I have just tried out a very inexpensive IrDA and thought I'd let you know, while the goods are still there.
They are here...
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/320700158283?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649
The price is £3.99
(call it £4
) with £2.99 p&p.
If you buy more than one then the extra postage is free. This applies to the UK only of course. The page is from the electrical outlet here called Maplins.
The reason I mention it?
This works pretty well now
(after a false start, which was largely my fault
) with Windows 7, and with Vista it worked straight away.
Personally I would have liked the option to use IR on the new systems, but even as the Windoze help on '7 says, there aren't many laptops sold now which still have IrDA aboard.
More than that however, the on-board Jornada 72x file explorer failed to work for me in Windows 7 altogether. But Total Commander works fine.
You sometimes need to cancel and then re-send, in order for Windows 7 to call up the receive dialogue, but using Total Commander also allows you to send more than one file at a time... which Windows File Explorer on the Jornada never permitted at all... it's greyed out.
Total commander sometimes … but only sometimes... throws a cryptic error message, but not that often. And I logged no problems at all with Vista.
I know the popular fashion among up-to-date pda users is Bluetooth, and you can get a Bluetooth Dongle for your pc, but I've yet to see Bluetooth work successfully on a Jornada. Of course if you are fortunate enough to have relatively new laptops, you'll find it's already built in on them... like IrDA used to be.
This is the cheapest IrDA dongle that I could see on eBay, and the fact of it's coming on a flying lead to me is a bonus. Our USB ports are all, either on the back, or on the side of our units here. The flying lead means I don't have to try to get the Jornada round the back of the laptop or aligned down the side.
The Plug 'n Pray
(as we used to call it in the days of Win95
) works faultlessly, and the dialogue boxes are soon accessible from the tray icon, which appears shortly after you plug the usb lead in and the drivers are found.
I wandered around the boxes on '7, unable to find the “receive” window. It was not until I plugged it into one of our HP Tablets
(Vista
) that the sequence became apparent.
You plug in the IrDA, and it responds with a sort of muted groan.
Right clicking on the icon gets you to the dialogue boxes where you can set your preferences. Or you can do the same thing by Start, Control Panel, Hardware
(and Sound on 7
) and click on the IR icon which is there.
Now it is installed, I don't see that tray icon now
(in '7
) until both the IrDA unit is plugged in, and I ask the Jornada TotalCommander to send a file
(s
).
Then you go back to the Jornada, and from the window in Total Commander you select the files to send... which puts up a dialogue box itself saying “IR Send
(OBEX- Protocol
)”
It usually generates an error message for me here... and I get the impression I get this error message because I have not put the J728 down on a desk or similar stable platform.
It seems to work ok when I do.
If it is working as it should now then it will throw this dialogue box up at you on the pc/laptop... to either accept or refuse the transfer...
The housing on this dongle sports some odd kind of clip arrangement. At first I thought it was so you could secure it to the main computer monitor or your laptop screen. But it doesn't have a spring and won't grip anything. I'm hoping that this all behaves the same way using the Jornada 820 now.
QF 14-09-11
