Epocdigest V1 # 331

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Epoc Digest Thu, 04 Sep 2003 Volume 01 : Number 331

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Sent to: 798 subscribers

In today's Epoc Digest 19 messages:

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- Epoc News

- MX5 - Power up problem

- P800 - £129

- Theole for Revo

- Netbook operation

- EPOC Explorer application - source code offer

- Re: Revo Battery Solution

- Netbook screen calibration

- Holiday & Eurocoin

- Psion/Outlook appointments

- T610 and faxing,

- Motorola Leaving Symbian,

- Phoneman & T610

- Re: T610 and faxing,

- Re: TubeRoute

- Will swap Jornada 710

- gprs OR wifi, not both

- WiFi again (sorry Rolf!)

- The colour of Money

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Date: 2 Sep 2003 15:56:11 +0100

From: Michael Degn

Subject: Epoc News

Message to: Andrea Luppi, Andy Challender, d'Antinea, Andrew Bosl

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Best regards,

Michael Degn

The Epoc Digest Team

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Date: 2 Sep 2003 13:43:43 +0100

From: John Robertson-McIsaac

Subject: MX5 - Power up problem

Hello All - I've had the MX5 for 3/4 years, 2nd Psion and cannot live without it. Issue, now is that it will not power up at all. I've tried soft reset - no luck. Batteries OK, at home is powered via PSU from mains. Data backed up via PSI-Win - ideas what to do next? I guess it might have to go for a repair, does anyone know of a reputable company in West Midlands (England)?

Regards - John

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Date: 2 Sep 2003 14:08:48 +0100

From: Andy Hayes

Subject: P800 - £129

Hi All

I see that Carphone Warehouse are advertising the P800 at 129 ukp on a 30 ukp per month contract. Seems very reasonable, now all I need is a job, 129ukp and 30 ukp per month!

Thanks for the advice on the HP1300 printer Rolf. I haven't had the opportunity to look into it any further as I am in the throes of moving house yet again.

Andy Hayes

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Date: 2 Sep 2003 15:36:39 +0100

From: Timothy H.D. Williams

Subject: Theole for Revo

Life without the 5mx is tough but I think I'm pulling through - just.

Things would be a lot better if I could find Reversi/Othello/Theole for the Revo.

The Purple edition is too large for the Revo screen.

Can anyone tell me where to look?

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Date: 2 Sep 2003 15:55:40 +0100

From: Philip Carlisle

Subject: Netbook operation

Hi All

Just an update on investigations following the surprise flattening of my netbook batteries.

I, like Thomas, have checked my applications to see if one prevents the netbook from switching off automatically. None seem to do so. In his off-digest message to me, Andy had mentioned Alarm+ as a possible cause of such a block, but as I don't have that application, I haven't checked it out.

As I am as certain as can be that I had switched off the machine anyway, I do like Thomas's theory about automatic switch on if the lid is vibrated, so I have deselected that function.

In any case, I have not had a recurrence and, with everyone's kind assistance, I believe I'm now less likely to.

Just found a little freeware application - Klip- that creates a user(idiot)-friendly clipboard for up to 12 copies. It is at www.palmanac.co.uk.

I have no connection to the author(s).

Regards

Philip Carlisle

London

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Date: 2 Sep 2003 16:24:04 +0100

From: Martin Maxwell

Subject: EPOC Explorer application - source code offer

Subject: EPOC Explorer application - source code offer Arjen Broeze wrote:

>>>For this reason I would like to offer these two projects (source-code, modules, OPXes, bitmaps, resource files, etc) to anyone on this list who is willing to finish and support these two projects as freeware or postcardware. If you're interested, please reply to me at the above address.<<<

Sad to hear that. Since we're doing OPL development for v6.0/Series 80 and hope to commence developing for v6.1/Series 60 later this year, we would be quite interest to know more about it and perhaps there are ways of resolving the OPX issues. Which OPXs are you referring to? Only the Neuon ones or other 3rd party OPXs as well?

I guess you are already aware that the Symbian controlled OPXs have already been ported over to v6.0/Series 80, including Buffer, Data, DbUtils etc. We would be very interested in any way of either collaborating with the authors of those OPXs, or obtain the source codes, to make it possible to port them over to OPL for Series 80 and Series 60, e.g. the nMPD, nDirNav, nListBox, CSocket, CDescriptor, MD5, MBMView, GPrinter, Macro5, JpegMbm, Photo5, nDiskTools etc.

kind regards

Martin Maxwell

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Date: 2 Sep 2003 21:53:59 +0100

From: Rolf Brunsting

Subject: Re: Revo Battery Solution

Dear Chris,

<< Quite simply, the dreaded Revo battery problem often appears only if you charge it before it is nearly empty >>

When that would be case I would have had the "dreaded Revo battery problem" a long time ago and would have experienced it time and time again. I therefore think that it hasn't much to do with the point at which you recharge the Revo's batteries. There's nothing in the electrochemistry of NiMH batteries that says that you have to drive them below a particular level before you recharge them. I think it has more to do with how you recharge them.

What I do is to put the Revo on the charger before I go to bed and remove it from the charger the next morning. Which means that the batteries are charged for 4 - 12 hours, depending how long/short my night is. A period that's actually longer than strictly required to get the batteries fully charged. I therefore leave the charging control electronics inside the Revo to do its job and to decide when it's time to switch from fast charging to trickle charging. And I use Psion supplied equipment. At home it's the 6 Vdc 500 mA AC/DC adapter model 2072-0008-01 that came with the Revo. I use the 6 Vdc 1,000 mA AC/DC adapter model 1901-0003, which I bought for my Series 5, when travelling

<< I have found the advice for Lithium batteries (e.g. Series7) VERY conflicting; no-one knows for sure AFAICT. I am currently using the advice that battery capacity will be reduced if you let them fully discharge, and therefore keep my Series7 fully charged most of the time >>

Please note that I didn't say that you have to drain the batteries completely. You normally don't go that low because a Psion refuses to switch on well before they're completely drained. The advice is to use the batteries for as long as is comfortable about once every month. Preferably to drain the batteries until the Psion refuses to switch on. But it's fine when you drain them down to a 10% - 15% level.

It's a recommendation that comes from more that one battery manufacturer. The reason was supplied by an engineer from battery manufacturer Varta when I had the opportunity to ask him about it. What it boils down to is that the electrochemical reactions that power the device, in our case a Psion, don't take place at every point inside the battery. However well you construct it, there are areas inside the battery that are used first and areas that are used later. When you don't activate these 'later areas' by always recharging the battery well before it's empty the chemicals at these areas slowly start to form crystals. The binding energy required to form the crystals is supplied by the heat of the recharging process. Trouble is that this binding energy results in the crystals decomposing less quickly when you suddenly do drive the batteries quite low. In other words, when you'd like to use them to give you that 'extra mile' you expect from the batteries they're not readily available. Draining the batteries till they're almost empty about once every month largely prevents this. It doesn't completely eliminate crystal formation - one of the reasons why the performance of rechargeable batteries decreases in time.

<< From my experience I would have to say the OPPOSITE to you! My (heavily used) Revo has a maximum capacity of 5 hours according to ChasDis. Whereas, if I removed my modem card (and maybe extra RAM), I could get 7 hours out of my Series7 >>

The two AA batteries inside the Revo are rated by Psion to last for 12 hours. Psion will, of course, have taken one of the more optimistic, low battery load, usage scenarios. Work with the Revo strictly in accordance with his scenario and you'll get 12 hours. When you play an arcade style game with full-screen graphics and sound effects you won't get that far. But when you use the Revo in a typical businessman style - writing a report, checking your diary, entering the data of a few receipts in your expense manager, doing some sums using Sheet - you're going to get about 8 - 10 hours. Which is sufficient for Itamar's 7-hour flight. The battery pack of a Series 7, on the other hand, is rated by Psion to last for 8 hours. Which is, again, according an optimistic usage scenario. Use a Series 7 in the same businessman style and you're going to get about 5 - 6 hours. Which is less that the 7 hours of Itamar's flight.

You can, of course take exceptional measures like lifting the 16 MByte RAM expansion module out of the Series 7 before the flight or to refrain from writing to CF card. But when you look at the typical use of a Revo or Series 7 during a 7-hour flight, taking account of such interruptions as dinner being served, it's clear that a Revo will last for the duration of the flight. But that it's questionable whether a Series 7 will do so. There's a bigger chance that it will when you use a 'fresh' - just out of the factory and hardly used - battery pack in the Series 7. Alternatively, when your Revo is from the very first production batch, has been intensively used and still has the original batteries, it may not last for a 7-hour flight.

Kind Regards,

Rolf Brunsting - Darp - Netherlands

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Date: 2 Sep 2003 23:16:42 +0100

From: jgthomson

Subject: Netbook screen calibration

Hi!.

Does anyone have any idea why, when I open my netBook up, the screen invariably (9 times out of 10) needs to be calibrated. There is a definite shift in the relationship between the screen contents and the drivers which define

the pixel address and I usually cannot pick up an item properly with the pen until I recalibrate. Often, I do not have to move the netBook on the desk to replicate the problem - just close it and reopen the case.

Regards,

Jim Thomson.

160 Main Street, Carnwath, Lanark, ML11 8HR.

e-mail address: jgthomson

Tel: 01 555 840 832 / 07 050 074 336

-- All reasonable precautions have been taken to ensure that this message is virus-free.

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Date: 3 Sep 2003 00:49:28 +0100

From: Jack

Subject: Holiday & Eurocoin

To : Timothy H.D. Williams Subject: FEIER.SIS

>>Are listers aware of the German program FEIER.SIS?<<

And Hol5 for more langages:

http://www.dplanet.ch/users/reto.beeler/psion.htm

>>Quite simply, it will put the holidays of any given country for any given year into your agenda file.<<<

>>>There is also another interesting German application which I found - and with my 5mx out of service, I don't even know what it is called - which gives you all the coins for each member state in the Euro zone<<<

Must be the gorgeous Eurocoin from www.propo.at

Jack

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Date: 3 Sep 2003 09:24:31 +0100

From: Martin Yirrell

Subject: Psion/Outlook appointments

Has anyone had the experience of a repeating appointment in Outlook going invisible when synching with a 5MX. Any suggestions for a solution? The appointment does not export nor can it be seen but the days it occurs on are shown as bold and a message is received if a conflicting appointment is created.

Martin Yirrell

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Date: 3 Sep 2003 12:32:46 +0100

From: Itamar Engelsman

Subject: T610 and faxing,

Answer to: Kevin Collins

Re.: T610 and faxing - You mean page 69 <G>. You are probably looking in the wrong place. Press the joystick once, go to the icn right of the phone book called "Calls", press the joystick again and than choose "next call" and "Next incoming call".

Best regards,

Itamar Engelsman

London, UK

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Date: 3 Sep 2003 12:32:47 +0100

From: Itamar Engelsman

Subject: Motorola Leaving Symbian,

Answer to: Martin Maxwell

Re.: Motorola Leaving Symbian - Why is it so important for Symbian to have a balanced consortium ? Maybe if Nokia have the lion part of the shares it will guarantee Symbian that Nokia - one of the larger players in the mobile phone industry - will continue to use them. Does that not guarantee their continued exsistence and success ?

Best regards,

Itamar Engelsman

London, UK

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Date: 3 Sep 2003 12:55:02 +0100

From: John Goss

Subject: Phoneman & T610

Thinking of getting myself a T610 soon (my aging and battered S35 is now useless for making calls, and crashes daily!), and was wondering if anyone's managed to get it to work with Phoneman?

It's nice to easily archive all my old text messages, and write really long messages on a real keyboard sometimes, so it'd be a shame if that doesn't work.

Any experiences?

Cheers,

John

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Date: 3 Sep 2003 12:56:36 +0100

From: Kevin Collins

Subject: Re: T610 and faxing,

To Itamar Engelsman:

<Re.: T610 and faxing - You mean page 69 <G>. You are probably looking in the wrong place. Press the joystick once, go to the icn right of the phone book called "Calls", press the joystick again and than choose "next call" and "Next incoming call">

Thanks, Itamar. OK, page 69 :-) Seriously, though, I *was* looking in the right place. When I go to "Calls", and choose "Next Call", I don't get the options which p69 says, and which you confirm, I should. My options are "Call and Show ID" and "Call and Hide ID". Unfortunately, I am now quite sure there is a bug in my phone in this regard. I'll have to see what can be done... I bought from Expansys UK last week...

Regards,

Kevin (Cork, Ireland)

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Date: 3 Sep 2003 13:11:13 +0100

From: Chris S Handley

Subject: Re: TubeRoute

Keith,

>> Thats because I changed my web address! It is now:

>> http://cshandley.web.users.btopenworld.com/

> That's one of those sites which shows only a list of apps and

> when you click on them you start the download process. Does

> that mean that you no longer have a site which explains the

> various apps and gives screen shots?

I *never* had a site which told you about the apps. The reason for this is that the apps are either (1) Beta versions (i.e. in development but mostly finished) or (2) essentially finished but not quite polished enough for me to want to widely advertise them yet (so only really intended for experienced users - hence the DIY installation).

The intention has always been that once they are "fully polished" that they will recieve FreEPOC releases. This should happen to Clipboard History in a few weeks, followed by FastBackup. At that point I'll likely look at finishing TubeRoute (and/or MovingMap).

BTW, someone recently mentioned to me that a London map is available for download from BioEddie's site.

First I should point out the fact that this is technically illegal (copyright is being violated), and therefore I do not condone using it; download at your own risk. The only way to be totally legal is to download the JPG & convert it yourself - unfortunately.

Having quickly looked at it (and then deleted it!), the map should work (if put in the same folder as the London database), but it is not very good. It is a grey-scale map that is TWICE the file size of a colour map that I have! I have a grey-scale version that is 2/3 the file size of the colour map. And a 2-colour (dithered) version that is 1/5 the file size of the colour map.

I have a little stand-alone freeware app that can be used to convert the JPG if you don't have nConvert or MBMView, but it needs a LOT of memory (20Mb free is not quite enough), and so probably isn't much use for most people. :(

---

Chris Handley

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Date: 3 Sep 2003 13:18:14 +0100

From: Timothy H.D. Williams

Subject: Will swap Jornada 710

I have a Jornada 710 that I used for the Halliwell Movie Guide.

On returning from the holidays I discover that the backup battery is low and I have lost the program. I have no further use for the machine.

Does anybody out there want to swap it for an ER5 machine with a minimum of 16 mb RAM?

Please contact me off list.

Timothy Williams

---------------------------------------------------------------------

If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?

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Date: 3 Sep 2003 13:41:17 +0100

From: Jack

Subject: gprs OR wifi, not both

On UK nB 105(450), I connect via GPRS allright... but the connection dialog does not allow to : Connect to Internet service "802_11Lucent"

Only after UNinstalling MobileConnectivityUpdate 2.00 does this "wifi" connection dialog reappear.

Any solution?

Jack

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Date: 3 Sep 2003 21:48:35 +0100

From: ian chapple

Subject: WiFi again (sorry Rolf!)

Dear All,

I have a couple of slightly off topic questions for the WiFi enthusiasts amongst you?

1. What Windows XP FTP server programs do you use, to enable file sharing with a netbook? I have tried Warrior FTP, but haven't managed to get my netbook to connect successfully.

2. Has anybody else had problems with Windows XP sporadically losing the connection to the network, and is there a solution? What seems to happen is the Windows periodically "discovers" that there are "one or more networks" available (it's always just one, our home network), but it requires confirmation before the connection is re-established. This problem occurred originally using a Sitecom USB WiFi adapter, but now happens with a Netgear adapter.

I know that this not entirely Psion related, so feel free to reply by PM, unless you feel the answer might be of general interest.

Cheers, Ian.

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Date: 3 Sep 2003 22:55:14 +0100

From: Kevin Thorne

Subject: The colour of Money

Itamar Engelsman wrote:

Subject: Palmtop Money

<Answer to: David Lir

Re.: Palmtop Money - I don't think we can be surprised anymore when Companies do not give support for EPOC programs anymore, even though I do think, like you, that it is wrong. It is a direct result of the demise of the OS, no more money to be made in changing anything.>

Yes, very true. For me, Palmtop Money is my favourite and most useful app on my S7 but I always think it's a shame it was never further developed to incorporate colour as it does look a bit boring in monochrome and not available in ER6 form. Presumably there is no technical difficulty in doing this but I assume a third party would not be allowed to "colourise" it without permission from Palmtop (or Tom Tom as they are now known).