Gadgets

How To Customise Your Text Alert/Alarm Audio On An i-mate SP3

Shandy — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 13:59:00 GMT

To customise your i-mate SP3 so that you can play specific tunes for text alerts/alarms simply copy your midi (it must be a midi audio file) into the root windows folder.

How To Use An i-mate SP3 On Virgin Mobile PAYG To Act As A Modem For A PC

Shandy — Thu, 31 May 2007 16:41:00 GMT

I managed to get my i-mate SP3 to act as a modem for my Dell 620 laptop by adding the following modem initialisation string in the bluetooth setup dialog.

+CGDCONT =1,"IP","goto.virginmobile.uk", where goto.virginmobile.uk is the apn address as entered in the settings from my previous post, Setting Up An i-mate SP3 With Virgin Mobile Pay As You Go In The UK To Use The Internet.

I also had to setup a dialup connection using the *99# number with no user name, password nor domain entered. The network was set to Internet.

The access speed is pretty slow but it does work.

Using Email On An i-mate SP3 With Virgin Mobile PAYG

Shandy — Thu, 31 May 2007 16:31:00 GMT

It appears that to enable email on my i-mate SP3 I needed to enable WAP. Enabling an internet connection was not enough. To setup WAP I needed to create a dialup account using the WAP Network option and the *99# number. No user name, password or domain entries were required.

The actual network setting is set to Internet. Setting the network directly to WAP does not seem to work but with a WAP entry being setup, even though it is not directly accessed seems to do the trick.

Virgin Mobile do not, as far as I know, have their own publically usable email servers so you need to specify both incoming (POP3) and outgoing (SMTP) servers as your own email servers (Personally I use vbCity's email server)

How To Get A Ringtone Listed On An i-mate SP3

Shandy — Thu, 31 May 2007 10:46:00 GMT

I'd always previously relied on the intrinisic ring tones on my i-mate SP3. However, with the improvement in sound quality with the BIOS upgrade I recently performed I thought I'd put on my old favorite of The Professionals theme tune as the ringtone when I receive a call. It took a little bit of trial and error to get the tune listed as a possible ringtone. It turns out the ringtone must be placed in the root of the Storage, My Documents folder to get the ringtone included in the list of selectable ring tones. Both wav and mdi formats seem to be supported. I still have to figure out how to get a sound listed on the text message arrival sounds list.

i-mate SP3 BIOS Upgrade (v2.4.33.11)

Shandy — Wed, 30 May 2007 17:13:00 GMT

I upgraded the BIOS on my i-Mate SP3 today. The download is available from Club i-mate. To gain access to the BIOS update you have to be a registered member. Be aware that to become a member of club i-mate costs $59.99 if you are re-registering an i-mate device that has previously been registered with club i-mate. However, once a member, the download is free. If possible I'd advise anyone buying a second hand i-mate to also try and get the login details off the previous owner.

The version I was using was v1.something (I forget exactly which) and I upgraded to v2.4.33.11. To find the version on my i-mate SP3 I used Start, Settings, About, ROM Update versions: Operator.

Note that when you upgrade the BIOS you lose all your user settings. This includes installed applications other than the default ones and any connection information like internet settings.

The main benefit of the upgrade appears to be that I am now able to use ActiveSync to via a bluetooth connection. Previously I used a USB connection and to some extent I will still use the USB connection as when the i-mate SP3 is connected to my laptop via a USB connection it also re-charges. However, the bluetooth re-synchronising is something that will be useful if I am fully charged and forget to plug my SP3 in. The quality of the audio has also been improved tremendously.

Setting Up An i-mate SP3 With Virgin Mobile Pay As You Go In The UK To Use The Internet

Shandy — Tue, 29 May 2007 15:29:00 GMT

I used the following settings

Start, 8 Settings, 9 More..., 2 Data Connections, Menu, 1 Edit Connections, 4 GPRS Connections, Menu, 1 Add
Description: Virgin GPRS (This can be any name)
Connects to: The Internet
Access point: goto.virginmobile.uk
User name: user
Password:
Primary DNS: 193.30.166.3
Secondary DNS:
IP Address:

Start, 8 Settings, 9 More..., 2 Data Connections
Internet connection: Virgin GPRS (This must be the same name that was specified above)

Skype

Shandy — Thu, 03 May 2007 10:53:00 GMT

The company I work for, CMI has recently started to roll out Skype as a method of communicating over our network. We have chosen to use US Robotics USR 9600 USB internet phones running with Skype 3.0. Hopefully this can save us a lot of money with phone calls between our UK and overseas factories. From a personal point of view it will save the company money with me being able to use it to contact my wife, Helen, from abroad once I get her a Skype phone. I always phone my wife every day I am away and the phone bill can be quite considerable by the end of my stays abroad!

Using the Single USB Port to Connect a Mouse and Keyboard to a Belkin OmniView™ PRO2 KVM Switch

Shandy — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 16:56:00 GMT

Today we utilised the usb capabilities of our Belkin OmniView™ PRO2 KVM Switch. As I failed to find any references to exactly how this worked prior to actually testing it out I thought I'd post how it worked in case anyone else is wondering.

The switch has a single USB, VGA and two PS2 ports per device connected. We had always connected the mouse and keyboard via the two PS2 ports. As there was only a single USB port to handle both the mouse and the keyboard I wondered how this worked. The answer is simple (at least on a Windows XP PC we tested it on). When the PC was connected to the switch using a USB A-to-B cable it autodetected the switch's USB port as a dual mouse/keyboard port, installed the drivers required (no media required) and allowed the single USB cable to replace the dual PS2 cables.

The exact procedure we followed for a PC currently using 2 PS2 cables for mouse and keyboard was:

Attach a USB A-to-B cable between PC and the switch. The drivers were automatically installed on the server without the need for external media. However, the mouse and keyboard did not work after the drivers had installed.
Remove the USB A-to-B cable. The mouse and keyboard started working again.
Shutdown the PC.
Re-attach the USB A-to-B cable.
Remove the PS2 mouse and keyboard cables.
Re-boot the PC.

Note that you still need a VGA male/female cable (as you do with the PS2 cables).

Second 19" Monitor Added To My Dell D620 System

Shandy — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 16:38:00 GMT

I have added a second 19" monitor to my D620 system at work. The first monitor has an analogue connection to the docking station but the second monitor has a DVI connection.

The two monitor setup is a vast improvement over my previous single monitor setup allowing me to run my development environment in one window and view the application I am developing in another. This is achieved by extending the desktop.

The only glitch I currently have is that I have the analogue monitor on my left and the DVI on the right. The analogue has been registered as the first monitor and the DVI as the second but I have set the DVI as my primary monitor. It all works fine when I set it up but on a reboot the XP swaps the monitors so that it thinks the anaologe is on the right and the DVI on the left. Presumably I have missed a setting that is needed to save which way around the monitors physically are on my desktop.

A New Laptop - Dell Latitude D620

Shandy — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 13:47:00 GMT

At work, after just over 3 years of using an Inspiron 8500 laptop I have replaced it with a Latitude D620. Complete with a bluetooth keyboard, mouse, docking station and 19" flat screen monitor it is a huge improvement.

So far the only fault I can find with the system is that if the laptop screen is raised when connected to the docking station the monitor loses the picture and I haven't found a reliable method of getting the picture back to the monitor without rebooting the PC.

One minor irritation with the laptop setup was that it came with Google Desktop Search and Google Toolbar pre-installed. I really dislike non-essential software being pre-installed. Suffice to say the Google Desktop Search was immediately uninstalled. I did leave the Google Toolbar installed as I do find it useful (if only for the spell checker).