"Meindert Sprang" wrote in
:

What about running an AIS application on a Windows Mobile PDA, inside a
waterproof box, using Bluetooth to receive data from an AIS receiver?

Meindert



I paid Dell for an Axim X51v, their finest Windows Mobile 5 PDA. I
wanted a good PDA to replace my aging Handspring Visor Edge (Palm OS)
that someone gave me a while ago.

Windows Mobile 5 was a disaster! It would lose control of ITSELF, just
sitting there with NOTHING running! The "Today" screen would have WM5's
own programs just disappear for no reason. Dell included a program
called "Switcher" so you could drop down its menu and switch between
running programs that Billy's Boys forgot to put into WM5. Not only
would Switcher's menu simply forget what programs were running because
WM5 lost control of them, if you left it running a few hours, WM5 forgot
where SWITCHER was and lost control of it! Program access from the HOME
screen was similarly crashed. Click on one of WM5's own icons to bring
up the calendar, for instance, and many times it couldn't boot it because
as far as WM5 was concerned IT WASN'T THERE!

The cure was always to start over by flipping the X51v on its face and
using a pin pressing the RESET button to force a hard reboot. This cure
lasted from 20 minutes to 2 hours, when WM5 would, again, crash......

Now, it wasn't my particular X51v. The Dell forums on the subject had
hundreds of users with this same phenomenon, lots of crashing. The Dell
Kiosk in Northwoods Mall still has a crashing X51v on display. Their
cure is to leave the X51v OFF until someone wants to see it run. They
can't just leave it running....like you'd want to run nav or AIS software
on a boat.

Of course, its 3 hour battery life cycle, 30 minutes longer than my
Gateway laptop, is another issue altogether.

I'm back carrying the Visor Edge. It never crashes and you only have to
charge it once a week, even with it running 24/7. Hell, I have two clock
programs running on it that chime every hour and alarm all events and
that doesn't run its tiny battery discharged, either.

Windows Mobile just SUCKS!

Larry
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEJmc...elated&search=