Following my earlier column about Bluetooth 2.0's EDR (Enhanced Data Rate), today I want to follow-up with the explanation why I've initially changed back to Toshiba's Bluetooth stack. As mentioned in my personal blog, my Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook Tablet PC originally came with the Toshiba Bluetooth stack preloaded but I faced serious problems getting the stack working with the Windows Mobile Device Center. Therefore I've decided to switch to the Windows Vista Bluetooth stack and everything was fine and I was using sync and PAN over Bluetooth. Until I got my Samsung i600. Sync still worked fine but I never got Bluetooth PAN working to use my i600 as my UMTS/HSDPA modem.

If you are a long time visitor of the::unwired and it's forerunners, you know that all the sites were about connectivity, especially about connectivity between devices. Was Arne's Windows CE Page back in 1998 about connecting a Windows CE based Handheld PC (H/PC) via IrDA with an IrDA enabled mobile phone to use the mobile phone as the modem for the H/PC, the focus and technology changed during the years and today it's about connecting a Notebook via Bluetooth with a Bluetooth enabled Windows Mobile Pocket PC or Smartphone to use the Windows Mobile smartphone as a modem for the PC.
That's all fine and in general, Bluetooth works pretty good (an exception is posted in my next column this week) but for sure you can also connect your PC/Notebook/Tablet PC using the USB sync cable. Nevertheless, I prefer to commute and travel as light as possible and since Bluetooth is also doing fine for sync, I rarely carry a sync cable with me.

Like most US American Starbucks, also most German Starbucks offers WiFi-based Internet access (unfortunately without the free Windows Vista WiFi promotion) through T-Mobile's HotSpot network and when I was at my favorite Starbucks yesterday, I first used one of the WiFi networks available there. However, something went wrong during the afternoon and the WiFi fade away. Not a real problem at all, thanks to my Windows Mobile equipped UMTS device which I've fired up the same time and which I've used as a unwired broadband modem instead:

Oh man, this topic is annoying me and it's not the first time that it annoys me but now I want and have to rant about it because it starts to seriously hurt (me). One of the benefits of having a Smartphone is the fact that it is a kind of micro computer. So far so good and with most Smartphones you can install your own applications to make it even better and provide the appropriate applications for your needs.
However something is wrong here and it's a basic customization functionality. Sure, I can change the Home Screen look & feel of a Windows Mobile Smartphone and if I'm a little bit talented I can even create my own Home Screens by tweaking the Home Screen definition file (which is a XML file). If I'm less talented I can download great 3rd party Home Screens (most of the for free) but for some reasons I cannot change the Start Menu order.

Okay, this is a view into the future but I would like to discuss it with you here. Since I've arrived in Seattle, I haven't switched on my hotel TV a single time but I have running my home TV via different place shift technologies (Sling Media Slingbox, ASCII Express WebGuide and Orb MyCast) and I wonder if hotel TVs will face the same future hotel telephones faced already. I mean, take it serious, since we have such a mobile phone penetration and virtually every traveler is carrying one, when do you made a phone call from the hotel phone the last time? And I'm not talking about room to room conversations which is cheap because it's free but I'm talking about long distance calls. I haven't done it for maybe the past 8 years or so but the phone is just occupying space on the table now.