Picture the scene. You’re at the beach for the annual Christmas/New Year break and would love to stay another week, the problem is the company hasn’t supplied you with a laptop and your holiday home doesn’t have a desktop in sight.

Does this mean you’ll have to head back to the office and throw yourself behind a desk? Or could there be another option? The answer is yes – and it’s one we haven’t considered for a while – the PDA, or PDA/phone to be precise. While PDAs have often been considered the (very) poor cousin to laptops and tablets, the latest batch of devices, and the networks they operate on, have now advanced to such a stage that you could be firing work from your PDA to your desk bound colleagues, Word documents and Excel spreadsheets for example, that in all respects look like they came from your office workstation. If there was ever a summer to experiment with the portable office, this is the year to do it.

The Operating Software
So what operating systems will you require? Sadly, the day is not here yet when a standard mobile phone can edit a Word document, but at the same time many PDAs or Symbian OS mobiles can. The following are the mobile operating systems your PDA or Smartphone device will need to allow you to truly ‘escape’ the office.

Microsoft
Critical to working away from the office, is having the same software applications on your mobile device, as you have on your desktop computer. In a word this means Windows applications – specifically Excel, Word, PowerPoint and Internet Explorer.

It’s around five years since Microsoft launched Pocket PC 2000, which has since evolved into Windows Mobile 2003 and now Windows Mobile 5.0. This operating system is now par for the course on many of the latest PDA devices being launched, including those with phone and internet capacity such as the new Apache from Telecom and the JASJAR and HP iPaq 6515, which operate on Vodafone’s network.

For its new mobile OS Microsoft has renamed all the old Pocket applications. Thus ‘Pocket Internet Explorer’ is now ‘Internet Explorer Mobile,’ ‘Pocket Word’ becomes ‘Word Mobile’, and so on. While similar to previous versions on Windows Mobile 2003, the new mobile versions of Word and Excel have enhanced document format support – handling documents better by keeping most of the formatting in imported Word documents.

In addition, Word Mobile now lets you insert numbered lists, while Excel Mobile also lets you create and insert charts into your worksheets. Windows Mobile 5.0 includes PowerPoint Mobile but unfortunately this is a ‘view only’ program and you can’t use it to apply any editing. PowerPoint Mobile lets you display slides in portrait or landscape view, and show a presentation with or without animations, transitions, and timings. The new mobile version of Internet Explorer incorporates a number of small, but useful enhancements.

First, you can now download photos, music files, and sounds directly to your PDA from web sites. For example, tap and hold on an image, and select the ‘Save’ option, and you’ll get the download dialog box. As a file is down-loaded, the program displays a progress bar at the bottom of the screen. If some of your business applications are accessed via the internet or an application service provider, Internet Explorer Mobile on a PDA, even with just standard 2G connection speeds, should be all you need to work remotely. And of course, email is a given, with any device running Windows Mobile 5.0 being configurable for POP/SMTP/IMAP and internet email accounts like Hotmail. Finally, when you do eventually get back to the office you can synch everything (email, contacts etc) up to your desktop using Microsoft ActiveSync 4.0.

November 2005

Symbian
While they’re not strictly PDAs, two phones that launched in the second half of 2005 can also help you give the impression you’re nose to the grindstone, when you are actually chilling by the barbeque. Nokia’s 9300 is about as close to a PDA as a phone gets, but still maintains a phone form factor. Except of course when you open it up to display its full QWERTY keyboard and landscape screen display. You can open and edit Microsoft Office files with the 9300’s office applications, plus view PDFs with Adobe Acrobat reader for Symbian.

The 9300 also supports POP3, IMAP4, SMTP, SyncML, and BlackBerry Connect e-mail accounts. It’s a tri-band GSM phone and operates on the Vodafone network. Not to be outdone, Panasonic’s X800 also comes with a Symbian operating system. The X800’s Quickoffice suite allows you to read and Edit Word and Excel files, and while it doesn't have a QWERTY keyboard, if you only want to make minor changes to documents, this could be an option for you. The X800 also comes with Bluetooth and infraRed. Both the X800 and the 9300 have expandable memory. One other option to consider when looking for a Symbian phone with PDA-like functionality, is Sony Ericsson’s QWERTY keyboard equipped P910i.

Palm
The Treo 650 smartphone from Palm is available on both Telecom and Vodafone. The Palm operating system includes a range of business-friendly applications, like an email client for IMAP or POP3 email and you can view Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. You can also edit them if you install an office suite product called Dataviz Documents To Go which is on the CD Rom supplied. For a full range of software for Palm, Windows, BlackBerry and Symbian devices, visit www.handango.com – select your operating system, and scroll through a range of installable office applications that have to be seen to be believed.

Blackberry
Certainly BlackBerry’s claim to fame is its ‘email anywhere, anytime’ mantra. Email to your office address can be pushed direct to your device. And if you’ve opted for Vodafone’s BlackBerry Enterprise Solution, when you do come back from your holiday and return to your desk, everything you’ve done on your BlackBerry handheld is reflected on your PC.

Every email you checked is marked as read. Every one you deleted is gone. Every reply you sent is in your sent folder. In essence there’s no double handling and no plugging in to synchronise when you return to the office. Where BlackBerry is a little light though, is in the office suite area, but as with Palm and Windows, there are now several companies developing office applications that work on BlackBerry’s – a quick visit to Handango, for example, found eOffice for sale, specifically design to run on the Blackberry 7230 which is very popular locally. Once installed, eOffice allows Blackberry 7230 owners to view, create and edit MS Excel and Word compatible documents, and organising those files using the wireless Desktop Manager.

Are You Covered?
Interestingly, none of the devices we have mentioned above, are reliant on 3G connections to enable you to work from your holiday locations.

For example, while the Apache and the i-mate JASJAR can both operate on a 3G connection (Telecom and Vodafone respectively), when one is not available, they will simply click down to the 2G connection. Sure, the data speeds will not be as fast, but this should suffice for sending most documents, and is certainly enough for text email service.

It’s worth noting that both Vodafone and Telecom boost their coverage and capacity in popular holiday destinations (sometimes permanently) over the Christmas/New Year period, and both networks are in the process of extending their 3G footprints across New Zealand.

So far this year Vodafone has provided 3G coverage in Pauanui, Whangamata, Rotorua, Mount Maunganui, Tauranga, Rotorua, Taupo, Queenstown and Napier, for example, and has also bumped up 2G capacity in Matarangi and Whiritoa with additional 2G coverage by Christmas in Ahipara and Kerikeri.

For its part Telecom says it beefs up capacity at all New Zealand’s major holiday sites over the summer. And in addition, provides temporary coverage at locations that cannot justify a permanent mobile site (because few use the site after the holidays Telecom says). This year, that includes Waihi Beach, Ohope Beach, Kai Iwi Lakes and Whiritoa.

For more on business uses of Mobility, visit the Mobile Business research pavilion on iStart.

The typing question
If you’re like me, probably what holds you back the most from working with a PDA is the size of the QWERTY keyboards that come integrated with devices like the Apache and the iPaq 6515. Yes, they have made a decent attempt at recreating a standard desktop PC keyboard (see image to the right), but nonetheless, those of us who suffer with fat fingeritis know there’s nothing like the real thing. Which brings us to the very real option of a Bluetooth keyboard. What is that you ask? Simply, a Bluetooth keyboard is one that can connect to your PDA via Bluetooth, enabling you to type into your device using a full-sized keyboard (they usually fold down). So what’s required?

For a start your PDA must have Bluetooth support, either built-in or added on later through an SD card or other means. It will probably require that you install drivers on your PDA, depending on the operating system you're using. Be sure to ask the sales assistant exactly what type of devices and operating system the Bluetooth keyboard will work with. Typically a Bluetooth keyboard is battery powered. Often the keyboards will come with some kind of rack for positioning the PDA – in either horizontal or portrait position. Given that it’s a Bluetooth connection though, you can put the PDA anywhere you like – within reason as you’ll still want to see its screen.