The Pocket PC Basics for Business Users and Road Warriors

The Pocket PC is best used as an extension of your desktop PC—not as a replacement! However, the Pocket PC is a reasonable alternative to a laptop for those of us who travel a couple times a month, 2-3 days at a time. The Pocket PC has a unique set of built-in tools and capabilities that are designed to meet the needs of business travelers. It's true that the screen is a little small and the built-in Word and Excel programs lack the features of their desktop PC counterparts. But a number of pluses help compensate for that. I have found that I can travel for 3-4 days with a Pocket PC and meet most of my computing needs.

So you buy a new Pocket PC and use ActiveSync to copy Calendar, Contacts, and e-mail from your desktop PC to your device. You've got Pocket Word and Excel to review documents, and it all fits in the palm of your hand. What more do you need to make the most out of this productivity tool?

Fig. 1: Add storage memory to your Pocket PC with a CompactFlash (left) or SD storage card (right).

Get some additional storage memory

Your Pocket PC will have at least one SD expansion card slot, and in some case a second CF slot. You can use these to add file storage memory to your device via SD or CF storage cards (Fig. 1). Memory is pretty cheap these days; you can get an SD with one gigabyte of storage space for under $70. Here's a bit of advice: Always buy more memory than you think you need. Why do this? Extra storage will allow you to carry around several YEARS worth of correspondence, copies of all your e-mails, company reference material, and a lot more. And all this can come in handy.

For example, many of the documents I write are based on other documents. I'll need to create proposal and will use an older proposal or letter as a starting point. With all of my pervious correspondence available on my Pocket PC, I have the raw material I need to prepare most of my letters and meet most of my needs.

Tip 1: After you have set up and used ActiveSync, you can configure the program to sync documents. Go to ActiveSync's Tools menu and select Options. Then check the box labeled "Files." This creates a synchronization folder on your PC and places a shortcut to it on your PC's desktop. Any document you put in that folder will be automatically synced with your Pocket PC's My Documents folder every time you connect to your PC.

Tip 2: Set up your Pocket PC to synchronize with your company's Exchange Server. (This is the feature that lets you drop by a Starbucks and get your e-mail, or you can stay at a hotel with Wi-Fi and do the same.)

Loading past correspondence and other documents on your Pocket PC

Initially, I had my administrative assistant prepare a folder on our shared drive containing a copy of the proposals, letters, spreadsheets and PowerPoint files that I'd used in the past three years. I copied all of these documents from the shared folder to the storage card on my Pocket PC as follows:

1. Open ActiveSync's Explore option.
2. Browse to the shared folder, on your PC
3. Select and copy the desired files and copy them
4. Browse the My Documents folder on my PPC's storage card. (If it doesn't exist, create a My Documents folder.)
5. Paste the copied files into the folder.