC 2002. Fortunately, Windows Mobile 2003 for Pocket PC's implementation of the VPN has performed far better in initial testing.

After selecting the settings hyperlink in the connection notification bubble, you can select an option to add a VPN connection. When you do that, you begin a wizard that starts to configure your VPN connectivity.

Of course, you have to know your IP address and other necessary information for your VPN.

You can enter in your username, password, and Windows NT/2000/2003 Domain information. If your VPN does not support DHCP, you can click on the Advanced button to enter in other vital information like static IP, DNS, WINS, SLIP and IP Compression.

Once you're done, you go to a selection area where you can define multiple VPN connections. This part was most impressive, because support personnel can VPN into different endpoints as necessary.

The nice and the not so nice about the Pocket PC 2003 VPN client

Once your VPN connection is configured, you can then select it from the connectivity notification bubble to connect to it. You can also verify immediately that your primary network connection is active before you start your VPN.

Click on the "Connect VPN" hyperlink, and your Pocket PC immediately begins to connect. One of the nice things in this particular screenshot is that you can see the notification arrows partially disappearing. This demonstrates one of the new features of Windows Mobile 2003 for Pocket PC - the arrows will appear and disappear while you have any network activity.

One of the disappointing things about the VPN client is it's lack of range. In a controlled test environment using Windows 2002 Advanced Server running Routing and Remote Access Services (RRAS) as the VPN endpoint, successful connections were able to be made only if security settings were reduced. RADIUS had to be off, and only unencrypted passwords were able to be used.

One of the good things that Microsoft has added to the new operating system is the capability of handling digital certificates. You are now able to handle personal certificates as well as getting the bonus of Microsoft providing some basic root certificates.

The basic root certificates included with the our review unit came from some of the major certificate providers - Thawte, GTE, and Entrust. Some Class 2 and Class 3 Public certificates were included as well.