Sherry Kissinger at myITforum.com

PocketPC Journey - Newbie tips

A couple tips I found online. These may be newbie issues, but remember, I'm a newbie to PPC!

• When you are tapping, that word bubble pops up. It never seemed to have the word I really wanted, though. But while I was researching just general tips, I came across this one... Go to Settings, Personal, Input, Word Completion, and change the Suggest 1 Word more suggestions. I went with 3.
• PPT / Push to Talk button. I updated the ROM to the April official release, and every time I accidentally hit that PPT button, I was asked whether I wanted to enable that (for a fee, of course). After some research, found "Sleuth255's PPTFix", which (after a soft reset), let me go to Settings, Personal, Buttons, and remap the PPT button to something else (I picked ListPro). Just google for "Sleuth255 PPTfix" to find it (it's in a forum thread at XDA Developers, post #1 of the very long thread) Read some of the thread before trying it, though; depending upon your model it may not work, or cause the phone to hang. It worked for me, though.

Pocket PC Journey - playing VoiceMessage.wav files

I just got this new Pocket PC--Cingular 8525; got the email setup.  On the way into work, I got a work voicemail.  No problem, this is a perfect opportunity (I thought) to see just how cool this is going to be.  I opened up the .wav file (it's a Cisco IP phone system), Pocket Media Player opened... and it wouldn't play the .wav file.  It said it was an unsupported file type.  Really?  a .wav? 

After getting to the office, (and after taking care of the voicemail), some google research, and a few attempts to get Media Player to work--I simply gave up and instead loaded TCPMP; and associated .wav files with tcpmp.  Now a work voicemail in my work inbox, which is simply an attachment called "Voicemessage.wav", if I tap the attachment; it downloads it, launches TCPMP, and it plays perfectly.

Beginning my Palm OS to Pocket PC journey

I've had a Palm TX for over a year, and prior to that model, several Palm devices; basically, I was a die-hard Palm OS fan. I recently decided to move to Pocket PC for various reasons. Since I've just about drained the battery setting it up/playing with it; while I'm waiting for it to charge up again so I can continue playing; I just thought this was the perfect time to blog my experiences so far.

The model I have is the Cingular (aka AT&T) 8525. I really love it so far. The only issues so far is the phone jockey at the store said "we just got these devices in, I'm sure they have the latest ROM update"--yeah right. So I first had to update the ROM before I started playing with it.

Once I got that out of the way; configured work e-mail to push to the device (easy for me--since the process is thoroughly documented in an internal document) Since the documentation was quite clearly for the company email (step 1 was get a file from the intranet, step 2 was input a company internet-facing web address), I won't go into it here.

Also quickly setup a few more pop-enabled personal mailboxes. Again, pretty easy; as long as you know your own accounts/passwords and the pop/smtp settings, you're golden.

Now for the hard part... making decisions. I had started researching what I really needed for applications when moving from the Palm to a PPC. I'm still in the eval mode for these; but for most of them I'm sure I'll be buying them when the eval is over (or sooner). below is a quick chart, Palm app --> PPC app.

• HandyShopper --> List Pro hands down, no question
• SmartList to Go --> eWallet ; since I primarily used Smartlist for keeping track of web usernames/passwords. ListPro will cover the other databases I had in there.
• Automobil --> There's 2 I'm looking at: Auto3in1 and AutoFile+. Auto3in1 seems like too much; autofile+ seems like too little... not sure yet on this.
• iSilo --> iSilo (that was easy)
• Datebk6 --> builtin calendar so far. I've heard of PocketInformant; I might check out the demo. I might be OK with the built-in.
• nothing --> Resco Utilities. It's 1 of their Suites: file explorer, enhanced keyboard, and photo viewer.
• BackupMan --> SPB Backup (not sure yet, testing; I know I want an emergency restore capability; just not sure if this is it)

As I said; it's just the beginning of my journey; I haven't even read the manual yet (I suppose I could have done that instead of blogging). The one thing I'm really curious about is whether or not I can get the ICA client for PocketPC to work with our internet-facing citrix apps. It should, but I haven't tried yet. I might wait til our Citrix expert is back from vacation before attempting that.

Accessories purchased: WriteRights (to protect the screen); Jawbone Bluetooth ear thing; Krussel case (on order). The Write-rights will be temporary. After I put it on, I remembered why I hated them for the Palm. I'll have to go back and see what I ordered for the Palm TX 18 months ago, which is still perfect, can't even tell I have a screen protector on there; and never had to replace it. Hope they are still in business--if their protectors are that good--it's probably 1 sale every 18 months (like me).

McAfee 8.x Enterprise sms_def.mof Edit

The MOF edits in the SMSExpert MOF downloads include a section for the various versions of McAfee AntiVirus through 7.x.  The 8.x version changed (again) in which registry keys the relevant information is stored. 

Attached is a zip file containing updated sms_def.mof (mini.mof) edits for McAfee.  There are a few different versions attached; one for if you already use the entire edit for all previous versions, one for just 7.x and 8.x, and one for just 8.x.  You would only add one of them into your sms_def.mof.  If you already have an edit for McAfee in place, you would replace the existing section with one of the new ones.

As usual, in addition to changing the file in inboxes\clifiles.src\hinv, when you make customizations to the MOF, you will need to compile (Mofcomp) on your Advanced clients before they will report the new information.

Also in the attachment are a few sample reports to get you started in reporting on the information returned.

SMS 2003 SP3 upgrade and custom MOF classes

Have you added several custom classes to sms_def.mof (perhaps from the Monster)? or use a Mini.mof? Planning on upgrading your sms servers from SP2 to SP3?

One trick I learned for my last upgrade (SP1 to SP2), was to pre-edit the sms_def.mof in the setup folder. Assuming you've extracted the files from the SP3 update into folders/files, the default sms_def.mof is contained in \smssetup\inboxes\clifiles.src\hinv

Since I'm planning on implementing the Asset Management piece right away, the process I used for SP1 to SP2 will have to change a bit for the SP2 to SP3 update; but not by much. What I'm planning to do to minimize the # of edits/steps I have to do to get my customizations back:

1. Compare my production sms_def.mof to the one in the setup folder, and changed all the FALSE in the default to TRUE (that I have in production). If you have customizations or just the #pragma include for a mini-mof; don't add that yet. Test the modified .mof in your lab (you have a SMS2003 lab, right? Ok, if not; just keep a backup of the original sms_def.mof from SP3 somewhere for paranoia reasons)

2. Put a copy of the current production sms_def.mof, (and if you use it, the mini.mof) somewhere in the SP3 folder structure (again, just for paranoia, so you have a copy somewhere safe)

3. From my Central, send the entire sp3 folder structure to all sites as a package (so I have it local on each server when I need it).

4. When upgrading each primary site (secondaries aren't that relevant to me for sms_def.mof, since I have no legacy clients), as soon as I'm comfortable the upgrade is complete, IIS/MP is working, and no errors in Site Status, add back to sms_def.mof the #pragma include statement; or if you do not use the pragma include/mini mof; add back your custom classes.

5. That's it. just fyi, The reason I don't put the #pragma include in first (in the setup folder version), is because I did do that in the lab test; and all the new asset classes added themselves after the #pragma include. It would have worked just fine that way, but it just didn't look neat and tidy to me. I wanted all the Microsoft classes first, and my customizations last in sms_def.mof. So it was really just my OCD (obsessive-compulsive) tendencies... you could add them in step 1 and not have to edit the sms_def.mof post-install at all.

PS: The above is just what I'm *thinking* I'll do in production. This is so far only in the lab environment. And I just noticed my lab XP workstations aren't reporting the ConsoleUser class. The server is (and there is data in WMI on the server), but on the xp workstations, that data simply isn't there in WMI, so there is nothing to report. So my process above might just have a critical flaw.

Basically.... test, test, test yourself!