The “Wow” starts now – but not if you’re used to connect to the Internet when you’re on the road via T-Mobile, Vodafone or Germany’s e-plus.

As I have described in one of my recent articles (find a German translation here) the support for Vista drivers for the mobile connect cards (most of them based OEMed Option UMTS 3G Fusion hardware) is ridiculously weak.

However one of my visitors, Riccardio Golia has remarked, that at least Vodafone seems to have drivers available for download now.

I have tested the Vodafone drivers with T-Mobile’s Communication Center (TMCC) under Windows Vista Ultimate and it works like a charme!

Should you urgently need help with this, please drop me an email.

First I gotta make a statement: I love Microsoft technologies. I recently migrated to Vista (as regular visitors know very well) and in my professional life for most of my time I build software based on Microsoft’s outstanding achievements. So this is not another “blame Microsoft for everything they do” blog post – rather it’s a statement to express my disappointment.

A couple of weeks ago my BlackBerry 7250 broke. I never really liked that device because of it’s strange form factor, it’s total lack of anything entertaining and it’s somewhat strange user interface.

Anyway, I had to go for a new handheld and visited the T-Mobile (Germany) website to see what they had to offer. I immediately got appealed by the T-Mobile MDA Vario II. Not only was it a visually way more appealing device than everything I knew from RIM but it also shipped with Windows Mobile 5.0.

The last time I have been using a mobile OS from Microsoft has been years ago so I was keen to see what their latest Windows Mobile version had to offer. Not to mention that as a .NET developer I kind of found the idea to finally use the .NET Compact Framework on my own device intriguing.

A quick Google-check on BlackBerry service availability for the T-Mobile device and I went to one of their stores and got one. (First annoyance: The price point. Selling it at nearly 700 Euros this handheld had to be the very, very, VERY best on the market!)

FAST FORWARD

I have been using the T-Mobile MDA Vario II for almost six weeks now. Correction: I desperately tried to use it. Honestly, I never experienced so much harassment with a device as with this one.

Here is the (not complete) list why:

• Windows Mobile 5.0 is slow. And I am not saying that it is sometimes a bit slow. It’s always slow. Switching from your today screen to your inbox easily takes between 5-10 seconds. Ever wanted to look up a flight reservation number quickly at the airport and your device just does not respond?
• Windows Mobile 5.0 is unstable. There was no – and I mean no single – day without at least 2-3 required soft resets. Even with no additional software loaded to the T-Mobile MDA Vario II it simply frooze hundreds of times. Oddly enough it also happend while I was in calls.
• The BlackBerry Connect Service sucks big time. Even though nobody from T-Mobile makes any effort to let you know before you purchase but here are some simple facts:
• The BlackBerry Connect Service for the T-Mobile MDA Vario II does no wireless sync of your addressbook. I fact it only syncs your calendar and email. Coming from a real BlackBerry this is ridiculous.
• The BlackBerry Connect Service does not support attachements larger than 60k. Have you ever recevied a PowerPoint or PDF file that was smaller than 60k?
• The BlackBerry Connect Service connects through the GPRS interface. RIM’s devices have been optimized for this. Windows Mobile Devices have not. Running BlackBerry Connect Service on the T-Mobile MDA Vario II reliably drains the battery. Your no-call standby time will go down to less than 7 hours.
• The BlackBerry Connect Service is even more unstable than Windows Mobile 5.0. For no obvious reason it stopped 5-10 times a day.
• PocketOutlook is everything but Outlook on a mobile device. If you expect a great calendar and a well organized inbox – forget it! In fact there are some great 3rd party apps out there mimicking a real PIM solution on Windows Mobile. If you want to spend the at average 40 Euro extra all is fine…
• No profiles. Used to have a set of profiles to quickly switch ring tones, alarm settings, etc.? They’re gone in Windows Mobile land. Stop searching, they are not there. You need to spend another 25 Euros to get a 3rd party app which introduces profiles – and more stability issues.
• Syncing with the PC is a nightmare. Even Windows Vista’s Mobile Device Center (which at the time of this writing was still in Beta 3) does not solve the many issues with syncing that I still knew from my PocketPC times years ago. “It’s all Microsoft. It should work like a charme.” Yap, it should!
• Just installed a 2 GB MiniSD Card to expand your devices memory and free up some device memory for the slow OS? Sorry man, you cannot force your Pocket Outlook to store emails on that freshly added memory. Windows Mobile 5.0 always stores emails on the device memory. But this is what memory expansion is thought for, isn’t it? Yes, it is. But not with Windows Mobile.
• There are no dial keys. I do like touchscreens when it comes to navigating a web page or an application which has been thorougly designed with the touchscreen in mind. However, the lack of haptical response makes it extremely difficult to quickly dial when you’re in a hurry. I’ll never buy a phone without dial keys again.

I could continue this list forever. But I won’t.

Two days ago my BlackBerry Pearl arrived. Setting it up took 10 minutes. Syncing some 1.000 contacts (over the air), my entire business calendar, bookmarks, notes, etc. took 30 more minutes.

The BlackBerry operating system is fast. It’s just amazingly fast. I did not have to charge the battery for three days in a row. And I had a total talk time of almost 5 hours already!

From a usability standpoint I never used a better mobile device. Everything is just exactly where you expect it. The media support (music, pictures, video) are great. The built-in camera is just fine. The dialing options including a perfectly working non-training voice dial feature for my entire address book are perfect.

And for the first time in my BlackBerry life all of this is packed in the visually most appealing device BlackBerry ever manufactured.

I am so happy my BlackBerry is back. If there could be one advice for the Microsoft Windows Mobile program managers: Get a BlackBerry Pearl and learn how it’s done right.

Let me make this very clear: I have been using Windows Vista (Ultimate) RTM since two weeks now and so far I love and like it a lot. It increased my personal and business productivity big time.

Microsoft has made significant efforts in many, many areas one being transparency. I am not referring to the appealing visual transparency of the pleasant new Vista Aero style here. I mean transparency in its original sense: Windows Vista keeps users informed everywhere and anywhere as to what a specific setting means and you find a vast number of More info… links in almost all of Vista’s system dialogs. This is a great enhancement to the user interface.

With the above said I almost cannot believe what happens to one of the most important areas of the new operating system – namely security – once you have installed Windows Live OnceCare 1.5 – which admittedly is still in beta.

The following screen depicts my current Windows Vista desktop:

As you can see Windows Firewall clearly states “Windows Firewall is off.” and urges me to turn it on.

Windows Live OneCare Settings however tell a different story: My firewall is set to Automatic which is recommended and therefore I should be fine and safe.

Doing a search for “firewall” in the Start menu (btw: the Start menu search feature is great!) returns two firewalls, an advanced one and, hmm, a not so advanced one?

So what does this mean? Is my firewall active – as OneCare tells me? Or is it not active – as my Network and Sharing Center indicates? Which firewall shall I use? The normal one? The advanced one?

Well, as it turns out the OneCare firewall is indeed active. So everything is fine. Except the warnings of the Vista security center and its wrong recommendations to turn the firewall on.

This sensible area needs to be reworked quickly or it will confuse other users besides me.

Those of you owning a Windows Mobile based device (where in most cases the very nice generic term “device” refers to a cellphone, I guess…) might wonder about the support in Windows Vista.

Unfortunately the statements you can find about Windows Mobile connectivity in Windows Vista are quite ambiguous and confused at least me while I was making the first steps with Windows Vista.

So this is to bring clarity to your mobile world:

1. Windows Vista (Ultimate) RTM ships with drivers which allow you to connect to a Windows Mobile Device. This means once you plug in your device Vista should be able to identify it and offers you access to its folders through Explorer. It does however not mean that you can sync or use Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC)!

2. Windows Moible Device Center is the successor of ActiveSync, the Microsoft tool used under XP to sync your mobile device. It is considered a separate application, not an integral part of Windows Vista and as of this writing still in beta. You can download the Beta 3 release here. Whilte the page says it’s “Beta 3 for Windows Vista RC1” it’s actually the only Beta 3 version and it works perfectly well on Windows Vista RTM.

3. As mentioned before Windows Vista RTM ships with Windows Moible Device drivers. To make things even more confusing the drivers bundled with Windows Vista RTM are not up to date. However, as they are also still in beta you do not get updates once through Windows Vista Update. Download the drivers from Microsoft’s site and install them.

4. Let’s do a quick check at this point: Your device should be disconnected. You have downloaded the driver updates and installed them. You have downloaded Windows Mobile Device Center Beta 3 and installed it. Fine! Let’s go ahead.

5. The last thing to check is whether you have Windows Live OneCare 1.5 installed. If you do have it installed Windows Vista very likely does not recognize your device anymore. This usually only happens if you install OneCare 1.5 after you have installed Windows Mobile Device Center as the installation routine of the latter configures OneCare 1.5 to work with WMDC if it gets installed after OneCare 1.5. If you have installed OneCare 1.5 first or if anything went wrong during install, OneCare’s firewall likely blocks your mobile device. Here is what you need to do:

• Disconnect your device.
  
  
• Download and install:
  • Updated Drivers
  • Windows Moible Device Center
    
    
• Open the following ports for all programs in the PC firewall:
  • Port 990: Open Inbound TCP
  • Port 999: Open Inbound TCP
  • Port 5678: Open Inbound TCP
  • Port 5679: Open Outbound UDP (Note: This is Outbound UDP!)
  • Port 5721: Open Inbound TCP
  • Port 26675: Open Inbound TCP
    
    
• Add the following programs to the allow list:
  • C:\Windows\WindowsMobile\wmdc.exe
  • C:\Windows\WindowsMobile\wmdHost.exe
  • C:\Windows\WindowsMobile\wmdsyncman.dll
    
    
• Reconnect your device.

This is it. I hope it helped you to bring a bit more clarity into an almost perfectly Vista clarified world!

This post is also available as a German translation.

T-Mobile Germany and many other mobile operators across the globe are selling hardware OEMed from Option Wireless Technology to enable their customers to run UMTS and GPRS mobile data connectivity via PCMCIA cards.

Telcos are known to not being the fasted companies when it comes to technology changes and currently there are no Windows Vista drivers for the PCMCIA card which mostly identifies itself as Fusion UMTS GPRS WLAN – 3G Modem.

This obviously is extremely annoying as the Vista technology adoption program has been heavily promoted by Microsoft since more than 18 months.

While some customer service reps are still blaming Microsoft for the lack of support – which is total nonsense as it is not Microsoft’s responsibility to create 3rd-party hardware drivers – this not only is a T-Mobile problem. The large community of mobile workers has tried to resolve this for quite a while now. You find traces in numerous forums.

As I ran into the exact same problem I directly contacted Option for help. While the e-mail I’ve sent to T-Mobile Germany’s enterprise customer support has still not been responded to at all after more than 48 hours, Option Wireless Technologies responded within just five hours. (Maybe somebody at T-Mobile Germany should look into how they treat their customers – but this is a different story.)

Option’s answer did not resolve the issue but sheds some light at the end of the tunnel.

Here is their reply e-mail:

Dear Sir,

Support and drivers are indeed to be gotten through T-Mobile for your card. However we can say that the Vista drivers are in the process of being WHQL’ed and released as we speak.

Very soon we will present the drivers to all operators (including T-Mobile) who will decide whether to release them to their customers.

As your card is OEM we are sorry to say we cannot assist you directly. As a policy Option does not release beta drivers to any customers.

—

Best regards,

Nadim Saeed
OPTION Wireless Technology
Customer Support

Well, I hope T-Mobile will present the updated drivers to us soon. Otherwise at least my company has to look for another mobile data provider.

Update January 13th, 2007

Meanwhile T-Mobile send me a couple of e-mails. In their first one they claimed they have successfully tested their software under Windows Vista and funnily attached a Word file explaining how to create a connection manually – under Windows XP SP 2. I responded back that their device drivers do definitely not work under Windows Vista RTM (Release to Manufacturing). A couple of days later they admitted that they just did tests with Vista Release Candidate 1 – well back then the driver architecture was not what it is now!

So their current final response is: There will be updated drivers on the T-Mobile homepage for download once they are out.

Let’s keep waiting – it’s already a shame.

Update January 24th, 2007

Another e-mail from T-Mobile. They wanted to let me know that updated information about the driver availability for Windows Vista is likely to become available in March 2007. I am not kidding. Windows Vista ships January 30st and T-Mobile has nothing better to do than to wait for two months until they get their customers back online. The shame goes on!

I recently migrated my Toshiba Tecra S3 to Windows Vista Ultimate and have been desperately looking for updated NVIDIA drivers that would allow me to run Vista with the fantastic new Aero style.

Unfortunately nothing has been available on the NVIDIA site at that time. (This might have changed as of the time you are reading this post!)

Thanks god the Guru of 3D has released Vista ready drivers for the GeForce Go 6600 which work like a charme.

I can highly recommend this set of drivers to all mobile users which have NVIDIA GeForce Go driven laptops. They absolutely deliver on the new experience Vista brings with the Aero theme.