One thing can be said about Microsoft, the company and its products are always evolving in some way, shape, or form. In the case of the Pocket PC platform, we've seen some great leaps and bounds forward in some areas, and virtually no movement ahead in others. In this review, we covers some of the key operational differences between Pocket PC 2002 and Microsoft’s latest handheld operating system, Windows Mobile 2003 for Pocket PC, and demonstrate some of the improvements (or lack thereof) that Microsoft has made.

Testing Platforms

We were fortunate enough to acquire two production Toshiba Pocket PC's with Windows Mobile 2003 for Pocket PC. One was a production e755, the other is a production e355. Both were acquired locally in the Phoenix, Arizona area at a common consumer retail store.

Both handhelds are manufactured and developed by Compal, with the e355 using Accelent Systems' Schema Development Suite tool. Both companies are approved hardware OEM's for the Pocket PC Platform, and both Compal and Accelent have in-depth knowledge of producing good Pocket PC development and production hardware.

When one starts up a Pocket PC with indows Mobile 2003 for Pocket PC loaded on it, you get a very familiar look as the earlier edition. Same start menu, same time and speaker controls, and the typical today information format.

At first, appearances can be deceiving - nothing really looks different, except for the connection icon that's next to the volume control. This connection icon is designed to simplify the use of modem, wireless, and wired networking.

When one clicks on the connection icon, you get a bubble notification that shows you your current connection, as well as a hyperlink to change the settings. One of the nice things that the bubble will do is tell you what networks are available (if you have 802.11b, wired, or Bluetooth), and you can click on which settings you want.

When you click on the settings, you get what seems to be a simplified way to connect your Pocket PC to a network. If your unit has any sort of built in networking device (like 802.11b), some vendors have chosen to implement a Windows XP like zero configuration setup. Unfortunately, for use in a corporate Wi-Fi setting, the zero configuration setup is somewhat useless. I still had to manually intervene to get things set up properly with both Cisco 350's and Cabletron Roamabout access points.

You can configure your network adapters to select the now familiar (and somewhat hated) "Internet" and "Work" settings. One nice thing about the network adapter settings is the applet's capability to show the current IP address, in either DHCP or static format.