Quick Tips & PC Companion Tricks

Keep Important Information on your PC Companion in case you get hurt

I have 30+ Contacts within a newly created Category of "JIM HURT." If I ever get hurt, disabled or die, my wife can sort on this Category and find out important things like: Life Insurance information; Bills Due; Who to call at Work; Stocks, Bonds, Mutual Funds, etc.; IRS info; Private Papers; A personal letter to her; Location of our Will; Savings; Mortgage stuff, etc.

Bank online from your H/PC

I use Bank of America's Home Banking online services when I travel to bank on-line from their Web site. I can pay bills, get balances, transfer funds, etc. It is one of the few banks that allows it from a Windows CE device, due to the smaller encryption code length. I pay $2.00/month for the above Home Banking transactions and plus Versatel, due to the minimum balance I keep. I signed up for Home Banking services at  www.bankofa.com and then accessed it from my H/PC's Pocket Internet Explorer Web browser.

Seeing more Contact information

The fewer taps you have to make to get Contact information, the less work you have to do. Set up Contacts so that the main list screen shows as much important information as possible. I always use lowercase letters when entering names, addresses, and other Contact data. It allows a few more characters in the main list view, and it's less likely that I'll have to tap the screen again to view additional screens of data.

If you have a few capital letters in Contacts, it's probably not worth the time going through and changing things. But if you've entered EVERYTHING IN CAPS, you might want to fix things. You should also get out of the habit of typing everything in caps. Not only does it take up more space, it's harder to read words, phrases and sentences where every letter is capitalized.

You can also display more information by adjusting the font and font size in Contacts. From the main screen, tap Tools, Options, Choose Font. Times New Roman is a compact font, designed to put a lot of characters in a small space. It gets a little hard to read if you select an 8 pt font size. If you're going to go that small you might want to select Arial as your font. It's not quite as compact as Times New Roman, but some find it easier to read.

Be creative: use Pocket Outlook your way

Pocket Outlook was designed by Microsoft software engineers to work a certain way, but there's no law that says you can't "do it your way." For example, I've adjusted the columns displayed in Contact's main list view to display the following fields:

File As, Work Tel, Work Fax, Home Tel, Email1

Since I don't normally enter Home Tel information for work Contacts, I use it for other data, including Passwords, Customer Numbers, Registration Numbers, etc. You can use the two "Other" fields in the Business and Home tabs for all sorts of information. And the Notes tab can store a lot of text.

My Tasks list grows faster than my ability to complete the items in it. That's because every time I have an idea about something that I should do, it goes in there. I may not be able to get to it right away, but I want it there, for the future. I have a lot of these "someday" Tasks, so I enter them with a future start data, depending on when I want to be reminded about them. When they come due, I take another look at them, and decide what I want to do about the idea (delete it, put it off again, or do it).

I use Calendar for TV programs, online chat sessions, and other events that happen at a particular date and time. If I see an announcement for a TV program I want to watch, it goes in Calendar with an alarm. If a special discussion is going to take place in one of our Windows CE chat rooms, it goes in Calendar. Shows or events that happen regularly are entered as recurring appointments. My HP 660LX sits on the end table at night to remind me.